ST. LOUIS, Mich. — Michigan corrections officers picketed outside the St. Louis Correctional Facility, warning that staffing shortages and changes in the prison population are putting employees at risk.
The Sept. 22 demonstration followed several violent incidents involving prison workers, ABC12 reported. In one recent incident, an inmate attacked a social worker with a homemade knife. The employee was not injured.
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Byron Osborn, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization, said prisons across the state are operating with staffing shortages of between 20% and 35%.
“When you combine the fact that many of these facilities are 20 to 35% short-staffed, that itself is a security issue because it results in the facility running every day with far less officers than are required to be there,” Osborn said.
Steven Ladoux, the union chapter president at St. Louis Correctional Facility, described staffing at the prison as critically low and said the problem extends across the state.
“We are short-staffed, critically. Not just here, but everywhere,” Ladoux said. “It’s throughout the state.”
The Michigan Department of Corrections lists St. Louis as a Level IV facility, but Ladoux said it is housing more prisoners classified at Level V, the state’s highest numbered security classification.
Ladoux called on MDOC to find a faster way to house those prisoners in facilities designed for their security needs.
“The state continues to put band-aids on things that need stitches,” he said. “We need the help now.”
MDOC recently announced a series of projects that it said will add 870 high-security beds across the state.
The department secured $152 million to build new high-security units at St. Louis and Oaks correctional facilities. Together, the units will add more than 400 Level IV and Level V or segregation beds. Construction is expected to take roughly 2.5 years.
Other projects include prison unit conversions that MDOC said will add 182 Level IV beds at Macomb Correctional Facility and 288 Level IV and Level V beds at Oaks Correctional Facility.
