By Phil Kabler
The Charleston Gazette
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Low pay — contributing to high turnover rates and mandatory overtime — is the single biggest safety threat for correctional officers in state prisons, legislators were advised Monday.
“You work 16 hours a day, and go home and sleep three or four hours. ... You’re just not on top of your game, and the inmates know it,” Jack Ferrell, a union organizer for the Communications Workers of America and former correctional officer at Moundsville and Mount Olive penitentiaries, told a legislative interim committee.
Ferrell said he was working 16-hour shifts five days a week at Mount Olive when he left the job.
“It’s a dangerous job,” he said of corrections work. “I probably didn’t go a week without somebody telling me they were going to kill me.”
Elaine Harris, international representative for the CWA, said sleep deprivation from working double shifts is a major stressor for correctional officers, especially those who commute two hours or more each way.
“That’s probably one of the worst things that causes us problems,” said Harris, who said prison employees have gotten into auto accidents caused by falling asleep at the wheel.
Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein told an interim committee looking at worker safety issues that there’s a 6 percent to 10 percent turnover rate among correctional officers, with 150 vacancies currently out of 2,200 officer positions.
Rubenstein said low pay is a factor, with federal prisons in the state hiring away correctional officers by offering salaries that are $15,000 higher than state pay.
“Even if we paid a lot better, there’s a lot of things that lead to burnout and turnover,” he said.
Rubenstein said he believes correctional officers generally are safe on the job, noting, “We have come a long way with our training, our equipment, our uniforms, and our policies.”
He said that even at maximum-security Mount Olive, most of the inmates do not present safety risks.
“The key is 8 percent of these folks that will never get the message. They’re troublemakers and they will cause harm if they get the opportunity,” Rubenstein said.
Also during legislative interim meetings Monday:
• Sen. Bill Laird, D-Fayette, questioned why the Regional Jail Authority has more than $60 million in reserve accounts at a time when many counties are struggling to pay regional jail costs and provide other county services.
Executive Director Joe DeLong said much of the funds are restricted to cover bond payments on the 10 regional jails statewide.
The authority had kept $18 million in the reserve fund, but bond insurers required the authority to set aside another $11 million because court fees used to retire the bond debt have dropped off sharply.
The fees, imposed on all charges from traffic violations to criminal convictions, have inexplicably dropped off 40 percent since 2004, from $13 million that year to less than $8 million in 2012. The authority is budgeted to pay $9 million a year of its bond debt from those fees.
DeLong also noted that while counties’ regional jail costs have increased, it’s a factor of more people being incarcerated, noting the per-diem charge has not increased in years, and actually dropped 55 cents, to $48.25, on July 1.
“It’s a volume-driven issue. It’s not the rate so much as the volume,” DeLong told the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jails and Corrections.
“Until we attack the volume side of the equation, which we’re doing through legislation, counties will struggle,” he said.
DeLong noted that part of the legislation passed this session to curb prison overcrowding requires pre-trial risk assessments for all inmates within 72 hours of incarceration, and that information should lead to more regional jail inmates being ordered into home confinement or other alternative sentencing options.