Daredevil Takes On Food Insecurity

We all deserve to eat, even the "bad guys"

“For [stealing caramel corn] they’re willing to spend five times more to lock me up than they are willing to spend to feed me.” Leroy Bradford, convicted of petty theft

Daredevil: Born Again, the Marvel Comics reboot on Disney+, does something rare for a comic book show: it highlights the poverty and food insecurity faced by one of the “bad guys”. Crimefighting comic book superheroes tend to beat up henchmen or cart them off to jail. Superhero stories usually ignore the moral complexity of locking up small-time criminals, but episode 4 of Daredevil: Born Again went there and got it right, with surprisingly accurate depictions of public benefit programs and the challenges of getting help when you need it.

Daredevil’s alter ego, lawyer Matt Murdock, is asked to represent a man with disabilities, Leroy Bradford, who was arrested for stealing some caramel corn from a corner store. Murdock successfully bargains his client’s sentence down to 10 days in Rikers, but is surprised when Bradford is less than thrilled with this outcome. “Last time I got 30 days, know what happened? I missed my SSI appointment and they cut my benefits.”

SSI–Supplemental Security Income–is a federal benefit program to support people who have serious disabilities that limit their ability to work. Bradford laments the bureaucratic nightmare of getting benefits reinstated once cut off. “Bad enough trying to live off food stamps, but when they cut it? Man, it takes forever to get that shit back regular.”

He’s right. SSI and food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are difficult to access. Missing an appointment can be enough to lose eligibility for benefits, at least temporarily. Being locked up just for stealing a snack can set off a chain reaction of missed appointments, lost benefits, lost jobs, and food insecurity, due to the administrative burden of applying for and keeping access to public benefits.

What is administrative burden? Don Moynihan and Pamela Herd wrote a book on the topic, and in an interview with the Niskanen Center, Herd said:

“Administrative burden is the kind of onerous encounters that we have not infrequently with public services and benefits or with the government more broadly. It’s waiting for three hours at your local DMV to get your license renewed or having to fill out paperwork four different times seemingly providing the same information basically over and over again, the time involved, the money sometimes involved in meeting these kinds of requirements to access state benefits and services.”

(Moynihan has a Substack called Can We Still Govern, to which Herd contributes, and which is essential reading.)

If convicted of a crime, participants may lose eligibility altogether. Petty larceny–like stealing caramel corn–does not affect SNAP eligibility, but criminal drug convictions do in many states. The impact of the drug conviction SNAP ban falls most heavily on people of color, because of the huge racial inequity in convictions. The Marshall Project reported that “in 2016, black people went to state prison at five times the rate of white people.” And any conviction will make it much more difficult to find a job, exacerbating food insecurity.

This scene covers so many real aspects of poverty and public benefits, with nuance and compassion. It even delves into the debate about SNAP food choice restriction. “And yeah, just once, I want a dessert. Something that don’t taste like crap, something that tastes real good.” Everyone wants a treat once in a while. Most of us aren’t criminalized for indulging in one.

“Then you gotta start eating throwaway crap from supermarket dumpsters,” Leroy says, “begging for change, for food…”

This last remark alludes both to the inadequate levels of SNAP benefits and also to the poor nutrition standards in American prisons and jails. Bradford has been in and out of jail repeatedly, for years. He was disabled, food insecure, and maybe he’d already lost his SNAP for another reason. The Marshall Project investigated the big business of privatized prison food. Many prisons and jails outsource their food service to private companies like Aramark in an industry estimated to be worth $3.2 billion. Does that expense buy high quality food for the incarcerated population? Hardly.

“Cell phone images smuggled out of jails and prisons across the country reveal food that hardly looks edible, let alone nutritious… In lawsuits and news reports, kitchen workers at prisons in Arizona, Oregon, and elsewhere reported seeing boxes of food … served to prisoners marked: ‘not for human consumption.’”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that “incarcerated people in the United States are six times more likely to endure foodborne illness than the general population.”

Daniel Rosen co-founded the Coalition for Carceral Nutrition after he was incarcerated for six years, writing that he spent those years “trying to buy, beg, borrow, and steal whatever real food existed inside those walls, from kitchen staff, other incarcerated people, wherever - especially fresh fruits and vegetables.” Now he and the Coalition for Carceral Nutrition are working to “change the tray,” advocating for:

“Food in prisons and jails that promotes dignity and opportunity, that heals instead of harms. We envision a transformed carceral food system that intertwines health, sustainability, agency, cultural respect, and job skills training, in federal, state, local, youth, and tribal facilities across the country.” (Coalition for Carceral Nutrition website)

Finally, Leroy points out the wastefulness of spending so much more on incarceration than it would cost to simply give people what they need. “And for [stealing caramel corn] they’re willing to spend five times more to lock me up than they are willing to spend to feed me.” In FY 2022, the United States spent an average of $42,672 per incarcerated individual, or $116.91 per day. The average SNAP benefit is just $6 per person per day, not nearly enough to adequately feed a person in 2025–benefits tend to run out 2-3 weeks into each month, causing increased demand at food pantries.

Republicans in Congress want to cut that $6 down to $5 and restrict eligibility in a variety of horrible ways. This is short-sighted, because nutritional support from SNAP in childhood reduces the risk of kids committing crimes when they are older. It is also antithetical to the stated goals of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which, among other things, aims to combat chronic disease, ensure food is free of environmental toxins, and to restrict SNAP food choice to make people use SNAP to buy fruits and vegetables. That’s hard to do on $5 per person per day. (Much, much more on MAHA soon in a blog in progress.)

This Daredevil episode does an important service by shining a bright light on the very real issues of food insecurity, food dignity, disability benefits access, and carceral nutrition. Food is a human right. Everyone has a right to safe, nutritious, appealing food, whether they are disabled or low-income or in prison or driven to shoplift food to survive. We all deserve to eat. Not because we are wholesome or law-abiding or because we have a job, but because we are human.