Private Prison Company Forced Inmates To Eat Delicious Garbage Buffet

Hope you didn't plan to eat today, because you're about to lose your appetite. A prison food corporation in Michigan is under fire -- again -- this time for literally feeding their prisoners trash from the garbage can.

Aramark Correctional Services is a Philadelphia-based private company that provides food to prisons in all 50 states and 22 countries. And oh look! Yr Wonkette has examined them before for feeding their prisoners spoiled meat kept in maggot-encrusted kitchens. Mmm mmm, good.

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This latest round of disgusting comes in the course of more recent allegations that Aramark workers served prisoners rat-contaminated cakes. It's cool though; they brushed off the rat droppings and covered the cakes with fun dip icing. Progress Michigan uncovered emails between Aramark employees discussing the rat cake incident, but also discovered that, according to one email chain , Aramark workers underestimated the number of prisoners coming into the cafeteria on a particular day, so rather than just making more food, they pulled a five-second rule with the dumpster:

...Mr. Chisolm discarded the left-overs from the line before the last half unit was in the chow hall. He then realized that there were more inmates to serve so he rinsed them off, reheated them in the oven and instructed the inmates to serve them. They refused, so he and Miss Gibson proceeded to serve them to the remaining inmates.

Even the prisoner kitchen staff refused to go ahead with this disgusting idea, but the Aramark people were a-okay with it. Our guess is that Aramark recently adopted a corporate model of freeganism.

As vomit-inducing as this latest allegation is, it's just one more on top of the shit pile. Aramark was already fined $200,000 from the state of Michigan and $272,000 from the state of Ohio for their horrible service, but now they're being sued by a Michigan inmate for serving spoiled food:

On the menu - Meatballs, gravy, noodles, bread, cooked carrots and cake or a cookie - didn't match what was on the plate, which contained a green and spoiled hamburger patty, cold gravy, cold noodles with a vinegar odor, raw carrots, moldy bread and a green orange in place of dessert, the lawsuit claims. The milk was warm and past its expiration date.

Add to that the fact that a full one fifth of Aramark employees can't even enter Michigan prisons because they've shown up to work drunk, raped prisoners, or smuggled in drugs, and you have a corporation just perfect for long-term contracts all over this great and privatized land of ours.

It's probably all a garbage pile of lies and false accusations, though, because the company has a very pretty website, covered in lovely pictures of barbed wire and touting their commitment to food service. They even have "fresh food" programs (snort) designed to let prison wardens leech more money off their captive populace. But all this appalling behavior is worth it because they saved the state of Michigan some money through privatizing, and isn't that what life's all about? A few bouts of food-born viruses is the price we pay for freedom.

Reagan Bless You, Aramark.

[ Think Progress / MLive / WKBN / Aramark.com ]