By Inspector Ryan C. Kolegar
If you’ve spent any amount of time working in corrections, you know political pressure often outweighs operational reality.
Doing the right thing is often hard. Effective leadership requires being able to plant your feet and tell those above you “no” when it matters, even at the risk of personal sacrifice.
You don’t have to look far to find an understaffed jail. While the media has focused on the shortage of police officers in the field, the problem is equally bad, if not worse, for the correctional system. Corrections staffing is a much easier problem to ignore because it occurs behind fences and walls, out of sight of the public. Cuyahoga County, which operates one of Ohio’s largest jails, just footed the bill for $25 million in overtime last year, almost all of it related to corrections.
This isn’t the first time the profession has dealt with staffing issues. The problems are often cyclical and tied to larger issues beyond anyone’s control. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, left many facilities running on skeleton crews.
Anticipate the problem before it explodes
The first step to solving any problem is anticipating that there might be one:
- Are your recruitment staff paying attention to upcoming retirement dates?
- Do they monitor staff members who are out for extended periods and may not return due to medical complications?
- Are you preparing to hire replacements before these officers have said goodbye?
- Are you paying attention to world events and trying to anticipate emergencies that might disrupt facility operations?
Taking these steps can mean the difference between a small problem and a full-blown crisis.
Still, a facility administrator cannot anticipate every possible event. Sometimes you get dealt a terrible hand. At that point, the “how” doesn’t really matter. What matters is how you address the crisis.
Stop the bleeding first
Many facilities are content to ignore the problem and carry on as normal. They mandate overtime until their staff, or at least those who remain, are exhausted, burned out and actively looking for a way out. This is the easy option. Well, easy for everyone who doesn’t actually have to work a housing unit.
The proper action, which also happens to be the hard one, is standing behind your people. That starts with stabilizing operations. While all jails are still subject to state and federal guidelines, this is not a time to try to achieve extra credit. Cut out any inmate programming until staffing allows it to return. The same goes for inmate visitation. Begin locking down housing units and only allow inmates out the minimum amount of time required by applicable standards.
If the crisis is severe enough, it may be time to start emergency releasing nonviolent inmates. America has a large number of people in jail who don’t necessarily need to be there.
Lead from the front and get creative
To help triage the situation, you may have to get creative. Can you pull staff from another division, like court security or patrol, to help shore up your facility’s numbers? Even the appearance that you’re willing to try something new may help boost morale. Is your command staff showing up for shifts and pulling their weight? Leading from the front shows your people that not only are you aware of the problems they’re facing, but you’re also experiencing them with them.
Next, you need to look at what you can do to get employees through the door faster. Ask yourself: Is there anything you can do to get candidates cleared and hired faster? Every law enforcement agency has its own hiring parameters, but these usually include several interviews, a background investigation, a polygraph test, a drug screen, a psychological screening and sometimes a physical fitness examination. Put it all together and you’re looking at a process that can take months.
It’s nearly impossible to rush a background investigation without risking the integrity of the process, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make things more efficient and thus faster. Schedule a day when you can get as many of your candidates together at the agency at one time. Work collaboratively with your vendors and partners to get everyone’s physicals, psychological screenings, drug screens and polygraph tests done in one day. You can shave weeks off the hiring process by taking the initiative and organizing it in a simpler, more efficient way. Your recruits will appreciate the ease of this too. Now, instead of scheduling multiple appointments on top of whatever job they’re currently working, they can get everything done at once. The best part is this added speed does nothing to diminish the quality of the hiring process.
Reputation, pay and the long game
If you’re having trouble finding recruits to fill open positions, start by evaluating your pay rates. While pay isn’t everything when someone is looking for an agency to call home, if your rates are substantially lower than nearby facilities, you will lose candidates every time. Reputation is a real attention getter, and it can work for you or against you. Do you want to be known as the agency that’s working its staff to death? Burned-out employees talk. Scorned employees talk even more. If your people feel you’re not adequately addressing the crisis, they issue warnings to others to stay away. In turn, you’ll have fewer candidates showing up and your staffing crisis will continue.
The inverse is also true. If you stand out as an agency that has its people’s back and makes the hard but right choices, you will actually attract candidates. You can spend as much money and time as you want on a commercial or social media campaign, but personal experience will always trump media. If candidates hear from disgruntled staff, they will run as far away from your agency as possible.
Prepare for pushback
The reality is administrative changes are easy. Most jail administrators can accomplish everything I’ve listed above in a few days. That’s the easy part. The hard part is having the fortitude to push back against the many stakeholders who will object to these decisions. Judges may argue that limiting bookings or releases constrains their options. Prosecutors may contend that such measures complicate their work. Inmates’ families and community advocates may say that reducing programming and time out is inhumane. Everyone will have an opinion, but few will offer practical solutions for maintaining safe operations with limited staff.
Use the media to your advantage. Do not keep your staffing crisis a secret. Transparency makes it more difficult for critics to mischaracterize your decisions.
At the end of the day, those voicing objections are not the ones working inside your facility. They are not the ones missing holidays in the name of public safety. They are not the ones sustaining injuries that heal but are never quite the same. They will not carry the weight of the experiences that come with maintaining order and safety inside a jail. The public and outside critics view your operations from beyond the walls. Your staff lives them every day.
Never forget that your people need you on the inside. They need you to make the right decision and be willing to put up a fight for what is best for them.
About the author
Inspector Ryan C. Kolegar serves as the Corrections Inspector General for the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office in Lorain County, Ohio. Over the course of his career, he has held a variety of positions in law enforcement and corrections, including auxiliary patrolman, juvenile corrections officer, corrections officer, corrections sergeant, and deputy sheriff.
A commissioned peace officer, Inspector Kolegar holds an associate degree in criminal justice from Eastern Gateway Community College. He is a certified Inspector General through the Association of Inspectors General, where he also maintains active membership.
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