The Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — State prison guards will get less classroom training each year so they can spend more time at their posts, Illinois Department of Corrections officials confirmed Thursday.
A Nov. 8 memo from Director Roger Walker, obtained by The Associated Press, said prison employees still will get 40 hours of annual training, but routine chores such as staff meetings and roll-call updates will count toward the quota starting Nov. 26.
The union representing most of the 11,500 Corrections employees points to the change as proof that state prisons need to hire more workers.
“There’s no debating IDOC’s rationale: The prisons are so desperately short of staff that they cannot afford to take employees off their posts for training,” said Anders Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
Security staff members currently get five days of training: Three for review of department policies, one for first aid, and one for firearms training. The policy-review days will be condensed into one, making for more efficient use of employees’ time, Corrections spokesman Derek Schnapp said.
Schnapp said he didn’t know whether the current arrangement shorts staffing, but consolidating classroom days “would give you two more days of where they’re on a job post.”
The 16 hours cut from the classroom will be made up through existing routine assignments, including staff meetings, reading of new policies at shift-change roll calls, and with an emphasis on employees learning new tasks by working at unfamiliar posts.
Non-security staff also receive 40 hours of annual education, but do not take firearms training. They will supplement classroom time with other activities, Schnapp said.
AFSCME and some lawmakers have complained about prison understaffing for years. Gov. Rod Blagojevich has cut costs by not filling many vacated positions in agencies statewide for nearly five years.
Corrections’ payroll has declined 21 percent from its 14,600 employees when Blagojevich took office in January 2003.
At prisons with too few employees, “every other issue becomes magnified,” Lindall said, including officers’ interaction with inmates for discipline or during lockdowns or contraband searches. That makes training even more important.
“A wise manager sees staff training as an investment to be made, not a cost to be cut,” he said.
Lawmakers approved 500 new Corrections positions last spring in their budget proposal. But a Blagojevich veto cut hundreds of millions of dollars. That included $9 million from Corrections’ account for salaries, meaning staff cuts at 14 prisons, Lindall said.