The Missouri Department of Corrections Will Soon Privatize

Ready or not, Missouri, here comes Aramark! The company famously under nourishing schoolchildren and supplying concessions to sports venues nationwide now stands on the verge of taking over the food service departments of every prison in the state. Despite imposing an increased burden on taxpayers and inviting safety problems at the facility level, someone in Jefferson City seems to think this is a good idea. I have to wonder who at Aramark they're related to.

For a couple of months, rumors of a takeover ran like roaches through the dining hall. The scuttlebutt was that minimum-wage workers from the free world would soon handle all food preparation and service; therefore, prisoners currently working in the kitchen would need new jobs at the outset of 2023. People here are prone to catastrophizing, though, so as my tablemates howled about some company with multiple lawsuits taking over the ERDCC kitchen, I adopted my usual wait-and-see stance.

Everything was cleared up when an article about the proposed takeover appeared on the wall of my wing, photocopied from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch by a conscientious neighbor. (Prisoners sometimes do this as a public service when the news is pertinent.) The details were not encouraging.

According to the article, a $45 million contract will soon allow Aramark to provide food for prisoners in all of Missouri's prisons. Their estimated cost per meal is $1.77 but may change before the contract is finalized. Aramark will also offer free coffee to staff and sell food to prison employees and visitors. All this will take is a tax hike and everyone turning a blind eye to Aramark's questionable reputation. As it happens, the rumors about lawsuits might contain a kernel of truth. Two state corrections departments recently broke ties with Aramark, one saying that maggots were found in its kitchens, one alleging repeated food shortages, both claiming that Aramark periodically served rotten food. For whatever it's worth, certain state lawmakers question the soundness of outsourcing to a private company. Increased costs are one reason; dubious meal quality is another. How can it possibly be cost effective to let go the five or six state employees currently overseeing kitchen operations, just to bring in contracted supervisors to do the job? And who will watch the watchers and ensure that conditions here don't end up like those in Mississippi and Michigan, both of which kicked Aramark out? Years before coming to prison, I knew about the pitfalls of its privatization. I'd read enough horror stories about conditions at facilities run by Corrections Corporation of America (commonly referred to as CCA) and its ilk to deplore how people confined there are often treated. Violation of basic human decency should never be part of someone's sentence. Unfortunately, its hard to maintain ethical standards of operation when warders' primary concern is their own bottom line.

The Missouri DOC outsourced the processing of postal mail last year. Its medical services have for decades been contracted to one negligent company after another – first CMS, then Corizon, now Centurion, and that's just during my time in the system. Pretty soon, Aramark will join their ranks. I'm less than thrilled to see how this shakes out.