Private staffs’ misconduct cited
PRISONS /
When the state displaced hundreds of public-sector workers in favor of privatizing prison food service, union leaders warned that security concerns would accompany the hiring of non-union workers willing to work for low wages.
Less than four years after food-service giant Aramark took over, more than 300 of its employees have been banned from working in state prisons because they imported contraband or committed security violations or other misconduct.
An average of seven
Aramark workers a month have been shown the door. By far the most frequent cause of their banishment from prison kitchens and food lines has been “unprofessional and inappropriate relationships” with inmates; 168 workers fell into that category.
Now, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and Aramark face lawsuits in federal and state courts by a female inmate who says that negligent hiring and supervision led to her being raped by an Aramark employee in a kitchen cooler at a Cleveland prison in May 2015.
The woman, serving a six-year sentence for corrupting another person with drugs, said that she was subjected to sexual advances and assaults by an Aramark supervisor while she worked in the kitchen at the all-female Northeast Integration Center.
Her lawsuits say that Aramark and prison officials were aware that then-Aramark employee Jonathan Velez engaged in sexual misconduct with female inmates, promising drugs and body jewelry for sex, but they failed to intervene until after she was assaulted.
Velez, 28, of Cleveland, was sentenced in February to eight months in prison after pleading guilty to gross sexual imposition following a State Highway Patrol investigation. He will be required to register as a sex offender for 15 years.
A spokeswoman for Aramark and a prisons spokesman said they do not comment on pending litigation.
The spokesman said the agency does not keep track of how many Aramark employees have been charged with crimes stemming from their work in Ohio prisons.
Agency reports on sexual assaults in prison said that three staff-on-inmate assaults in 2013 involved Aramark employees; about seven cases in 2014 and three in 2015 were attributed to unidentified contractual employees. Figures for 2016 were not yet available.
Most cases involved “unwelcome touching” and “inappropriate physical contact” rather than “serious” sexual assault, the reports said.
Chris Mabe, president of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, which has unsuccessfully submitted proposals to take over the food-service contract from Aramark, offered a told-you-so.
“When you hire substandard individuals, you get substandard results. The issues have not gone away,” Mabe said. “We have a different quality of employee in considerations of security, training and everything else you get, comparatively, between state and contractual employees.”
Aramark spokeswoman Karen Cutler responded, “As you know, security clearances are routinely pulled for all types of workers, guards and other personnel, working inside every correctional facility in this country.”
Asked about misconduct by company employees, prisons spokesman Grant Doepel said: “Aramark acts quickly and makes the appropriate decisions when there is misconduct. Additionally, training has been added to address inappropriate staff behavior.”
The company’s takeover of prison food service in 2013 was marked with wide-ranging complaints over the quality and quantity of the fare and headlines over the discovery of maggots (some attributable to prison infrastructure problems) on food lines.
Prison officials say Aramark’s performance has improved, and they are negotiating to extend its contract, which pays the company about $60 million a year to feed 50,300 inmates for $3.94 a day each.
Mabe said the union offered to undercut Aramark’s price by $4 million and upgrade the quality of food-service workers, but it expects to be turned down.
An independent review panel found that the union’s proposal did not account for the “true cost of procuring and delivering food services,” Doepel said.