Reforming body and soul : Malta's Prison Food Experience 1920–1939

Abstract

Based on official prison documents from 1920 to 1939, this study examines the relationship between institutionalized food, ritualized practices, and the penal experience at Corradino Civil Prison in colonial Malta. Following British penal reforms, prison regimes shifted away from physical corporal punishment toward psychological discipline and re-education designed to reform the inmate's "body and soul." The chapter analyzes prison foodways through three main categories: issues of food quality and quantity, expressions of Maltese culinary identity, and covert forces of resistance. While institutional rules enforced strict, monotonous dietary patterns that reduced food to its biological use value, prisoners actively sought opportunities—such as informal trading networks with warders and fellow inmates—to assert agency, alleviate hardship, and maintain forms of identity value.