Eliminating
All the Prison Privateers
By Phil Mattera for the Dirt
Diggers Digest
Yet
the for-profit prison scandals are not limited to those involving companies
such as Corrections Corporation of America that are in the business of managing
entire correctional facilities.
There
is also now a widespread practice of contracting out specific functions at
government-run prisons, often with disastrous results.
Numerous states and localities have, for instance, handed over responsibility for feeding prisoners to large foodservice companies such as Aramark operating under lucrative contracts.
Like
other providers of outsourced services, Aramark has made grandiose promises
about the savings that private operation would provide.
Many
public officials, especially conservative governors looking to shrink the size
of the state workforce, have taken these claims at face value and ignored the
dismal track record of privatization.
A
case in point is Michigan, where in 2013 the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder
gave Aramark a three-year contract worth about $150 million covering the
state’s correctional facilities. The plan eliminated some 370 state jobs and
was supposed to save $12 million a year.
Instead,
it led to a nightmare situation in which Aramark was found to be serving
maggot-infested food and employing low-paid and poorly trained workers, some of
whom fraternized with prisons and smuggled in contraband.
These
problems were described at great length in thousands of state documents obtained by the Detroit Free Press through
an open records request. One of those documents was an e-mail message from the
state official in charge of the contract saying he was “at my wit’s end.”
At
one point the state department of corrections fined Aramark $86,000 for
violations of the terms of its foodservice contract and another $12,000 for
fraternization between company employees and prisoners, but those fines were quietly cancelled.
Later
the state imposed another $200,000 in fines that
apparently were collected.
Yet
a former Aramark worker later filed a whistle-blower complaint alleging that she was fired for objecting to
the falsification of records about unhygienic kitchen practices.
In
2015 the state bowed to public pressure and terminated Aramark’s contract.
Michigan
is just one of numerous states in which Aramark’s performance under
correctional foodservice contracts has been less than sterling.
In
2000 it was reported that Aramark secretly negotiated with state corrections
officials in Ohio to obtain $1.5 million in additional payments on a pilot
contract to provide food services at the Noble Correctional Institution, even
though other state officials were recommending that the contract be rebid.
In
the wake of the controversy, the state decided to return the function to public
control yet later switched course.
In
2013 Aramark won a foodservice contract for the state’s entire prison system.
The
following year the company was fined $142,100 for violations that included
failing to hire enough employees.
More
fines followed, including a $130,200 penalty for ongoing
problems such as food shortages and a lack of cleanliness.
A
2007 audit by the Florida Department of Corrections Inspector General of
Aramark’s contract to provide foodservice for the state’s prisons found that the company was serving fewer
meals than anticipated and was using less costly ingredients but was not
passing along the savings to the state.
Officials
later fined the company more than $240,000 for slow meal delivery, insufficient
staffing and other violations. In 2013 investigative journalist Chris Hedges reported that Aramark served spoiled food to
inmates at prisons in New Jersey.
There
was a time when much of the public was indifferent to prison conditions and
cared little whether inmates were being food that was inedible.
But
now that there is much wider understanding of the problem of
over-incarceration, we need to make sure that those still behind bars are
treated with dignity and not abused by privateers.
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