By Jacob Seibel
The Citizens’ Voice
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — The money-saving hiring freeze placed on Pennsylvania state prisons amid budget pressure has raised concerns about safety in the institutions, including the two in Luzerne County.
Roy Pinto, president of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association, told the Associated Press that prison staffing is at the 2008 level, while the state prison population has grown by 5,000 more inmates since then. He said officers’ biggest concern is their own safety and a hiring freeze that lasts well past July 1 -- the soonest Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel projected it to end when he imposed the freeze May 27 -- will increase the danger.
Mark Truszkowski, a local union representative for state correctional officers in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties, agrees safety is the number one concern.
He said the number of violent attacks has climbed since 2008 at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas and the State Correctional Institution at Retreat, which are the two state prisons in Luzerne County.
According to state Department of Corrections (DOC) data, there were 13 assaults in 2008 in the two prisons. In 2013, there were 21, and as of the first four months of this year, there have been two.
The freeze is alarming, Truszkowski said, because it affects the potential safety of prison guards. New inmates are coming in every day, but are not leaving every day, he said.
Because it comes down to funding, he said, it takes a toll on the staff, demanding overtime -- voluntary and mandatory. Truszkowski said some correctional officers work 16-hour days.
“We would like to see some type of bill passed to have mandatory staffing levels,” Truszkowski said.
There used to be three officers in each housing unit, he said, but over the last few years it’s dwindled to one in most cases.
“These inmates are not in jail for parking tickets. These are convicted felons, and of course inmates see staff levels are down,” Truszkowski said, citing a recent attack at SCI-Dallas.
The prison was locked down following an attack April 17 when Joel Perez, 40, a Lancaster County man serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, slashed the right side of correctional officer Francis Petroski’s face.
“Our goal is for officers to go into a shift as a whole and come out as a whole,” Truszkowski said.
Not everyone believes there is a safety issue.
Susan Bensinger, deputy press secretary for Pennsylvania DOC, said the freeze is across the board, not just for hiring correctional officers.
“We feel that freeze is going to be a short-term, temporary freeze,” she said.
As of April, more than 50,000 inmates were in state prisons. The state prison system has 9,483 security staff employment positions, but prison officials were unable to provide the total number of vacant security staff positions. Of the approximately 16,000 total employees, there are 422 vacant positions.
Bensinger said that number of vacant positions “is not out of line with where we normally are.”
The percentage of total filled positions statewide exceeds the total for the prisons in Luzerne County. Statewide, 97.36 percent of the positions are filled; whereas, 92.6 percent are filled in SCI-Dallas and 92.5 percent are filled in SCI-Retreat. The DOC has had some sort of a freeze every year except one since 2008. The last three freezes, which occurred in the last three years, were DOC initiated freezes, as is this one. The others were state-initiated.
The DOC freezes lasted no longer than six months, according to Bensinger; state freezes have lasted up to a year. She said there’s no safety concerns among administrative members regarding the vacant positions because if there are “critical positions” that need to be immediately filled, staff can apply for an exception.
“Wetzel started out as correctional officer,” Bensinger said. “He would not compromise the safety of staff and public to save a dollar.”
Bensinger said the DOC initiates freezes to make determinations about filling positions and managing the budget. It’s a temporary stop in hiring so the administration can review all open positions to determine what will need to be filled and what can wait without compromising safety and security, adding it also provides some temporary savings.
The state’s finances are under extreme pressure, according to the AP. Tax collections for the 2013-14 fiscal year ending June 30 are about $600 million behind expectations, putting Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s $29.4 billion budget proposal out of balance by more than $1 billion.
“With a need for supplemental appropriations this year and the budget uncertainties looming next year, the implementation of a freeze at this time is prudent fiscal measure,” Bensinger said.
Each month, she said, there are about 100 turnovers in the statewide prison system, and hiring state employees is always a process -- no matter the agency -- given civil service tests, application reviews, physicals and mental health evaluations.
A class of 42 trainees graduated Friday to become correctional officers. Despite the freeze, Bensinger said, those individuals will be granted one year of conditional employment.