UPDATED AT 7:37 PM on 5/20/15
More scandal today for Aramark, the company that provides food for Michigan's prisons.
A former food supervisor in a Northern Michigan prison is being charged for allegedly trying to hire one prisoner to assault another prisoner, who had reportedly killed one of the supervisor's relatives.
Michael R. Young worked at the Kinross Correctional Facility in Chippewa County.
"So we have one Aramark employee soliciting an inmate to help orchestrate another inmate's assault,” says Andrea Bitely of the Michigan Attorney General's office.
Young’s lawyer, Charles Malette, says his client maintains his innocence and expects to be out on bail soon.
Aramark was fined $200,000 last August for poor service, and there have been several employees fired for misconduct.
Progress Michigan has released the following statement:
“Attorney General Schuette’s victory lap press release this morning about prosecuting a former Aramark worker is nothing more than a smokescreen for the fact that he has abdicated his responsibility to review this entire contract,” said Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan. “Our AG has completely failed to hold Aramark accountable. There have been hundreds of employees fired, drug smuggling, sexual contact with inmates and countless basic contract failures — if this contract in its entirety doesn’t receive the scrutiny of Schuette, then he’s ignoring the duties of his office.”
Schuette’s office had no comment regarding that statement.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly reported that Aramark had been fined $200 million dollars last summer. The fine was in fact $200,000.
