Corrections officers have become so difficult to hire and retain that robots may end up doing the job.
Employers are scrambling to find teachers and health care professionals but nearly all 50 states have long struggled to bring in enough security guards to oversee the nation’s prison population of 1.2 million people. And in recent months the vacancy rates have skyrocketed as officers — frustrated by low pay, violent conditions, long hours, isolated work locations and routine exposure to Covid-19 — quit in droves.
It’s a difficult situation that’s been brewing steadily for decades, as a tough-on-crime attitude among politicians and the public led to longer sentences, dramatically growing prison populations. Then states were slow to invest in maintaining staff, the quality of facilities or programming that reduces recidivism.
Factors like that are driving Nevada toward a novel approach: deploying drones to patrol the state’s prisons and fitting the people serving time with surveillance bracelets.
Despite special bonuses and other incentives approved by local lawmakers and governors from Minnesota and South Dakota to Pennsylvania and Tennessee, some prisons are seeing at least a quarter of their correctional jobs sit unfilled.
“I did 40 years in law enforcement but I couldn’t have done 40 minutes in a correctional facility,” said Nevada Assembly member P.K. O’Neill, a Republican who is open to the drone proposal. “It’s a very, very difficult job to do.”
Conditions have grown so dire that governors in Florida and West Virginia have declared states of emergency in recent weeks and called in the National Guard to help staff prisons. Some states have resorted to closing prisons, like in Florida, where three of its main facilities shut down indefinitely last year.
Continue reading: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/28/corrections-officers-shortage-drones-00059140
Employers are scrambling to find teachers and health care professionals but nearly all 50 states have long struggled to bring in enough security guards to oversee the nation’s prison population of 1.2 million people. And in recent months the vacancy rates have skyrocketed as officers — frustrated by low pay, violent conditions, long hours, isolated work locations and routine exposure to Covid-19 — quit in droves.
It’s a difficult situation that’s been brewing steadily for decades, as a tough-on-crime attitude among politicians and the public led to longer sentences, dramatically growing prison populations. Then states were slow to invest in maintaining staff, the quality of facilities or programming that reduces recidivism.
Factors like that are driving Nevada toward a novel approach: deploying drones to patrol the state’s prisons and fitting the people serving time with surveillance bracelets.
Despite special bonuses and other incentives approved by local lawmakers and governors from Minnesota and South Dakota to Pennsylvania and Tennessee, some prisons are seeing at least a quarter of their correctional jobs sit unfilled.
“I did 40 years in law enforcement but I couldn’t have done 40 minutes in a correctional facility,” said Nevada Assembly member P.K. O’Neill, a Republican who is open to the drone proposal. “It’s a very, very difficult job to do.”
Conditions have grown so dire that governors in Florida and West Virginia have declared states of emergency in recent weeks and called in the National Guard to help staff prisons. Some states have resorted to closing prisons, like in Florida, where three of its main facilities shut down indefinitely last year.
Continue reading: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/28/corrections-officers-shortage-drones-00059140
