Industry experts offer their expertise in sustainability, safety and reduced spending.Increasingly burdened by a growing inmate population, correctional facilities across the country continue to face a dilemma in sustainability when tasked with providing proper housing and food services for inmates when space and resources can be stretched no further.
With fewer new facilities being built each year, many operations are going the renovation route in efforts to keep costs down while still promoting services and increasing productivity.
One key area where many correctional facilities are looking to upgrade is the kitchen and dining room. The design of a kitchen in a correctional facility involves a plethora of professionals, including architects, engineers, food service consultants, commercial kitchen ventilation experts, fire suppression specialists and myriad tradesmen. Numerous spending choices are considered when a food service facility is redesigned. These expenses include selecting and acquiring cooking equipment and the appropriate kitchen ventilation equipment. Doing it right can help keep the budget in check.
Double Duty
Installing equipment that has multiple uses, like combi ovens, can help facilities save on available space and on cost. In addition, by utilizing a cook-chill system for large prison populations can also save money and labor. Cook-chill systems cook high volumes of food and chill them very rapidly. The plastic bags in which the food is packaged are sterilized in the process. Since both food and package are pasteurized, the packaged product has a typical refrigerated shelf life of 21 to 28 days.
There are also a host of safety issues to consider. Specialized equipment for correctional applications is mostly constructed with tamper-proof screws and hinges that cannot be easily removed for weapon making. Durability of the kitchen equipment is another key factor, not only because of inmates' disregard for the equipment, but also due to the fact that these units typically run 12 to 16 hours a day, 24/7.
Flexibility a Big Design Factor
In terms of kitchen design, flexibility is always a key element. Depending on the population, which may shift over time, these facilities may house men, women or younger offenders at different times. Where a minimal security lockup may require a standard cafeteria, cell tray service would be warranted for operations housing higher security offenders. So being able to adapt to changing environments and populations is important.
“When designing corrections kitchens, the goal is to keep things as simple and inexpensive for the facility as possible,” reports Jim Petersen, FCSI, owner at C.i.i. Food Service Design. Since 1979, the Lapeer, Mich.-based food facilities design consulting firm has been offering a complete variety of design services for a host of markets including the correctional market.
Petersen says kitchen and dining areas should feature open layouts that allow for wide visual supervision and no alcoves or hidden corridors. “Elevated offices are helpful in this regard. Temperature of hot water and lock-out of high-pressure spray systems are other areas to be considered. Tools (particularly those with sharp edges, of a weight and configuration that would make them useful as a striking device, prone to pilferage for purposes outside the kitchen, etc.) should be issued to a specific inmate who is responsible for returning it, and stored in a shadow box or office under control of the officers/civilian staff,” he states.
He says that facilities where high-custody level inmates are employed, tools may be chained with a padlock to keep them in a defined area; or small, securable glass-surrounded rooms provided for occupancy by only one inmate at a time. He adds that tools may be issued through a bank-style pass-through drawer.
To avoid vandalism or pilferage of food, or to keep food from being used to support a long-term disturbance, he says ingredient rooms can be established that allow access to food storage by only supervisors or strictly limited inmates. “Some facilities will store only one or two days storage in the kitchen, with the main food warehoused outside the secure perimeter.”
A big trend he is seeing for 2010 is in the area of waste disposal. “There seems to be an added emphasis on operations dealing with the disposal of solid waste. A particular area that is somewhat problematic relates to food waste disposers; there are a lot of solids that need to be separated from the effluent, particularly if it has to go through a grease trap,” Petersen points out.
He reports that there are alternatives to food waste disposers that can effectively separate solids from the effluent while also reducing the volume of the solids to help reduce the cost of hauling them away (an expense that is usually based on volume rather than weight). In addition, systems are available that can turn solid organic waste into a soil amendment that is ecologically beneficial.
“Another alternative, decidedly low-tech and not as common as it once was,” he admits, “is to use organic waste as feed for farm animals that may then ultimately be used as a food source.”
Other emerging technologies include new configurations in exhaust ventilators that can help reduce the total amount of air that needs to be removed from cooking operations. Fire safety requirements dictate that cooking exhaust fans automatically turn on when cooking equipment is in use, continues Petersen. In addition, dishwashers can use hot water for sanitizing and convert the steam that would normally have to be captured by an exhaust hood into heat energy that can be returned to the wash tank. “This is available now in smaller dishwashers, and is in development for use in larger units,” he explains.
Chilling Numbers
“In general, correctional food service development is determined by four key factors and the importance of each of them is constantly growing. They are cost, safety, compliance with federal food code and adaptability to different needs of changing inmate population,” states Ira Kaplan, president of IRINOX USA in North Easton, Mass.
Kaplan says that instead of considering just the cost of purchase, more operators are taking into account cumulative cost of purchase, cost of operations and cost of maintenance (that is, total cost of ownership). “The challenge here is [that] traditionally it is still easier to justify construction cost, but not operation/ maintenance cost. Some equipment manufacturers are still slow in communicating this to the facility in terms of total cost of ownership.”
He also says that safety issues during equipment service and maintenance bring in the necessity for remote access to equipment operational data and the capability to monitor equipment operation in real time and access online. “Equipment manufacturers also need to offer more services like these at minimum additional cost,” he explains.
Kaplan reports that their MultiFresh product line of rapid chilling equipment allows facilities to successfully address most of the contemporary correctional food service requirements. “This is especially true in the need for preservation of food safety, reduction of operational (in particular, labor cost) and maintenance costs, waste reduction, energy and water conservation. With our new MultiFresh product line, we have brought together in the one product multiple functions that not only allow the user to manage chilling and freezing processes but also to control proofing and thawing of foods. In addition, it has been designed and built to significantly reduce running costs with savings of up to 30 percent in electricity consumption compared to previous models,” he concludes.
Food Contamination Issues
In the past few years, reported outbreaks of food-borne illness are increasing: according to the CDC, 76 million people are affected each year by food-borne illnesses, including 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. Produce safety is a concern at every stage of the food chain. Foodservice operators often rely on their bulk food processors and suppliers to prevent the contamination of raw fruits and vegetables, but current practices still allow for contamination before and during handling at the foodservice operator level.
To address this need, the X-Green Produce Safety System from SteelKor LLC provides an easy and consistent solution to clean and sanitize large batches of vegetables, eliminating any dirt, grime, waxy buildup, and bacteria or harmful microbes that cling to produce. Using an agitated cold water bath which is injected with FiT, an all-natural produce washing agent that kills 99.9% of harmful bacteria like E. coli and salmonella, produce is said to be more attractive and safer to serve. “The big benefits to this system are that it's easy to use and install, adds consistency to a facility’s food prep and takes up a small footprint in a kitchen. The big payoff is that users are secure in the knowledge that the produce they serve is safe and sanitized,” says Bill Brown, director of national accounts at Fenton, Mo.-based SteelKor LLC.
“The X-Green System is a stainless-steel produce washstation that is designed to become the new standard in produce cleaning for back-of-the-house food service operations,” adds James Bigott, president of SteelKor. “It is designed for operations ranging in size from QSRs and full-service commercial kitchens to full-scale commissaries. Its flexible design allows for the addition of components like salad spinners, prep tables, and cutting boards to meet the needs of a specific operation.”
For more information on Innovating Kitchen Ideas see the May/June issue of Corrections Forum. Subscribe to our digital copy and get entered in a drawing to win great prizes. http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/21bc3a26
