evolution

There’s no easy answer I can see for this:

The risk to life and limb, combined with low salaries paid to guards in the state prison system, is feeding a staffing crisis. The $23,600 starting wage for a prison guard is making it difficult for wardens to recruit enough qualified applicants. It also is a challenge to retain officers after they acquire work experience valued by law enforcement agencies and other employers.

With turnover rates approaching 25 percent this year at several state prisons, wardens are slicing off bigger pieces of the budget to pay overtime to guards. Despite guards working more than 40 hours each week, prison security is stretched to the point that inmates and staff are at greater risk of harm.

Another embarrassing detail here:

Sam Cline, warden of the Ellsworth Correctional Facility, said some inmates in Ellsworth’s work-release program were holding down welding jobs that paid $12.50 to $14 an hour. The starting wage for Ellsworth’s guards is less than $12, he said.

“That helps illustrate the point,” Cline said.

Any fix is going to have to incorporate things that will make absolutely no one happy, but it must be done, or the whole system could topple under its own weight. As I said, there are no easy answers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 20:52 and is filed under kansas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.