One of the most important things to understand about the rampant understaffing in United States prisons is that it is not a hiring problem. It is a retention problem.
In Georgia, where I’ve been incarcerated since the early 1990s, research consultants found that between 2021 and 2024 more than 80 percent of new officers quit within the first year. Anecdotally, I’d say more than 80 percent quit within their first pay period.
Pay is of course an issue, but it’s not really the issue. Estimates vary, but nationally the average corrections officer is making somewhere around $58,000 per year. The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) has in recent years bumped up officer salaries to around $45,000 per year. But like any other corrections department in the country that’s thrown a modest amount of money at the problem, the problem has not been resolved. The jobs are too miserable for an extra $5,000 or $10,000 a year to entice people to stay.
A lot of corrections departments—and especially GDC—pay an inordinate amount of attention to the existence of contraband cell phones, which are blamed for any and every systemic failure currently making prisons unsafe. A less-discussed factor in the high rates of staff turnover—the most tangible thing currently making prisons unsafe, other than mass incarceration itself—is that officers aren’t allowed to have cell phones either, while they’re on the job that is.
In GDC, only captains, unit managers, deputy wardens and wardens carry a personal cell phone while at work.
It’s easy for a newbie officer to be reeled in with a $5,000 signing bonus and underestimate the impact of leaving their phone in their car before they start their 12-hour graveyard shift. Even knowing that in the morning they get to go home, while on duty they’re completely cut off from the outside world, and submerged in this place where no one wants to be. Many officers are of course attracted to the job by the desire to grind other human beings under their boot with little oversight, but many find it too soul-crushing to witness the misery of modern slavery for very long.
An officer post doesn’t have a TV or radio; the prison-issue radio is not for social use. The landline phone routes through a switchboard of sorts that tracks all numbers dialed and the length of the calls. Generally officers are isolated enough that the nearest co-worker could hear them shout, but not make out what was said. A shift supervisor will come around every two or three hours to wake them and point out chores that need to be done. Each needs to clean their own bathroom and office, since prisoners aren’t allowed in those areas.
Some states have tried modifying their policies to make the situation more sustainable. Maine for example has enacted a policy with some carveouts for personal cell phone use during breaks and meals and the like, “to support the need for staff to stay connected and available to their families.”
Minnesota allows employees and contractors to use their phones during lunch and break periods, and also allows them to “check messages periodically throughout the day [and] reply with a brief response to family who may be checking in (for example, children arriving home from school).”
An officer-prisoner ratio of 1:100 is not uncommon.
In GDC, only captains, unit managers, deputy wardens and wardens carry a personal cell phone while they’re at work. Policy also states that doctors can bring their phones onto the premises. Which leaves out most of the 22-year-olds who started the job a few weeks ago, and in a few weeks’ time will quit.
Aside from the depressing isolation and the prospect of missing major news events until the next day, the phone policies mean parents are not able to check on their children. A problem that a 12-hour shift compounds.
After five 40-hour weeks, new recruits begin a schedule of three consecutive 12-hour day shifts, supervised by another officer. Then they begin 12-hour night shifts, alone. An officer-prisoner ratio of 1:100 is not uncommon.
The ever-increasing GDC annual budget, now up to $1.6 billion, emphasizes increased salaries and benefits a lot more than anything related to training. Updated curricula are referenced. You’d think they’d expand the actual training facilities.
Mostly what the budget emphasizes is new infrastructure. In the utopian future envisioned by politicians, robots will deliver our meals and medications; medical bracelets will monitor our vital signs. Surveillance cameras can take the place of officers doing rounds. There’s no need to make the job a bearable one.
Image via Illinois Department of Corrections
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