January 13, 2025
Report: Understaffed Prisons A Symptom Of Mass Incarceration
According to a December report from the Prison Policy Initiative, jails and prisons across the United States are experiencing staff shortages and no amount of pay raises, benefits, or new facilities have been able to turn the tide.
According to a December report from the Prison Policy Initiative, jails and prisons across the United States are experiencing staff shortages, and no amount of pay raises, benefits, or new facilities have been able to turn the tide.
According to the report, between 20% and 30% of prison workers leave their jobs each year. This leads to authorities at correctional institutions cutting back on the things employees need to do their jobs, leading to other issues compounding the staff shortages.
In 2019, a report from the National Institute of Justice indicated that one problem was the nature of the occupation itself.
“Though for many, it has proven to be a rewarding career, a variety of factors can deter individuals from entering or remaining in the field of corrections. The work is inherently dangerous, given the characteristics of the population of incarcerated individuals. Beyond the risk of physical injury, there are extraordinary stressors associated with corrections work that can seriously affect the well-being of staff. Beyond the risk of injury and actual injury, common stressors are exposure to crisis situations and secondary trauma as well as work overload, overtime demands, and role conflict,” the report stated.
In January 2024, The Marshall Project noted that the corrections industry has a dilemma: as the number of incarcerated people increases, the number of correctional workers is dwindling, and like the Prison Policy Initiative, its ultimate conclusion is that this is due, at least in part, to mass incarceration.
According to Brian Dawe, the national director of One Voice United, an advocacy organization for correctional officers, the issue of understaffing goes in cycles.
“It becomes cyclical. You start getting mandatory overtime, which means you miss more and more time with your family,” Dawe told The Marshall Project. “You are demanded more and more to be on the job, which burns you out and causes people to leave.”
This is mirrored by the account of Andrew Phillips, a former correctional worker in Georgia’s Smith State Prison.
Reflecting on his time working in the prison, he told the Marshall Project, “We just had no energy; we didn’t have the ability to care,” Phillips said. He indicated to the outlet that mandatory overtime, as well as constant violence against both staff and incarcerated people, led officers to quit. “The place was too brutal, too disgusting,” Phillips concluded.
During the pandemic, institutions reduced their populations by releasing nonviolent offenders to prevent prisons from becoming too crowded to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Some call for a return to this approach.
According to The Vera Institute, in November 2024, One Voice was one of the groups that called attention to the problems created by the rampant overcrowding in American prisons.
“The size and scope of our national prison population is exacerbating our understaffing crisis. As we work to ensure proper staffing levels in our prisons, we should also explore ways to reduce the high demand on our prison system through mechanisms designed to safely release individuals whose sentence is no longer necessary to protect and promote public safety — such as individuals who are terminally ill or geriatric,” a joint statement from One Voice and Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an organization representing the families of incarcerated people reads.
The statement continued, “It is time for our country to pay attention to what happens behind the walls. Years of chronic neglect are putting lives at risk and creating a vicious cycle of low staff morale and high turnover that makes these problems more severe and also more difficult to solve. Corrections officers have a suicide rate that is 39% higher than other professions, and rates of PTSD are higher for staff and incarcerated people alike. Unless policymakers act now, there will continue to be more violence and trauma behind bars, staff wellness will further deteriorate, fewer people will leave prisons rehabilitated, and more people will become victims of crime in our communities.”
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