Shortage of prison guards a big problem in many states
In 2015, Idaho, North Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma started programs to try to combat serious shortages and high turnover in prison staff. Now several more states, including Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, and West Virginia, are working on the problem. The states are trying to increase the number of correctional officers by increasing pay scales or opening new training academies.
Understaffing in prisons can lead to seriously dangerous situations, such as assaults, escapes, and riots. At the same time the states are looking for remedies to the staffing issue, most of them expect to see rises in prison population over the next three years. This is happening in spite of the states’ efforts to provide alternatives to prison incarceration and shorten sentences for minor crimes.
When prisons are short on staff, the correctional officers experience long hours, fatigue, and increased stress. This can cause a facility to be forced to cancel or reduce the number of social and recreational programs for inmates, including family visits. This, in turn, can result in unhappy prisoners, making the facilities less safe.
Low starting salaries, few raises, and low levels of unemployment do not help with hiring new officers or retaining experiences staff. At the same time, many facilities are full or overcrowded. In New Mexico, where facilities are at 98 percent of their capacity, the starting pay is $13.65 an hour with little chance of a raise. Officers can often find better pay in federal prisons or county jails, or lower stress and better pay in a different career. Only two-thirds of the jobs for corrections officers in the state prisons are filled; only half are filled in the two most understaffed facilities. Many officers in the state leave within three years.
Kansas, with a starting pay rate of $13.61 an hour, saw 29.7 percent of its corrections officers leave in 2015. In Nebraska, the turnover rate was 30.8, despite a slightly better salary of $15.49 an hour.
The number of job openings in the state prisons requires more officers to work overtime, which drives up costs. It doesn’t help that over-worked, stressed-out prison guards tend to take a high number of sick days. Some states are working to provide more training on handling stress and being resilient. The states’ departments of corrections are asking for more funding from the state and federal governments to help solve the problems before the situation gets worse and the prisons become more dangerous.