By Liam Migdail-Smith
Reading Eagle, Pa.
LEESPORT, Pa. — Berks County Prison correctional officers demonstrated outside the county services center Wednesday, saying understaffing at the jail is leading to safety concerns.
Officers said they’re routinely required to work back-to-back shifts of 14 or 16 hours. They said that leaves them with little time to rest between shifts, making them burned out and tired on the job and less equipped to provide the necessary security.
“The morale of people has crashed through the floor of the basement,” said Stephen Hitchens, chief representative for the jail system employee union, as he and other correctional officers held signs questioning safety at the jail.
The demonstration comes as the union and county leaders remain at odds over the officers’ contract, which among other things, sets parameters for work hours and pulling overtime shifts. The matter is scheduled to be handed over to an arbitrator next month.
Commissioner Kevin S. Barnhardt, who chairs the prison board, said the county has not neglected officers’ concerns.
“We’ve been making as much effort as humanly possible to try to correct the issue,” he said.
He said the county has been working to fill vacancies quickly but doing so is difficult because when officers quit or retire, their replacements have to go through training. To get ahead, he said, the county has given the OK for the jail to hire extra trainees so new officers are ready to start when vacancies open.
“It’s tough to keep up with the total actual complement,” Barnhardt said. “It’s not like we’re not trying to hire people.”
The county has approved 207 correctional officer positions but right now only 197 are filled, Warden Janine L. Quigley said. She said three of those open positions are vacancies in the prison’s regular staff while the others are extra positions the county OK’d to get a head start on training officers.
The jail has ramped up efforts to fill those spots and has been putting job candidates through testing, she said.
Hitchens said officers want to see more done to ensure they’re not overworked as positions are filled. He said the work conditions are contributing to the jail’s turnover and officers calling off work.
He said the county needs to focus on getting shifts filled without excessive overtime by focusing on the essentials when the jail is understaffed instead of tying up manpower on other initiatives, such as community service projects.
“You have to prioritize things,” he said.
Barnhardt disputed that community service projects are driving overtime. He said the stress on the jail staff has been the rising need for officers to supervise some inmates one-on-one due to mental health or suicide concerns.
Quigley said outside community service projects have been curtailed from past years. She said now only one officer takes inmates into the community for projects and only if doing so won’t require overtime.
She said she’s reserving detailed comments about what’s causing the need to cover shifts until the contract arbitration hearings next month. But there are many factors in play, she said.
“Clearly, when you’re running an operation this complex, there are numerous factors that contribute to a vacancy of a shift,” Quigley said.