USA TODAY International Edition
We need to rethink whom we incarcerate
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Hundreds of secretaries, teachers, counselors, cooks and medical staffers were tapped last year to fill guard posts across the Bureau of Prisons because of officer shortages and overtime limits, according to prison records reviewed by USA TODAY.
Just another day in the land of Make America Great Again.
The U.S. is a nation that criminalizes almost everything, yet refuses to fund our legal system, or the social and education services that could prevent people from falling into criminal behavior.
Harold Heath
If you have been trained at a federal law enforcement training center as a correctional officer, then you can be put in that position, no matter what your specialty is. Marshal Magoo
The story says staffers were tapped last year to fill guard posts. Tell us again why public service employees don’t need unions? Martin Braspennix
Calling employees of the Feberal Bureau of Prisons civilians is incorrect. All employees in a federal prison are law enforcement officers, and have to meet the same qualifications and training.
Doug Wiser
Having worked at a prison, I am not surprised. The officers are inadequately compensated for the level of risk and stress they are expected to deal with every day.
Officers burn out on a regular basis, in part, due to the excessive amounts of overtime required and 12-hour work days. There is not enough time off work to fully decompress/recover from the psychological and physical stress. Either the government needs to stop putting otherwise non-violent offenders in jail, or it needs to offer enough pay to attract sufficient staffing to eliminate overtime needs. James Childress
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