First we had this: Then we had this: And throughout it all we had food service employees having sex with inmates, rotten, rodent-chewed food being served to prison inmates, and drugs being smuggled into prisons by prison employees. Since 2014, I have written roughly 30 posts about the privatization of prison food services in Michigan and they all tell the […]

This is a disgusting story. It’s disgusting because it involves maggots in the food served to human beings. But mostly it’s disgusting because it is further proof that privatizing critical government services to a for-profit company inevitably results in cutting corners and inhumane conditions, this time for prisoners. Officials found maggots in food in three separate incidents at a Jackson-area […]

Gov. Rick Snyder is determined to prove that privatizing critical state services is a big money saver for the state. What his spreadsheets and dashboards fail to take into account are the unseen and unbudgeted prices paid when those private for-profit groups fail to act professionally. First it was Aramark who got busted for: Running out of food Making unauthorized […]

Two years ago, after privatizing Michigan’s prison food services to a company that then set out to prove what a fiasco this sort of thing is with scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal), Gov. Rick Snyder finally fired Aramark. He then hired another private firm, Trinity Services Group. Since that time, Trinity hasn’t fared much better, racking up $2.5 […]

There are three things that should never be privatized and profitized. You don’t have to be an expert in public policy to know that when profits are on the line, the needs of those being served will be trumped by the desire to increase profits. The first of these things is healthcare. We’ve seen the tragic outcome of that in […]

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is clearly not a man who ever concedes he has made a mistake. After his privatizing of state prison food services went horribly awry with Aramark employees having sex with prisoners, bringing in drugs, and the many and repeated cases of vermin in food, he finally fired them. You would think he’d admit it was a […]

After scandal after scandal (after scandal after scandal), the Michigan Department of Corrections While the Detroit Free Press takes a victory lap for this development, the true heroes were Progress Michigan who tenaciously kept the story in the news including spending the money needed to procure thousands of pages of documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. Here’s Progress Michigan’s […]