A tough sell for DOC
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is doing its best to address a significant shortage of correctional officers. Consider this job description by the agency's spokesman, Matt Elliott.
“If people want to do a job that's challenging,” Elliott said last week, “that rewards them for their hard work, a job where they can actually try to have an impact on people's lives, try to help people change their behavior, turn their lives around … our staff do that every day.”
We don't doubt it, and Oklahomans from border to border should be grateful to the men and women who staff the state's prisons. However, the DOC has much working against it as it seeks to recruit more than 600 entry-level correctional officers.
The first is pay. New COs start at $15.74 per hour, plus benefits and overtime. That starting hourly wage is $2 more than it was not long ago, thanks to the Legislature boosting starting pay this session.
Yet the starting pay is only on par with what a person can make working at a convenience store, and far below what is available in fields such as the oil patch. When the energy industry in Oklahoma is robust, as it has been in recent years, the DOC loses correctional officers regularly.
Annually, the turnover rate for correctional officers is 30%. The DOC says that as 2018 ended, 73% of its COs had fewer than five years of service.
Working conditions present another significant hurdle. Because the roster of correctional officers is so thin — just 55% of the DOC's cadet positions were filled on July 31 — and because the state's prisons are filled beyond capacity, the men and women in these jobs are badly outnumbered. Bobby Cleveland, head of the Oklahoma Corrections Professionals, has said COs work 12-hour shifts, five to seven days a week. In April, he said the ratio of inmates to COs systemwide was 87-to-1.
The DOC says that at the end of July, only 18% of cadet positions were filled at the prison in Sayre. The prison had a whopping 96 vacancies.
Correctional officers must be at least 20 years old and have a high school diploma. No experience in the field is necessary. Those who sign on will have to complete a six-week academy and are paid during that time. COs are eligible for retirement after 20 years.
Elliott notes that correctional officers do more than stand watch over inmates. They also take inmates to doctor and court appointments, help with contraband and administer Narcan if an inmate overdoes, among other duties.
It's a tough job, Elliott acknowledges. However, “It's not just what people think of when they think of what a prison guard does,” he says. “There's a little bit of case management, a little bit of mentorship, a little bit of just about anything you can imagine.”
Here's hoping the agency succeeds to some extent with this recruiting drive, because having so many of its correctional officer positions vacant is asking for trouble.