Long-awaited kosher and halal options to become available in New York state prison
A new bill guarantees religiously appropriate foods in commissaries and visiting area vending machines
Correctional facilities on Rikers Island in June, 2022. Photo by ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images
By Sam Lin-Sommer December 29, 2023
Incarcerated New Yorkers will soon have more options for kosher and halal food.
This month, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill guaranteeing religiously appropriate food items in prison commissaries and visiting area vending machines. The law is set to go into effect next September.
Across the country, the availability of kosher and halal food in prisons is often the subject of lawsuits that reference the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, which enshrines the rights of people in correctional facilities to religious services, including food that meets their dietary restrictions.
In New York state, where a 2018 report found that 12.3% of the prison population identified as Muslim, 6.5% as Jewish, and 3.9% as belonging to the Nation of Islam, mess halls already provide kosher and halal options for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
But in commissaries, where people supplement prison meals that are often small and unappetizing, religiously certified options are much harder to find. The same is true for vending machines in visiting areas, where friends and family purchase meals and snacks to replace the meals that their incarcerated loved ones frequently miss in order to attend visits.
Tzedek Association, a Jewish prison reform organization that was an early advocate for the bill, regularly receives complaints from incarcerated New Yorkers and their families about struggling to find kosher options, according to Rebecca Taxman, an associate policy writer with the group. “I used to visit someone, and they did have it at the facility,” she said, speaking about kosher options outside of the dining hall. “And then, like, a couple months later, it just wasn’t there. Like, they didn’t have it at all.”
Taxman, who also teaches chess to people at Rikers Island Jail Complex, added that her Muslim students reported having similar problems finding halal food in facilities throughout the state.
The new bill aims to change that. Its text guarantees that commissaries and vending machines will provide food that meets “requirements of halal, kosher and other religious dietary needs” for people incarcerated on premises, for the same price as comparable, non-religiously certified items. State Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, one of the bill’s sponsors, told the Forward that the state would have to provide items with higher standards of halal and kosher certifications, such as those given by the Orthodox Union and other kosher certification organizations.
“It’s a parity bill,” he told the Forward. “Whatever this system already provides, there needs to be an option available for religious individuals.”
In the past, the loved ones of Jews and Muslims got around existing limitations by bringing halal and kosher products with them on prison visits. But last year the state banned families from bringing packages to correctional facilities, cutting off a crucial lifeline.
Eichenstein said he has been working on getting prisons to provide more kosher and halal options since he heard about the problem while visiting New York state prisons a few years ago. “This is wrong,” he recalled thinking.
Since the bill was passed, Taxman has been in conversations with New York’s Board of Rabbis about implementing the new policy come September. She hopes to ensure that commissaries stock everything from kosher powdered milk to prepared kosher meals. Tzedek is also working on improving the quality of kosher meals served in mess halls, which often have less protein in them than prisons’ standard fare.
Her rationale for these efforts would be familiar to many a Jewish parent: Eating comes first. “Food is one of the, sort of, cornerstones of a person’s life in general,” she said. “And it’s even more so within the prison system.”
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