Prison jobs go vacant despite bonus

Understaffing a long-standing problem due to tough conditions

The Texas prison system handed out more than $9 million this fiscal year on bonuses to aid recruitment as the agency grappled with extensive officer vacancies, but department data show the cash outlay has hardly moved the needle.

Seven months after the state launched a concerted effort to bring down the 14 percent officer vacancy rate, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice still has 3,675 unfilled positions — roughly 30 more than in January, when the leadership started tackling the problem.

But prison officials are optimistic that the tide is turning, pointing out that vacancy numbers are down from a peak in April.

“I am in no way ringing the bell of victory,” said TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier at a June prison board meeting. “These numbers make me cautiously optimistic.”

Still, critics say that longer-term solutions could require more money — for salaries and for air-conditioning — or more drastic measures.

“There’s really only one solution, truthfully,” said Scott Henson, policy director with Just Liberty, a nonprofit that advocates

for criminal justice reform. “And that is that we need to reduce the incarceration levels enough to close more units, and this time target units with high vacancy rates for closure.”

Staffing shortages have long plagued the prison system, a problem driven in part by the lock-ups’ remote locations, the tough working conditions including a lack of air conditioning, and the relatively low pay.

Back in 2008, just over 13 percent of officer positions were unfilled, and though the vacancies decreased over the next two years, by 2012 some units were so poorly staffed the state was forced to take nearly 700 beds offline due to a lack of guards.

In 2015, TDCJ executives offered an across-theboard pay hike as vacancies climbed over 13 percent again. Afterward, the situation improved — but by late last year, numbers started creeping up, and as of October just over 14 percent of officer jobs sat unfilled.

Twelve of the system’s 104 units were under 75 percent staffed, and one — in the panhandle town of Dalhart, where a cheese factory pulls away the local workforce — had just 56 percent of officer positions filled.

That’s why at the start of the year the prison system attacked the problem headon, bumping up recruitment efforts, expanding targeted $4,000 and $5,000 hiring bonuses to 29 particularly understaffed units, and increasing starting pay 12 percent systemwide effective Feb. 1. Now, new guards can start making $36,000 per year instead of $32,000.

The bonus funding was scheduled to come out of the system’s existing budget, officials said at the time, and the bonus pay alone turned out to be a record-setting figure. In the first nine months of fiscal year 2018, the prison system shelled out just over $9.1 million on bonus pay, more than in any other entire fiscal year for the past decade.

At first, it didn’t seem to have much effect. Through February and March the exodus continued, and by April, 3,930 jobs were unfilled, making for a 15.22 percent vacancy rate.

But in May, the numbers started to look a little better, with 3,772 open positions. By June, the figure was down to 3,675 — almost back to where it was in October.

“We are constantly recruiting in the communities that we serve,” prison spokesman Jeremy Desel said in a statement. “Hiring data shows that our recruiting efforts are working and progress is being made shrinking the number of unfilled positions agency-wide.”

But even though the overall figures improved, more units are severely understaffed now than last fall. The latest unit-by-unit figures — from May 31 — show that fourteen units were under 75 percent staffed. Dalhart was down to 51 percent staffed. At the Daniel Unit, between Lubbock and Abilene, staffing dropped from from 77 percent in October to only 62 percent of jobs filled in May.

And the notorious Ferguson Unit — where a teacher was allegedly raped by an inmate last year in an incident her lawyers blamed on understaffing — was down to 69 percent staffed.

Of the 29 units with hiring bonuses, 19 — including Daniel, Ferguson and Dalhart — had higher vacancy rates in May than they did in October. New unit-by-unit data from July 31 is expected to be released in the coming days.

Prison officials say the figures would be worse without the pay bumps and bonuses, but Lance Lowry, a Huntsville corrections officer and former union president who now runs a criminal justice nonprofit, said focusing on new hires only addresses part of the problem.

“A bonus just gets people in the door,” he said. “We’ve never had a problem getting people in the door — the problem is getting those employees to stay.”

It’s long been accepted as conventional wisdom that prison guard vacancies are linked to the success — or struggles — in the better-paying industries, like oil and gas.

“Obviously the problem is the economy, not to mention oil,” said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston. “It’s just hard to compete with the salaries that the energy sector pays in these areas that oil is doing so well.”

But the Chronicle talked to a handful of corrections officers and criminal justice experts, who also cited a number of other factors driving the recurring vacancy issues.

One common concern was the lack of air conditioning. As inmates fight for access to cooler quarters with the settlement of a federal class-action suit on behalf of prisoners at one geriatric lock-up in East Texas, officers at many units face the same struggles.

“If they would air-condition every unit across the state, they would keep more people,” said one officer, who asked not to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. “If you as a corrections officer tell your lieutenant, ‘Look I’m hot, I need to go cool down,’ they’re gonna laugh you off the unit.”

Other officers cited broader problems, like a “good old boy” agency culture, favoritism, sub-par pay and an advancement ladder that doesn’t offer scheduled pay hikes after eight years on the job.

And even though the agency is striving to tackle those issues, there’s the even tougher problem at hand: location, location, location.

When the prison system underwent a massive and abrupt expansion in the early 1990s, the state didn’t turn to pricey real estate in urban areas. As a result, Texas ended up with dozens of lock-ups in far-flung places and tiny towns — exactly the sort of locale where hiring is tough and a hiring bonus may not do the trick.

“We built the prisons in all the wrong places,” Whitmire said.

The potential problems that stem from understaffing are not hard to spot. Prisons can become more dangerous, and prisoners are let out less often for activities, making it harder to meet rehabilitative goals. But the solutions to understaffing aren’t as clear.

Adding air conditioning would be expensive, and boosting pay across the board even more so.

“We already pay less to incarcerate people than just about every other state,” Henson said. A 2015 Vera Institute of Justice analysis showed that Texas has 11.6 percent of the country’s state prisoners but only accounts for 7.6 percent of prison spending.

“We’re underspending at pretty radical levels,” he added. “If you don’t want to spend more, your options are: incarcerate fewer people. That’s it.”

Marc Levin, vice president of criminal justice policy at nonprofit Texas Public Policy in Austin, agreed.

“I think it’s the ideal solution,” he said. “We would obviously want to look at the units with the biggest staffing issues and biggest capital costs.”

But some officers were skeptical, and Lowry suggested mothballing beds at understaffed units rather than closing them entirely. And, looking ahead, he warned about the possibility of an even more dire staffing situation.

Coming out of the GOP convention in San Antonio, one of the party’s platform planks included transitioning retirement plans for some state workers from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution plans.

“If they do away with that defined benefit, they better call in the National Guard,” Lowry predicted. “You’re going to have the biggest mass walkout you’ve ever seen.”

In the meantime — and absent any funding influx from lawmakers — the prison system plans to keep doing what it’s doing. The higher starting pay is a permanent change, Desel said, and there’s no firm end-date or target goal for the unit bonuses.

“For the foreseeable future, the bonus pay is in the mix and will be staying because it’s working,” he said. “It’s been an upward trend for the last three months running.”