This time regulators have a problem with prisons’ foodservices

TOPEKA, Kan. — Dirty kitchen conditions and violations repeated for several months are among some of the more consistent findings in food safety inspections for Kansas prisons.

Although the corrections department adheres to Kansas Department of Agriculture food safety guidelines, like restaurants, it doesn’t rely on KDA staff to do the inspections.

Instead, both monthly and sporadic audits are conducted by Kansas Department of Corrections employees, some of whom work in the facilities they inspect.

“I hear what you’re saying in terms of looking like it’s all under one DOC umbrella,” said Jeremy Barclay, spokesman for the KDOC. “But we interact with so many different state agencies and branches of government and different divisions within the agency, that it’s pretty secure.”

The inspections cover the 19 months between January 2013 and July 2014. They include seven of the state’s 10 prisons and total 19 facilities, such as satellite units. The KDOC filled the request free of charge, because another entity already had requested the inspections. Inspections weren’t provided for the Topeka, Lansing and Larned juvenile correctional facilities because they weren’t in the original request.

The nearly 340 inspections show noncompliance and deficiencies month after month at several facilities.

The Kansas Juvenile Correctional Complex in Topeka, for example, repeated several mistakes for at least 10 months, including not taking proper temperature logs; not enforcing handwashing and glove use; not having employees and staff restrain hair properly; not keeping accurate chemical logs; and not having inmate staff up to date on food safety training.

“Three persons seen licking fingers and continuing to work,” reads a May 2013 inspection of the KJCC.

“Gloves worn to handle bread and meat patties used to touch face and pick item up off floor and touch door handles,” according to an April 2014 inspection of the facility.

Handwashing issues were noted in 11 of the facility’s 19 inspections.

But the KJCC isn’t alone in its repetitive errors.

In the Ellsworth Correctional Facility, inspectors reported issues with bugs in the lights for 11 months.

At the Winfield Correctional Facility, a knife was used to keep a dishwasher’s fill switch in position the full 19 months.

At the El Dorado Correctional Facility, waste containers went without covers for eight months, a soap dispenser remained out of service for 11 months, fans went without cleaning for seven months and water leaked from fountain fixtures on the west wall for four months.