End of prison food program won't hurt rehab group, CEO says
A recently criticized inmate rehabilitation organization plans to stop providing meals to Tennessee prisons.
The decision to eliminate the multi-million dollar program won't be drastic for the Tennessee Rehabilitative Initiative in Correction, or TRICOR, said CEO Patricia Weiland. Instead, it's one of a number of decisions aimed at improving the organization's business model and bolstering a reputation earned through 17 years of success, Weiland argued.
"You asked why legislators should keep TRICOR going? My question is why would they even think of not?" Weiland said Friday, during an extensive interview with The Tennessean.
Tennessee Cook Chill
No lawmaker has questioned the mission of the organization, but they have questioned its financial management.
TRICOR provides jobs for people incarcerated in Tennessee. For the last five years TRICOR has employed roughly 60 inmates to run the Tennessee Cook Chill program — named for the process of producing and chilling food before it is shipped to its final destination — that has created millions of meals for the Tennessee Department of Correction.
The inmates working at Cook Chill account for a small portion of the roughly 1,250 to 1,350 offenders working in various TRICOR operations at any given time, Weiland said. TRICOR also employs 122 people as state workers, with a roughly $5.3 million annual payroll. Although the Cook Chill program will be eliminated, Weiland said TRICOR plans to move those 60 positions to other parts of its business.
"We were very successful before Cook Chill, we’ll be very successful after Cook Chill," Weiland said.
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Weiland and the department continue to say the food program arrangement worked well, but fiscal issues recently put the program in legislative cross-hairs.
Lawmakers blasted TRICOR and the department in the wake of an audit that showed the two had operated the food program without a contract or any concrete pricing agreement. TRICOR thought the department would pay one price for the daily meals to feed an inmate, while the department actually paid a lower price. The difference, and lack of a contract, resulted in TRICOR operating the program at a $4 million loss during the last year.
“I just don’t understand, being a CPA, I just have to admit I’m stunned. I’m completely stunned. This goes beyond carelessness,” said state Sen. Kerry Roberts, R-Springfield, to Weiland during the hearing.
Weiland is quick to note TRICOR is self-funded by money earned through its services. She also downplayed the extent of the problem — on Friday she repeatedly said there were "only two things" wrong with the program, and neither had anything to do with the quality of the food — but acknowledged both the lack of a contract and confirmed pricing were not a good idea. In the midst of that operating issue, TRICOR also determined two finance employees were not doing their jobs, and they were fired.
“I mean, what CEO in their right mind would terminate their CFO in the middle of an audit. I mean, that raised all kinds of red flags. I didn’t have any choice," Weiland told lawmakers during the legislative hearing in October.
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Around the same time of the hearing, the department and TRICOR were working to agree on a contract that would run through the end of the year. Although the department asked TRICOR to continue to provide food, Weiland said "we just didn’t think it ended up being in the best interest of TRICOR" to continue the Cook Chill program.
Weiland said the department and TRICOR are working to extend their current contract to run through June of 2016, allowing the department to go through a competitive bidding process (or RFP) to find a new food provider. After June, Weiland said the organization plans to focus on the many other services it provides to private clients around the country.
Although Cook Chill provided $20.5 million of the $46.8 million in revenue TRICOR received last year, it cost roughly $24.5 million. Even when it didn't operate at a loss, Weiland said it was never a money maker.
"In food service, the margins are small. They're small [for] anyone. Our goal is to cover costs and then make enough to be able to reinvest," Weiland said.
The future of TRICOR
Through TRICOR, inmates run dairy and crop farms, make textiles, conduct data entry, create printed products and provide a slew of other services. Essentially, if an industry needs plenty of bodies, it can turn to TRICOR.
"We are basically providing labor. We're not providing raw materials, we're not providing the market to sell in, we're responsible for production or quality. It's a partnership to where we make sure we select the offenders, we basically monitor their performance...but as far as on-sight production quality, it's the private company," Weiland said.
In theory, TRICOR could have a competitive advantage against other private contractors: prison labor can come pretty cheap. However, Weiland said the organization must pay prevailing wage, show it's not competing with other Tennessee businesses and follow other federal guidelines in order to receive a contract.
That leads to almost unheard of pay rates for inmates: while many prison jobs pay pennies per hour, an inmate working for TRICOR can earn $12 or $14 an hour with overtime pay. Inmates pay 5 percent of every paycheck toward victims restitution, with another 35 percent going toward a "workforce development" contribution. That's supposed to pay for the rehabilitative programming they receive through TRICOR, Weiland said.
Since the legislature created TRICOR in 1994, it's also provided inmates who don't get into trouble and have some coursework under their belt with jobs in many industries. Tasked with helping to rehabiliate inmates, Weiland said TRICOR initially thought the work itself would be enough.
It wasn't. Now, Weiland said there is a classroom component and other programming that is supposed to replace any similar program that may be offered through the prison system.
"You can’t pick and choose. You can’t just go on the floor and make your wage, you have to do the rest of it," Weiland said.
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Although prisoner advocates and some inmates have complained to The Tennessean about a general lack of quality programming in prison, Weiland points to the recidivism rate of offenders who participate in TRICOR jobs. In the last 10 years, roughly 75 percent of the 13,247 inmates who've participated in the TRICOR program did not reoffend, Weiland said.
TRICOR trains inmates to have multiple skills once they get out of prison. Once they're out, Weiland said they've also connected inmates with jobs and try to follow up with inmates who may be struggling to find work.
"You want that person who's in there with your wife, or in there with your daughter, in her apartment fixing her machine, you're going to want to hope they went through TRICOR when they were in prison," Weiland said.
Weiland doesn't anticipate lawmakers will move to make any drastic changes to the agency. As stated during the recent legislative hearing, she anticipates they will renew TRICOR's authorization for another year as long as Weiland, or whomever is the CEO, no longer serves on the board of directors.
Reach Dave Boucher at 615-259-8892 and on Twitter @Dave_Boucher1.