LANSING – Problems have dropped dramatically 10 months after the state of Michigan ended a privatization experiment and returned state employees to prison kitchens, according to the Corrections Department.

During the 56 months that Aramark Correctional Services and later Trinity Services Group ran the kitchens under multimillion-dollar contracts, the Corrections Department had to issue "stop orders" to 412 of their employees, banning them from prison property for various infractions such as smuggling or getting too familiar with prisoners, for an average of 7.4 such orders per month, spokesman Chris Gautz told the Free Press.

Since state employees returned, there have been 16 stop orders, or an average of 1.6 per month, Gautz said.

The kitchens are also cleaner and more fully staffed and the meals are much more likely to be served on time, Gautz said.

Gautz said one of the biggest changes is "dramatically lower staff turnover," compared with when kitchen contractors were used.

"Trinity and Aramark both churned through employees constantly," he said. As a result, "you had people with only a few weeks of experience showing the ropes to the newest employee off the street."

In a series of articles, the Free Press documented a wide range of problems with the services provided by Aramark, based in Philadelphia, and Trinity, based in Florida, from maggots in the food to kitchen workers arrested for smuggling drugs and workers having kitchen sex with prisoners. In one case in 2014, an Aramark worker was suspected of trying to hire a prisoner to kill a second prisoner.

The Free Press used Michigan's Freedom of Information Act to obtain thousands of pages of internal food service records. They showed one Aramark food service director showed up drunk and failed a Breathalyzer, while another worker was caught trying to smuggle marijuana. Others had failed drug tests, kissed or had intercourse with prisoners, threatened to assault inmates, or announced intentions to “go postal” inside a facility, records showed.

“I’m at my wit’s end,” Kevin Weissenborn, the Michigan Department of Corrections manager in charge of policing the Aramark contract, emailed one Michigan warden in March 2014.

More:Michigan prisoners dying behind bars at highest rate in decades

More:Gov. Rick Snyder: State to end problem-plagued privatization experiment with prison food

After resisting calls for years to end the privatization experiment that began in December 2013, former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder announced in February 2018 that the benefits were not outweighing the costs and state employees would return to the kitchens.

Snyder requested an extra $13.7 million in the 2019 budget to bring back the state workers, who receive higher pay and benefits than the contractors' employees did. State prison cooks are paid between $18 and $22 an hour, supervisors between about $19 and $26 an hour, and food service directors between about $26 and $37 an hour. Many of the contract employees earned between $11 an hour to the low to mid teens.

Corrections Department Director Heidi Washington said last year the contracts had saved money but were not worth continuing when considering "continued challenges with staffing vacancies, turnover, compliance with performance expectations, and a recent request by Trinity for additional funding."

Gautz said the department is "pleased with how things are going thus far with the transition," and "we thank all of the employees who worked so hard in a short time frame to make this happen."

James Hohman, director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which favors free markets and privatization of government services, said the fate of the state's prison food contract says nothing about the benefits of government privatization more generally.

The state has 1,400 contracts with private vendors, many of them multiyear, with a combined value of $61 billion, Hohman said.

"We have a professional group of people to analyze bids and monitor contracts to ensure that residents get a good deal for their money," he said.

"A contract constantly fought against by union officials is a poor indicator for how well they are doing their jobs."

But Sam Inglot, a spokesman for the liberal group Progress Michigan, said what happened with prison food is not an isolated incident.

There have also been serious problems with privatization of nursing aide services at the state home for veterans in Grand Rapids and at Michigan charter schools, to name two examples, said Inglot,

Progress Michigan, which called repeatedly for the prison food contracts to be canceled and in 2015 released a report that said the Snyder administration was not holding Aramark accountable, believes "we can't allow profit-driven motives to dictate levels of public service."

Trinity was awarded a three-year, $158.8-million contract in 2015, after Aramark, which replaced about 370 state kitchen workers, ended its three-year, $145-million contract early, by mutual agreement with the state.

Among the points of comparison cited by Gautz:

As of April, the department had 93% kitchen staffing. Gautz said Trinity's staffing percentage was typically in the high 80s, and Aramark's was typically in the mid-80s.

Since state employees returned, the average kitchen sanitation score is 93%, Gautz said. Trinity averaged a 91% score on sanitation.

Delays in serving meals are shorter in duration and more rare, averaging 10 to 20 per month, versus 80 to 100 per month under Trinity, he said.

Steve Rzeppa, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 25 in Lansing, the union representing prison kitchen workers, said he's not surprised by the data.

"This is pretty much what we expected to happen," Rzeppa said. "This was pretty much our argument all along, for why it should stay in-house."

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.