A small group of teenage boys vigorously dig through a trough of soil, yelling out the things that they see: worms, rollie pollies, millipedes.
This is how the Garden Education Manager for the Sustainable Living Center’s Farm to School program, Nathan Brannon, describes a typical lesson involving a vermicast (worm compost) bin.
“We searched through [the worm bin] to get an average count of the populations to see how well they’re doing. They get so into it; it’s really crazy to see in 15- 16-year-olds,” Brannon said.
As the name implies, the Farm to School program typically works to implement community gardens and teach lessons at local elementary and high schools. But in 2022, the program was extended into Walla Walla’s Juvenile Justice Center (JJC) with the hopes of providing incarcerated youth the opportunity to learn valuable skills and feel empowered by their ability to meet their own basic needs.
As of 2022, approximately 27,600 teens were incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities around the country.
These figures represent a significant improvement from 2000 when 108,800 youth were incarcerated. A notable factor in the decline was the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a decrease in youth delinquency and arrests across the board. Thus, rates of incarceration may have increased in the last two years as the country continues to rebound from the pandemic.
Despite the overall decline in youth incarceration, racial disparities amongst those incarcerated remain high in Washington state. Black, Latino, and Indigenous youth are all overrepresented in juvenile detention facilities. In fact, Washington has the fourth highest rate of over-representation of incarcerated Indigenous youth in the nation.
Youth incarceration is associated with sexual assault and suicide risk, as well as increased risk of substance abuse and adult incarceration later in life.
Intertwining systems of poverty and racism make incarceration a vicious cycle that can feel nearly impossible to escape without the necessary support. Though there is little research on the effect of food justice programs in youth facilities, research on adult inmates and formerly incarcerated people indicates that these programs, combined with other mental health supports, can alleviate some of the pressures that lead people to re-offend, including the inability to find a stable job, support oneself and one’s family.
Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University Joshua Sbicca, investigated how food justice activism can be reimagined to increase social equity at the point of reentry, using the Oakland-based Planting Justice program as a case study. He discusses ways this kind of work can provide stability and support to individuals reentering public life after incarceration.
“Food justice activism that promotes the restorative properties of urban agriculture is a bulwark against the carceral logic that might otherwise wrap these men back into the prison pipeline. Central to this activism is also the way it strengthens community bonds,” Sbicca said.
Emphasizing community and family bonds is central to Brannon’s work with Farm to School. Brannon talked about what he hopes the youth take away from the program.
“Self-reliance. Not just in ‘I can make my own job,’ but if you see other people in trouble or your loved ones…and you’re looking for a way to contribute, you have these skills that are applicable all across the board,” Brannon said.
Brannon went on to describe a Juneteenth event at a local school that the youth at the JJC helped prepare for.
“They helped me take corn seedlings and transplant them into little cups that we later gave away to students and families in the elementary schools.… and they were so right on board, knowing that they were helping kids or helping families,” Brannon said.
The event was a huge success, and Brannon described how many families came back and told him they had become so inspired by the thriving corn plant that they went on to start their own gardens.
However, the realities of operating a Farm to School program within the confines of a detention center are far from ideal.
Though there is an outdoor garden bed at the JJC, the youth are no longer allowed outside and are unable to interact with the garden. The Detention Manager of the JJC Victor “TJ” James talked about the change.
“Due to the youth that we have back there – we’ve been having more violent offenses – I didn’t feel comfortable putting them outside….I’m hoping at some point we can move out to do that [again], but it just depends on who we have in here,” James said.
Keathley Pinney Brown, class of 2024, was the Community Fellow for the Sustainable Living Center last spring and was responsible for planning and running lessons at the JJC. She said it could be a challenge to work around the restrictions imposed on the youth, but she ultimately found ways to keep her students engaged.
“You have to be flexible and creative, but you can come up with ways to make it engaging…We did a lot of cooking classes and they really liked those. And that’s a very hands-on, fun activity that still would link back to food systems and farm to table,” Pinney Brown said.
Ultimately, however, Pinney Brown and Brannon wanted to find a way to reincorporate food production into their curriculum, despite the myriad of obstacles.
Brannon designed and built a hydroponics system that the youth could use within the confines of the Justice Center. Hydroponics is a way of growing plants without soil that can be done indoors. The plants are partially submerged in a water-based nutrient solution that uses vermicast from the worm bin. Artificial light from LED bulbs allows plants to grow in any season. The students were actively involved in the final assembly of the system.
“When it came to constructing the hydroponic system, I really wanted to try and do it as hands-on for the youth as possible, but a lot of it they couldn’t do because it would be drilling or hand sawing. But we still were able to have them assemble it at the very end once everything had been cut and drilled. They were able to put the PVC pipes together … So it’s definitely more difficult to get the hands-on learning that you might initially plan for, but it’s not impossible,” Pinney Brown said.
Since then, the youth have been able to grow a variety of different plants indoors, including peach and avocado trees.
Brannon described how many of his students would give their saplings to their families with the idea that they would eventually be able to have fruit from the tree they started while incarcerated.
“It gives you a goal or a point further down the road to focus on – a light at the end of the tunnel,” Brannon said.
Despite the positive impact Farm to School programs can have on kids and communities, critics of the movement argue that these programs can overemphasize consumer choice and individual responsibility, thus taking focus away from systemic issues such as food deserts and unequal access to health care.
In his article on food justice in adult prisons, Sbicca makes a similar argument.
“The problem is that the food lens has often clouded the strategies and tactics necessary to advance social justice. For example, food insecurity becomes about food access instead of poverty and capitalism.”
Sbicca emphasizes that food justice programs should operate in tandem with mental health services in the reentry process. Youth at the JJC currently have relatively limited access to counselors and other trained mental health care providers. However, James is working to improve available counseling services.
“A year and a half ago we had a great mental health counselor who was in-house, which was great because she could then triage anything that happened back there. But she left, so now… we are in the works of setting up a contract with a bigger company that will come in and provide more mental health services for us. But at this time we have one mental health counselor from Lincoln High School coming [once a week],” James said.
Though the Farm to School program cannot be expected to meet every need of a vulnerable youth population, Brannon believes this work does get to the heart of some of the systemic problems that lead to incarceration.
Brannon became interested in community gardening during 2020 as Black Lives Matter protests, spurred by the murder of George Floyd, were happening around the country.
“There were protests in the streets and all that stuff. And you know, I’m 40 years old. I can’t be out in the streets all the time. So you find different ways to protest and you find different ways to go after the systemic problems at the heart of everything. The Black Panthers started their breakfast program, and the same kind of energy is in the work that I do,” Brannon said, “I sound like a broken record, but there’s absolutely nothing that you’re going to be able to elevate in your life if you’re not able to take care of the basic needs.”
The idea of self-reliance can often take on the rhetoric of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” which typically excludes an analysis of race and cycles of poverty. But the reality is, for 18-year-olds reentering public life after spending time behind bars, having confidence in their ability to be self-reliant and provide for their basic needs could mean the difference between establishing a stable livelihood and ending up re-incarcerated.
Unfortunately, due to The Wire’s ethical guidelines surrounding minors, as well as restrictions in place at the JJC, I was unable to interview any of the youth who have participated in the Farm to School program. Thus, this article is fundamentally incomplete. Incarcerated youth are at the intersection of two of the most vulnerable populations – children and prisoners. I hope the absence of their voices in this article serves as a reminder that those who are unable to speak for themselves are often most deserving of our advocacy and attention.
