By Theresa Clift
The Tribune-Review
ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — Allegheny County Council has gone two months without answering a labor union’s request to add 47 full- and part-time correctional officers positions to deal with understaffing and constant overtime shifts at the Allegheny County Jail.
Last year, the county paid $7.45 million in overtime to jail COs. So far this year, it has paid $3.24 million, but Warden Orlando Harper said the staffing level is adequate.
“I have to do a staffing analysis every year and I feel as though we have appropriate staffing for the jail,” Harper said during an interview in late April. “I think we do an excellent job of managing the inmate population.”
The ratio is one correctional officer per 70 or 80 inmates, depending on the pod, Harper said.
The jail typically houses about 2,400 inmates, though the capacity is 3,156, Harper said.
There are currently 426 correctional officers employed by the jail, including both full and part time, said Amie Downs, a county spokeswoman.
A review by the Allegheny County Prison Employees Independent Union found the ideal staffing for the jail should be at least 473 officers, including about 430 part time and 43 part time, said Eric Stoltenberg, an attorney for the union.
Because of the low staffing levels, shifts often start with as many as 20 officers absent, causing jail officials to require COs to work overtime, Stoltenberg said.
“Our labor agreement prohibits the jail from forcing an officer to work overtime more than once in a two-week period, but the jail routinely violates that restriction,” Stoltenberg told County Council members during a meeting March 20. “There have been many occasions where officers have been mandated four times in a two-week period. It’s a practice that is unsafe, unfair and unacceptable.”
No council members have responded to the request to budget for more COs, Stoltenberg said.
The request would need to be made to the county administration during the process for the 2019 budget, when departments make requests and recommendations, Downs said.
County Executive Rich Fitzgerald’s proposed budget comes out in the fall, with public hearings held as part of the process.
Kate Eves, a consultant on jail and prison safety and oversight, said the staffing level at the Allegheny County Jail sounds low, and that low staffing levels can reduce health and safety of inmates and staff.
“It’s very difficult for staff to know their inmates very well in those types of ratios,” Eves said. “You want to understand the potential risks of what might be about to happen... and you want inmates to trust they can talk to staff about concerns, whether that’s relating to sexual violence or they need access to certain types of health care or there are vulnerabilities among people. If they don’t have that kind of good relationship — which is a very hard thing to form with a very high ratio of inmates to staff — then it’s very difficult to manage that type of population robustly.”
Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wager, a member of the Jail Oversight Board, said her office has found that hiring more officers would actually save the county money because it would reduce overtime costs.
“It seems to me they’re trying to save on other benefit structures, like health care and pension costs,” Wagner said. “But when you look at overtime costs, they have increased and continue to be very high and increasing. (Adding staff) would be a huge benefit for morale.”
In February, the Pennsylvania Legislative Budget and Finance Committee released a report, which found the Department of Corrections could have saved up to $22 million in the last budget year if it had fully staffed its corrections officer positions.
Correctional officers’ salaries at the jail range from about $40,000 to $70,000.
©2018 The Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pa.)