KBTX-TV reported yesterday that, "The Texas Department of Criminal Justice admits there's a statewide shortage of correctional officers. That fact is causing some local correctional officers to fear for their lives." While most of the focus on understaffing has centered on a handful of rural units, the story highlights shortages at units in the Huntsville area as well: "According to the latest records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, just the 13 prisons in the Huntsville area are more than 700 correctional officers short."
The story says, "The TDCJ says they will urge the state lawmakers to consider a pay raise for correctional officers in the next legislative session." However, save for $32 million requested to enhance the salaries of prison health care workers, pay hikes for correctional officers were not included in the 12 "exceptional items" submitted in the agency's Legislative Appropriations Request.
How big is the problem? Last month, a union official wrote to Gov. Rick Perry urging raises for correctional officers (see Grits' earlier discussion here and here), offering these data on statewide understaffing trends:
The Department of Criminal Justice currently is over 2,700 officers short, not including the 530 correctional officer positions that were eliminated by your budget cuts this last session. The prisons further have over 500 new recruits in training every month, in addition to over 1,000 employees on Family Medical Leave Status, Military Leave, extended sick leave, and leave without pay. This leaves Texas prisons with a shortage of over 4,730 officers not present at TDCJ prison facilities.The Legislature last session behaved as though it were in collective denial on this question, cutting the budget for correctional staff, in-prison programming and prisoner health care without taking action to reduce the number of prisoners supervised. This outcome was both predictable and predicted; overstuffed, understaffed prisons are a policy choice, not mere happenstance. As such, to address the situation, the Lege ulltimately will need to make different policy choices.
See prior, related Grits posts:
- No easy fix for prison staffing shortage besides deincarceration
- Prison staff shortages and budget reality
- TDCJ can't keep rural units adequately staffed
- Staffing shortages force closure of TDCJ Connally unit wing
- Adult, juvie corrections took 39% of state employee reductions last year
- Juvie, adult prison guards atop list of high turnover state jobs
- 'As TDCJ recruiting slows, overtime usage increases'
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7 comments:
While Im sure not everyone may be concerned with this issue, when families go for visitation, due to either guard shortage or not having enough guards to staff on visitation days(only Sat and Sun), one must either arrive at 630am to be able to see their loved one in the first round of visits for 8 or 830 or if you arrive at 730am(as I did), you must wait in the line of cars...then wait approximately 2 1/2 hrs to get in to see my son. This is at the Holliday. You have to sit in the heat, rain, cold, whatever outside waiting for your visit. I will say their Warden(when Ive seen her) takes care of people and seems to genuinely care...not so much of her staff though.
With all the reported cuts to educations and the loss of teacher positions, it's hard for teachers or others to say they can't get hired. TDCJ has thousands of vacant guard positions and DPS maintains several hundred vacant trooper positions that both seem to never get filled. The problem appears to be pay.
Anon 5.47 ~ you can't take a professional teacher and dump them in a TDCJ unit and expect them to just fit right in! It take a certain kind of person to succeed in Corrections (and I don't just mean a soldier who is good at sucking up to their superiors). It's not just about the money, it's often about how the Officers are required to behave.
You can throw tons of money staffing TDCJ-ID; however, you won't likely attract or keep personnel when you have a such butt-kissing work environment. Word gets around. TDCJ-ID, collectively, is too stupid to come in out of the rain. The Federal court system had to intervene; however, rather than profiting from their experiences, TDCJ-ID returned to the same practices. Sure, offenders are no longer performing surgery & policing others, but the psychopathology of ranking officers & buffoons in administration are still present. I'm sorry that the officers left behind are working under such deplorable conditions, but I laugh that this whole ordeal will end up costing taxpayers tons of money because the TeaTards & GOPigs are too stupid to understand how to avoid needless expenses. It takes a well-oiled machine to do this right. Pinheads!
You can throw tons of money staffing TDCJ-ID; however, you won't likely attract or keep personnel when you have a such butt-kissing work environment.
Word gets around. People aren't stupid. Why risk your life inside a prison when you make much more money doing dangerous work in the oil field?
TDCJ-ID, collectively, is too stupid to come in out of the rain. The Federal court system had to intervene; however, rather than profiting from their experience, TDCJ-ID returned to the same old practices.
Sure, offenders are no longer performing surgery & policing others, but the psychopathology of ranking officers & buffoons in administration are still present. I'm sorry that the officers left behind are working under such deplorable conditions, but I laugh knowing that this whole ordeal will end up costing taxpayers tons of money.
TeaTards & GOPigs are too stupid to understand how to avoid needless expenses. It takes a well-oiled machine to do this right. A modest increase in taxes might have helped matters at one point in time. Now, you might have to use illegal aliens to staff these units. So, Bubba "No New Taxes", you can pay the fiddler in counterfeit bills.
This is not new! They've been short staffed for years so much that they eliminate positions to make the numbers look better! Which means not enough officers and health care staff to properly do the job required so short cuts are made, paper work is whipped. The Coffield unit in Tennesse Colony has been short staffed for many years and it continues on and on every year. Even the numbers they publish are skewed in some sort.
Pay is an issue, but it is not the only one. When a manager at a Papa John's makes upwards of $7,000 more a year not including monthly bonuses there really is the feeling that the job with all its risks is not worth the effort. This is further compounded by the fact that the work environment, which is already dangerous (hence the hazard pay), is made more antagonistic by ranking officers and upper administration. It is no good when you have rank that refuses to do their job, that supports the offenders over the officers in cases where the offenders are clearly in the wrong, or engages in unbecoming and harassing conduct toward their subordinates. It is just as bad to have upper administrative personnel from captains all the way up to wardens that are more interested in their own career advancement or other ulterior motives that they engage in activities that beat down the officers who actually make the prison run. And the stance of Huntsville is to ignore such issues. It is like asking the Germans to investigate and report on the events of the Nazi war camps in an objective manner...it just doesn't support any productive responses to the issues. When those are common problems and pay is low in comparison to jobs that are less dangerous and less stressful, sure the agency will develop a reputation for being a poor choice in career options. If this problem is to be fixed, then all the issues that contribute to the problem need to be analyzed, understood, and addressed appropriately.
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