By Bill Cummings
The Register Citizen, Torrington, Conn.
TORRINGTON, Conn. — Connecticut Correction Officer Terry Castro only needed three days last June to exceed the standard 40-hour work week while patrolling Bridgeport Correctional Center, records show.
After taking a day off, the records show Castro toiled nine more days in a row, putting in numerous 16-hour shifts. Over 14 days that month, Castro worked 195 hours, according to 2024 timesheets obtained by CT Insider through state Freedom of Information Act.
Officer Leroy Lee, working at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, didn’t take a single day off in January or March, logging 449 hours and 503 hours respectively, timesheets show.
For all those long days, the officers earned substantial sums of overtime — paid at 1.5 times their hourly rate.
The state’s Department of Correction doled out a total of $110.8 million in overtime to correction officers in 2024 — a 30.5% increase from 2015. No public agency in Connecticut spends more taxpayer dollars on overtime than the DOC, according to 2024 budget numbers.
In fact, overtime has become a way of life for the more than 3,500 correction officers in Connecticut, many of whom double and sometimes triple their yearly pay through overtime.
Many of the extra hours are mandatory to cover required prison shifts, according to the correction officer’s union.
Brian Dawe, director of One Voice United, a national non-profit which advocates for correction officers, said understaffing in Connecticut and across the country is forcing many officers to work long hours, leading to excessive spending on overtime. The intense schedules can be harmful and dangerous, he said.
“It is a national staffing crisis,” said Dawe, who is a retired correction officer. “We have staff working three or four 16-hour shifts. You have eight hours off and go back for another 16-hour shift. This will destroy you and your family.”
Dawe said the grueling work hours coupled with other on-the-job conditions correction officers face contribute to why the profession has the highest suicide, PTSD and divorce rates among public employees. “We are No. 1 in all those categories,” Dawe noted, referring to correction officers.
AFSCME Council 4, which represents thousands of DOC employees across the state, also blamed staff shortages for excessive overtime and negative health impacts endured by its members. The union said most overtime is mandatory because supervisors constantly struggle to cover continuous shifts with a declining number of officers.
“Despite more than 20 years of warnings from AFSCME Council 4 and our members, this is the path that the leaders of the State of Connecticut have chosen, and now the state is facing the very predictable consequences,” the union said.
DOC acknowledged overtime costs have increased but blamed much of that trend on steadily rising pay rates for officers.
“DOC operates on a 24/7, 365 day-a-year basis, and must maintain certain mandated levels of staffing in order to ensure the safety of the incarcerated population, the staff and the general public, (so) keeping overtime hours to a minimum is an ongoing challenge,” the department said in a written statement.
When asked how staffing requirements are set, DOC said the department sets the levels. “For safety and security reasons, staffing details/specifics are not made public,” DOC noted.
“However, to state simply that overtime costs have increased since 2015 ignores many contributing factors,” DOC added. “Perhaps foremost is the rate of compensation the average Department of Correction employee is currently receiving when compared to 2015.”
During contract negotiations, the state Office of Labor Relations serves as the governor’s designated representative, through the Office of Policy and Management .
DOC said it is also actively hiring more officers, pointing out nearly 2,000 new officers have been hired since January of 2020. DOC said between January 2020 and June 2024 , 565 correction officers left the department.
This number is not inclusive of those employees who left this job classification via transfer/promotion.
Chris DePentima, president of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association , said the state’s overall overtime costs, including DOC and other agencies, is too high and out of line with other nearby states.
“It’s incredible that state overtime costs have soared almost 50% over the last seven years, particularly when there are real cost-saving solutions available,” DiPentima said in a recent article published on CBIA’s webpage.
” Connecticut spends a higher share of its payroll on overtime than neighboring states — over 11% of the total in 2023, compared with 5.9% in Massachusetts , 4.7% in New York , and New Jersey’s 4.2%,” CBIA said.
Rising overtime
A CT Insider analysis of staffing and the prisoner population found the number of correction officers and prisoners have steadily decreased since 2015.
Between 2015 and 2024, the number of officers dropped from 3,936 in 2015 to 3,578, or 11%, figures provided by the state Comptroller show. Over the same period, the number of prisoners dropped from 16,025 in 2015 to 10,584 in 2024, or 34%, according to figures provided by DOC.
Yet despite the reduction in the number of correction officers, overtime rose significantly, from $84.9 million in 2015 to $110.8 million in 2024. Officers were paid $887 million in overtime between 2015 and 2024, state data shows.
While stressing the challenges inherent in continuously staffing state prisons, DOC pointed to various factors which drive overtime, including union contracts.
“These collective bargaining agreements specify the number of hours a correction officer or correctional supervisor are allowed to work,” DOC said.
Under the current contract with Council 4, correction officers work a base week of 36.25 hours. The contract sets a variety of rates for different shifts, such as weekends, nights and holidays, and establishes various workplace rules, including the process to sign up for voluntary overtime.
But the most stringent limit on working hours comes with a blanket exemption. The rule stipulates employees cannot be required to work more than two consecutive shifts, or work two consecutive days of two consecutive shifts, “except in an emergency situation.”
The union disputed the notion its members have any control over overtime.
“Officers are ordered to work overtime under a threat of discipline or termination,” the union said. “These overtime shifts are not a few hours here and there.”
Many officers routinely double or triple their base salaries through overtime, whether mandatory or voluntary.
For example, Officer Leroy Lee earned a base pay of just over $71,000 in 2024 and took home more than $187,000 in overtime, bringing his yearly pay to over $258,000. That made him the highest-paid correction officers in 2024, according to figures provided by the state Comptroller.
The correction officers mentioned in this story either did not respond to requests for comment or could not be reached.
DOC is not the only state agency paying large amounts of overtime. In 2024, the state spent $378 million on overtime across a variety of agencies, with DOC workers earning the most, $110.8 million, followed by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services , $62.1 million, and the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection , which includes the state police, $60.1 million, state figures show.
New laws proposed
Lawmakers over the years have proposed various fixes to reduce overtime or make it less attractive to employees, although few of those ideas have become law.
Earlier this year, state Sen. Rob Sampson, R- R-Wolcott, co-sponsored a bill to eliminate overtime from state pension calculations. A state employee’s highest salary years are part of how monthly pension payments are determined so excluding overtime would reduce the amount workers receive.
“I’m trying to look out for taxpayers, and I don’t have any ill will toward any state employees,” Sampson said in remarks regarding the bill published on the party’s Senate Republican webpage.
“In corrections, I don’t think we are properly staffed,” Sampson said. “The place ought to be staffed better so that we don’t have to rely on such an immense amount of overtime. In a lot of cases, it’s mandatory...I’m not trying to harm these guys. I just want to make sure that those agencies are properly managed and properly staffed and the workers are properly compensated.”
During a March public hearing on the bill, Brett Gifford, a state correction officer, told lawmakers his future pension, fueled by overtime, is a big reason why he remains on the job.
“We work weekends, holidays, mandatory overtime, evenings, overnights,” Giffords wrote in written testimony submitted to the Appropriations Committee.
“While there are times where 90% of the country is with their families, we are in the crosshairs of danger working inside of these violent prisons,” Gifford said. “This career is mentally taxing, often creating problems outside of work with our family lives due to the amount of stress we are consistently put under.”
Daniel Gaudiosi, an 18-year veteran, also told lawmakers about the dangers they face on the job.
“I’ve been assaulted numerous times throughout my career, and as a result I’ve sustained several life changing injuries,” Gaudiosi said.
“I’ve devoted and sacrificed a lot in my life to this state and as a result lost a lot of time with my family that I will never get back,” Gaudiosi said. “This bill in my opinion is a broad stroke of the pen and falls short on addressing true issues within the pension system.”
Sampson, contacted through a press aide, declined further comment. The bill died during the legislative process.
Prisons never close
DOC said the COVID-19 pandemic had a direct impact on overtime during the period examined by CT Insider.
“During the pandemic, a large percentage of staff members contracted the virus, which necessitated the need for available staff to work overtime,” DOC said. “The department also established a Covid Recovery Unit where incarcerated individuals who had contracted COVID could be isolated from the general population, receive medical treatment and recuperate.”
DOC said retirements are also a factor in rising overtime.
“Although there have been a substantial number of retirements, the department’s human resources unit — through persistent recruitment practices — has hired more than 1,916 correction officers since January of 2020,” the department said.
Other issues, DOC said, include officers out of work due to injury, sick leave or family leave.
“Their absence often leads to increased overtime for remaining employees,” DOC explained. “This is necessary to maintain adequate staffing levels and ensure continuity of operations, as their duties must still be fulfilled despite their absence.”
DOC said it has recently formed an Overtime Reduction Committee charged with “identifying and developing sustainable strategies to reduce reliance on overtime hours without compromising facility safety and security.”
“The Overtime Reduction Committee was established earlier this year, and is still working on developing recommendations,” DOC said.
The union said the overtime problem is the result of DOC’s policies.
“Every day, in every facility, posts essential to facility security are left unstaffed, and overtime is needed to fill the gaps,” the union said. “The mandatory overtime is not ‘remote’ or ‘telework’, it’s not glamorous or respected, it’s inside a prison, with no interaction with your family.”
The union added: “The understaffing crisis is the result of at least two decades of budgetary constraints and bad public policy, through which hard-working state employees have been forced to bear the consequences. Every year since, in some form or another, AFSCME Council 4 has urged the state government to treat the understaffing crisis with the sense of urgency it deserves. Yet, more than two decades later, nothing has been done, and we’re still forced to have this discussion.”
The toll on officers
Dawe said the true cost of excessive overtime is burnout among staff, which causes many officers to move on to other jobs, further increasing staff shortages.
Within the first 18 months of employment, Dawe said nationally 54% of new cadets leave. “Think of the cost to the state,” Bawe noted, referring to training and other services provided to employees who don’t remain on the job long.
“We go around the country and have meetings,” Dawe said. “All staff are suffering from this. What causes most stress is policies, forced overtime and missing family events. How many soccer games are you going to miss before your family starts looking at you? What does that do to your family?”
Dawe added: “There are over 200,000 assaults in prison each year. You never hear those stories, If it happened on the streets, there would be also sorts of headlines.”
A 2022 National Institute of Health study found correction officers are particularly vulnerable to burnout.
“Given the emotionally and often physically demanding nature of the work of correctional professionals, they are at substantial risk of suffering the adverse consequences of burnout,” the study concluded.
The Vera Institute, a New York City think tank, said in a recent article that researchers have just begun to examine the impact of overtime on correction officers.
“Early studies show that officers suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and commit suicide at rates much higher than law enforcement staff in other agencies and those in the military,” the institute noted.
According to the institute, correction officers suffer depression at a rate of 25% compared to 7% for the general public; PTSD at 27% compared to 4% for general public and suffer 39% higher suicide rates.
The Council 4 union agreed overtime puts officers at risk.
“It also places an extraordinary strain on their families as well as other relationships, and it has very real impacts officers’ long-term health. When officers are forced to work until the point of mental and physical exhaustion due to extreme understaffing, it places their safety at risk.”
The union noted: “The understaffing crisis often means that individual correctional officers are forced to interact with large groups of inmates, by themselves, with no guarantee that backup can arrive in time to prevent serious injury or death if a situation unfolds. That is the reality, even in a day when there are no reportable incidents. There is never a day without incident.”
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