Federal investigation into Colorado’s juvenile system puts nutrition in the spotlight

Disclaimer: This research was funded in part by The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the R Street Institute. We thank them for their support; however, the findings and conclusions presented in this report are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of these organizations.

“Mom, I think they’re trying to kill me.”

This was the plea of a young man inside Colorado’s juvenile detention system shortly before he nearly died from kidney failure attributed to malnourishment. His story is the catalyst for a new investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) into the Youthful Offender System in Pueblo, where The Denver Post has chronicled fainting spells, rapid weight loss, and undernourishment among detainees.

These problems are not unique to Colorado. In California, the San Mateo County Juvenile Justice Commission has highlighted poor food quality in their annual inspection reports for the past four years. Medical staff have had to “prescribe” peanut butter and jelly sandwiches just to meet basic caloric needs. To make matters worse, the high per-meal cost of $90 contributes to the estimated million-dollar price tag of incarcerating a single youth for one year.

From Maryland to Texas, reports suggest that nutrition is treated as an afterthought rather than a core component of the justice system. Out of 249 programs identified as “models” by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, only one emphasizes diet and physical activity. While the specific problems in Colorado remain under investigation, the nutrition crisis provides an opportunity to reconceptualize rehabilitation from a whole-body perspective.

Counting Calories

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) updated its nutrition standards for institutional settings in 2023. Colorado officials followed suit, slashing daily caloric intake from 3,200 to 2,700 for males and from 2,600 to 2,200 for females. On a spreadsheet, 2,700 calories looks sufficient to maintain a healthy weight. But in reality, counting calories to comply with a “one-size-fits-all” federal mandate ignores the acute nutritional challenges of children in the criminal justice system.

Poor diet is a major driver of criminal behavior. Justice-involved youth are more likely to be either underweight or overweight and suffer higher rates of diabetes and heart disease than their peers. They disproportionately come from “food deserts,” entering custody with deficiencies in Omega-3 fatty acids, zinc, and B vitamins. Low levels of these nutrients can cause heightened aggression and antisocial behavior, while unstable blood sugar levels can lead to miscalibrated “fight-or-flight” responses. In one of the most significant studies on juvenile carceral nutrition, researchers found that replacing junk food with healthier alternatives led to a 42 percent reduction in disruptive behavior and a 25 percent drop in assaults.

It turns out that “hangry” is more than a slang term—it is a genuine state of neurophysiological stress.

Based around static calorie mandates, Colorado’s simplified diet calculus is a bureaucratic oversimplification. Not only does it fail to account for the complex nutritional needs of this special population, it does not reflect the actual nutritional value of what is on the tray. Case in point: To meet new federal caps on sodium within tight state correctional budgets, manufacturers have created “compliant” processed foods like breaded patties and instant mashes that use chemical additives and potassium chloride as salt substitutes. Similarly, when the USDA mandated that sugar make up less than 10 percent of total weekly calories, facilities replaced sugar-rich items like natural fruit juice with artificially sweetened beverage mixes.

This is a classic example of regulatory displacement. When a rule designed to fix one problem (e.g., high sugar intake) inadvertently creates a new, often worse problem (e.g., chemical additives and nutrient loss), it is usually because regulators failed to account for the real-world operational and budgetary constraints of the regulated entities. In this case, cash-strapped state agencies are not just feeding children less food; they are feeding them lower-quality food that is technically compliant but nutritionally inferior.

The result is less-appetizing food that young people simply do not want to eat.

Nutrition as Discipline

The situation highlights another questionable detention practice: using food access to incentivize good behavior. Until the recent DOJ scrutiny, children in Colorado with clean records could purchase supplemental snacks from the canteen, while those with disciplinary issues could not.

Tying food to discipline blurs the line between the carrot and the stick: Is canteen access a reward for good behavior or a punishment for bad behavior? Furthermore, withholding nutrients required for impulse control and emotional regulation is ultimately self-defeating. A hungry population is a volatile population, endangering youth and staff while undermining the facility’s rehabilitative mission.

After the story broke, Colorado’s Division of Youth Services relaxed its rules around canteen access. While a positive step, this is a reactive fix to a systemic failure—a Band-Aid that continues to rely on parents to supplement their children’s nutrition by funding commissary accounts. This practice shifts the financial burden of care onto families, many of whom already struggle to make ends meet. Food security should be a non-negotiable right for all children in state custody, regardless of their finances.

The Restorative Power of Physical Fitness

Seven out of ten children in the American juvenile justice system suffer from mental health disorders. While the system provides specific, individualized rehabilitation plans involving counseling and medication, a critical component has been overlooked: physical fitness.

New meta-analyses conducted in 2024 and 2025 indicate that for teens aged 14 to 18, exercise can be as effective as SSRIs in treating major depressive disorder—without the side effects. Exercise naturally regulates dopamine production, providing a healthy reward signal to a brain that might otherwise seek it via risk-taking or substance use. Physical activity forces a “mind-body” connection that breaks the cycle of negative thoughts common in justice-involved youth.

Those analyses also show that focusing on diet and physical activity could be at least as beneficial as pharmaceuticals and cognitive behavioral therapy. Yet many facilities do not treat exercise and physical fitness with the same empirical rigor reserved for other clinical interventions. If the goal truly is public safety, then we must recognize whole-body wellness as a prerequisite for behavior change.

Conclusion

The government has a special relationship with children in its custody. When it assumes the role of “parens patriae,” it assumes a moral and legal obligation to provide for the child’s basic development. After all, rehabilitation cannot occur if a child is not healthy. The DOJ investigation and internal policy changes in Colorado are a start, but we need clear, verifiable nutrition and exercise plans in juvenile facilities across the country. If we cannot manage to feed children adequately under state supervision, we have no business locking them up in the first place.