After Thousands of Complaints and Years of Issues, Will Cuyahoga County Finally Move On to New Jail Food Vendor?

A meal at the Cuyahoga County Jail in an undated photo, showing slices of bread, jam and an unidentifiable white food brick of some sort. Trinity, the jail’s food service provider, has faced criticism from both inmates and County Council for its subpar food. Credit: Cuyahoga County

Cuyahoga County Council has reluctantly extended contracts with Trinity Services Group as the food vendor for the county jail for years despite long-standing complaints from inmates and officials about the quality of the food.

Maggots, cold meat, undercooked meat, bland flavors, slop.

Asked for records of complaints about Trinity, a Cuyahoga County public records official told Scene there were at least 3,000 dating back years.

Narrowed down to just four recent months, Scene found hundreds, with multiple complaints coming in over the course of just a single day, all pointing toward a critical plea for healthier meals, even edible meals.

The complaints were wide-ranging: potatoes or beans served raw or uncooked; meat pink and causing mass vomiting; powdered milk served in lieu of the real thing; maggots crawling on trays or in heaps of soggy vegetables. In some cases, inmates weren’t fed for hours on end, either due to apparently negligent correctional officers or protesting inmates tired of their paltry meals.

“I am eating toilet paper or paper towels as reported to medical [services],” inmate Aikeen Chambers wrote to admins on May 19, “in an attempt to try and fill up the missing space of the missing or underportioned food items.”

“My food was uncooked today,” Jamille Massingill wrote on July 6. “The meat was really red on the inside of it. It made me feel sick. Something has to change in the kitchen, there are too many occurring incidents in the Trinity staff.”

Many, like inmate Jonathan Trinidad, hinted that poor performance from Trinity or from officers that worked alongside them would either result in a legal complaint or an escalation of inmates’ refusal to abide by Trinity’s service itself.

They “gave us the same food 3 meals in a row with [freezer] burn,” Trinidad wrote on July 8. “I feel sick. Been throwing up.”

“This is cruel [and] unusual punishment,” he said.

Two weeks after Trinidad’s complaint, Cuyahoga County voted and approved an extension of Trinity’s contract until December 31 of this year.

And RFP is out for a possible replacement and three applicants made proposals: Trinity, Summit Food Service, and then a wholly local one unlike the others — Edwin’s Brandon Crostowski.

Last January, the founder of Edwin’s, the restaurant that trains ex-convicts in culinary services, was on a tour of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center with county councilwomen Cheryl Stephens and Meredith Turner. The food, he’d heard, wasn’t up to par, which led to a Council-led walkthrough of the jail’s cafeteria.

He tried the jail’s mashed potatoes, their vegetable sides. He saw their milk cartons, met overseeing correctional officers. At first, the food was good. The kitchen was stocked and clean.

“But then, one of the guards was like, ‘This is a dog and pony show’,” Crostowski recalled to Scene. “‘They cleaned this place up, and they’re serving this food like they knew I was there.’”

Come the summer, when County Council rushed to vote on a contract extension for Trinity, Crostowski saw an opportunity. Edwin’s would be an ideal producer and supplier where Trinity was not.

By August, his proposal was denied. Edwin’s ask—$19.5 million —was too high.

In a 54-page bid to the county, Crowstowki sold Edwin’s as a remedy for the jail’s chaos. One food service manager, two supervisors, two cooks, two aides and a registered dietician would, he proposed, “provide nutritious meals,” “certify menus” and do “regular quality audits and inmate feedback” featuring “strict safety protocols.”

In other words: breakfast, lunch, dinner billed to the County at $273,968 a month.

While adding Edwin’s specialty: hiring and training inmates themselves to run the kitchen.

“Brandon’s proposal fits many of the needs of the prisoners, the jail, the corrections officer, the community, et cetera, and should be taken seriously,” Jim Schaefer, a citizen watchdog who has focused on jail food issues, told Scene. “And it hasn’t been taken seriously at all.”

County Executive Chris Ronayne nor councilwomen Cheryl Stephens and Meredith Turner returned a request for comment.

Trinity Services is itself quite elusive. Similar complaints have arisen in correctional facilities in Utah and Arizona, according to author Brendan Ballou’s Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America. Its website says it’s headquartered in Oldsmar, Florida, yet a pre-recorded phone message cites a “TKC” in St. Louis, Missouri.

It boasts a website that paints a much more clean, crisp image than months of inmate complaints suggest.

“We make sure that all food is properly prepared and presented,” it reads. “Trinity is committed to providing food service programs that achieve these objectives three times a day, seven days a week.”

But even sitting councilmembers have seen firsthand that that’s not the case.

Which has Crostowski flabbergasted that Edwin’s wasn’t considered for the contract to produce meals, he said, at about $3 per plate.

Not the $3 per-day, per-inmate, he said, Trinity uses.

“What could you, what could you possibly do with $3 a day?” Crostowski said. “I couldn’t cut grass and package it with for $3 less a day. I mean, what are you gonna fucking feed people?”

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