Florida DOC Cuts Food Costs
Florida is now coping with the effects of a failed and expensive food-privatization venture.
In 2001, Florida turned over most prison food operations to Aramark Corp., even after Ohio had scrapped a similar experiment with bad results. After seven years marked by numerous irregularities, fines for sloppy service and a state report that flagged the vendor’s “windfall” profits, Aramark pulled out of Florida prisons last month. The firm said it could no longer make money due to skyrocketing prices of bread, milk and other staples amid pressure from the state to cut costs [see earlier reporting] …
Now that the vendors are gone, the privatization experiment is officially dead and the state must run an in-house meals program on less money amid the worst budget crisis in decades. In fiscal 2007-08, Florida paid two private vendors a total of $85 million. The current year’s food budget is $76 million. Aramark’s per-diem rate, or cost per day to feed an inmate, was $2.69. Now it’s $2.12, which will force the state to make menu changes to save money. Corn bread replaces sliced bread at some meals. Inmates will get one sweetener packet instead of four. In the prisons of the Sunshine State, orange juice is made from concentrate …
Feeding 100,000 inmates three meals a day is an expensive business. And doing it right is a major factor in avoiding unrest … Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil has come under fire from legislators for not reducing his food budget by the $9.25 million that the Legislature ordered last spring. “We won’t do it in the time we were directed to do it,” McNeil told a legislative budget panel last week.
There is more detail in the St Petersburg Times.