Private Prison Could Cost Farm Jobs

The Department of Corrections, as part of its effort to streamline its food service and reduce costs, is working to buy more of its produce from Michigan farmers, an effort that would go away if prisons are privatized, said Brad Purves, Food Program manager for the department, at a presentation Wednesday to the Commission of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The department has changed its processes for buying, and storing, all of the items it uses as part of an overhaul of its supply chain, and Mr. Purves said part of the effort is working more with local growers to reduce transportation costs.

Though he estimated the department currently buys 40 percent of its produce from Michigan farmers, it is working to increase that to 75 percent.

"We're definitely looking at manufacturers and farmers, how can we grow that in Michigan?" he said.

And he said coming requests for proposals for supplies will also encourage working with Michigan businesses and, for food, Michigan farms.

"Let's have more farms. There's no reason we can't," he said. "We just have to be more coordinated."

Private prison operators are not going to have that same focus, Mr. Purves told the commission, remarks coming as the Legislature is urging the department to put various services up for bid and possibly even have an entire prison run by a private company. "They already have their supply chain set up, and it's not in Michigan," he said.

Under the department's new purchasing system, the change could be particularly devastating to the farmers already selling to prisons, he said. The department is now able to forecast its needs for produce for a year and essentially guarantee farmers it will purchase that amount.

"That's huge for our farmers and our growers. ... They know everything that's coming out, we use," he said.

If the state closed its facilities in favor of a private facility and ended those contracts, "we will close farms," he said.

Mr. Purves said the department is working now on moving all of its food service vendors to more predictable contracts, with all of the prisons moving to "push" deliveries. Purchases for food services are made centrally and delivered at regular intervals to the various facilities, rather than the facilities ordering what they need.

He said the change was possible because the new tracking systems allowed the department to predict what each facility would use based on its population. For instance, inmates can now only go through the food line once because there is a system for counting them as they go through.

The next goal, he said, is finding ways to reduce the cost of transporting items to the prisons. For instance, he said, check-in procedures sometimes leave trucks sitting at prison loading docks or gates for extended periods. If those waits can be reduced, that cuts costs to the shipper, of which he said the department is hoping to see a portion.

Mr. Purves said the department had already been working with other states to help them reduce prison food services costs. For instance, he worked with Ohio officials to reduce their menu cycle from five weeks to three weeks and so reduce costs.

The department now is working with a number of school districts, hospitals and other institutions on their food costs. The department currently spends about $2.25 per inmate per day for food, he said. "When we started, we were running $2.69," he said. "All these other places I mentioned are running that per meal."