By Brian Lyman
Montgomery Advertiser
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A correctional officer can supervise up to 196 inmates, and is trained not to trust them.
“It plays a lot in your mind,” said Victorrus Felder, a correctional officer who has worked in the Department of Corrections for seven years and currently works at the Elmore Correctional Center. “You never know what mood they’re going to be in.”
When he talks about his work, Felder doesn’t speak so much about security as psychology. It’s managing attitudes, he said. He may reach out to an inmate — an older person or someone involved with religious activities — to help keep things steady in the prison. He also tries to assess each situation individually.
“You don’t want to overreact,” said Felder, 32. “You don’t want to be the only officer going into a crowd of 100 inmates. It could be a trick.”
Felder remembers an incident when an inmate with a cellphone refused a colleague’s order to stop. Things escalated, he said, as other inmates began cursing and crowding around the inmate and officer and other correctional officers moved to intervene. “Now other inmates jump off the beds because they think there’s too many officers for one inmate,” he said.
Felder has never been seriously injured in the course of work. Restraining inmates led to elbow and knee scrapes, but nothing worse.
Still the job is hard. A shift can begin at 4 a.m. and not end until 5 p.m. Going back to his car for the drive back to Montgomery, Felder feels drained.
“I try to brace myself, catch myself,” he said.
Increasing risk
Corrections officers face stress, long hours and low pay. The state’s prison overcrowding crisis adds to the difficulty. Cuts to the department’s budget could hurt more.
Architects built Elmore Correctional Center in 1981 to hold 600 inmates. It currently holds 1,176, or 197 percent capacity. Systemwide, Alabama’s prisons average 185 percent capacity.
There are 169 correctional officers authorized to work at the prison. It curently has 87. Systemwide, the number of employees in the Corrections system fell from 4,277 in 2010 to 3,944 in 2014, according to the Alabama Personnel Department.
Leon Furniss, the warden of Elmore, has worked in the department since 1976. Three strikes laws and mandatory sentences, he said, played the major role in the overcrowding. The profile of inmates has changed as well, he said.
“They’re a lot younger, less-educated and more difficult to control,” he said. “They come with a lot of mental baggage.”
And there are more of them. When Furniss started, state prisons held just over 5,000 inmates. Today, the system holds over 24,000 inmates in a system built for 13,318.
Security cameras at the front gate capture the sights in the dorms: rows upon rows of bunk beds crowded into a dorm in the facility. In the yard afterward, inmates, all in white prison clothing, walked on the stony ground, threw Frisbees, or leaned against the walls.
Overcrowding has contributed to increasing violence in the system. At least six inmates have been killed at St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville since 2011. Elmore has not been immune: In February, an inmate was fatally stabbed in the facility by another inmate. The prison has been named in at least one report alleging excessive violence in the state prison system.
Gov. Robert Bentley earlier this year signed legislation aimed at reducing the state’s prison population by 4,500 individuals during the next five years. Separate legislation would lead to new construction that could reduce overcrowding to about 140 percent of system capacity. To implement the reforms, Bentley named Jeff Dunn DOC commissioner earlier this year, and Corrections reassigned several wardens.
The reforms are not currently funded. In June, the Legislature approved a General Fund budget that would have cut Corrections funding by about 5 percent. The cut was part of a broader series of reductions aimed at closing a $200 million shortfall in the budget. Bentley ultimately vetoed the budget.
Dunn said that the reduction would have required the closing of two prisons and the movement of 5,300 inmates into existing ones.
It’s not clear where those inmates would go; many prisons, including Elmore, are physically incapable of holding more people. But it would push overcrowding in the state prison system to 226 percent and add to the burdens of Corrections officers. In April, DOC estimated there were 11.8 inmates for every correctional staff member. At Elmore that month, the ratio was 13.2 to one.
“It very likely increases the number of inmates he or she will have to supervise, and to man a post over in any given shift,” Dunn said in an interview. “That’s problematic. That’s very problematic. We already accept a significant amount of risk as it is.”
The cut was unusual. Even in lean years, legislators have tended to protect Corrections funding. But protected funding doesn’t mean it’s adequate. While the department has not seen the cuts that other departments have in the past seven years, Corrections commissioners have said that level-funding effectively means a cut, as the department’s fixed costs continue to rise.
Ideally, Felder said, a Corrections officer would be responsible for 50 to 75 inmates. At that level, bunks would go and Corrections officers would have improved sight lines in dormitories. But adding more inmates would mean that Felder would deal with “20 to 30 more attitudes,” which could increase the danger to those within the system.
“You have to be more cautious in those situations, because a guy in the 30 may not want to be at the camp he’s assigned,” he said. “He might want to be somewhere else.”
Low pay, little sleep
Corrections officers generally are the lowest-paid officials in law enforcement. According to the Alabama State Personnel Department, salaries start at $28,517 a year, compared with $35,590 for state troopers. Most Corrections officers work mandatory overtime. Felder estimates that he usually puts in a total of 64 hours a week. Like other state employees, correctional officers have not seen a cost-of-living adjustment since 2008.
Stress factors into turnover; of 100 officers who graduate from the academy, only about 60 will still be working in the system after three years, Dunn said.
Corrections officials have been stepping up recruiting. Dunn said retention of experienced officers would be aided by a commitment from state officials to invest in the facilities and technology. Getting more officers, Dunn said, would also help reduce overtime worked by correctional officers.
“Over time, the overtime creates fatigue, wear and tear,” he said. “It creates family issues. When mom and dad are working a normal 40 hours a week and then working a ton of overtime all the time, it impacts the family.”
Felder knows. His girlfriend works a late shift, and he usually goes to bed at 10:30 p.m. each night, getting four hours sleep before rising to make the lengthy drive from Montgomery to Elmore. The hours also mean that he misses time with his stepdaughters, ages 7 and 5. He tries to catch up with friends and family on Saturday, but it’s difficult.
“It’s hard,” he said. “It brings me down because I want to be involved, I want to be seen. But on the flip side, I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got bills that need to be paid.”
Felder has sometimes given thought to leaving as well. But for him, the job was a step up. He had been working in restaurants as everything from a cook to a dishwasher before a friend “pushed me to get real” and find a new job. For all the stresses, he enjoys his work, and is thinking about taking the sergeant’s exam.
“It’s a great career move,” he said. “I’m living better. My situation is better.”
About the series
The Alabama Legislature will convene on Aug. 3 to address a $200 million shortfall in the General Fund budget, which pays for a host of services in the state. Legislators passed a budget this spring — ultimately vetoed by Gov. Robert Bentley — that would have addressed the shortfall through cuts, and reduced funding may be on the table in the special session. “The Cost of Cutting” looks at selected services, and how reductions could affect the people who depend on them.