Are Corrections Officers in More Danger After JRA?

Five staff members in the North Carolina prison system have died this year as a result of inmate attacks. According to witnesses, during one attack inmates used hammers and scissors to kill two prison workers. During another attack, a female correctional sergeant was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.

In a state that has seen officer staffing levels drop dramatically since its legislature passed the Justice Reinvestment Act (JRA), North Carolina has been quick to give prisoners the benefit of the doubt and slow to recognize the dual dangers of understaffing prisons and relaxing the rules by which officers can engage prisoners. It’s leading to an impossibly dangerous situation.

Officers say that while their jobs have always been characterized by low pay and understaffing, since the Act’s adoption things have only grown worse with the ranks of unhappy officers swelling and vacancies growing. The Charlotte Observer reports that 39 percent of officers surveyed in one university study, “said they wanted to quit.” It adds that the vacancy rate as of October 2017 stood at 16 percent.

Passage of the act, backed by then-house member W. David Guice, who now holds a leadership position in the Department of Corrections, has saved the state money, allowed for prison closures and reduced probation revocations, according to a report from the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments. What the report didn’t say was that the savings have come with a price that can’t be measured in cash.

Officers who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution say the legislature has made the prisons more inmate-friendly by reducing the authority and options officers can use to react to violent threats. They say officials are parking too many prisoners at the larger institutions, taking authority from the correctional officers and adding to the staff’s emergency response time by virtue of not having enough personnel to properly cover each shift. According to reports, officers who were once able to spray an uncooperative prisoner now must call a supervisor to first secure permission. The supervisor must then go to the officer’s location and witness the chemical’s deployment. Not very efficient or safe, in my opinion.

The badly understaffed prisons are stretching their personnel so thin that, according to the Observer, officers often earn more in overtime than they do in regular hours and this leads to higher costs and exhausted employees.

Employees say the JRA’s implementation has made prisons more dangerous and provided impetus for officers to quit. The day following the deaths of the employees mentioned above, 28 officers at that unit quit, with a total loss of 56 officers statewide. Others stayed home from work. And the exodus is not over.

The JRA might have had a good idea or two hidden in its language, but glowing reports of success are disingenuous. The lives and safety of correctional officers are being sacrificed in a bid to save a few bucks and be kinder to criminals.

And in my book, that dog don’t hunt.