Published: March 26, 2008 11:59 am            

Prison system falling short?

Some say pay is at the center of staff woes

McALESTER, Okla. — Short seems to be the operative word at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.



The Department of Corrections is short on money, the prison is short on staff, and correctional officers are short on sleep.



How long can that go on before it begins to affect the public? And why are there so few correctional officers?



“The turnover rate is high and there is definitely a shortage of prison employees right now,” Sen. Richard Lerblance said.



He feels that the answer to getting and keeping correctional officers is money.



“If we could pay them a decent salary we could get some career people, not just people looking for a job,” Lerblance said. “We’re losing them after we’ve invested the time and money to get them trained as a correctional officer.”



Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie agrees.

“We’ve hired a large number of people this year, Massie said, "but the problem is that you lose about the same number each year, through retirement or people leaving the agency for one reason or another. Particulary in that first year and a half. That’s when we lose the majority of our people.



"We’ve got a 30 percent turnover rate," Massie said."That’s almost half of the people who’ve been hired, who leave.”



Lerblance said he’s been working to get raises for corrections workers. But Terry Crenshaw, warden’s assistant, said the $2,700 raise proposed is just not enough money for what the officers have to contend with on a daily basis. He said he would like to see them get a substantial raise — and he thinks it should be higher for people who work at McAlester's Oklahoma State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison filled with “the baddest of the bad.”



The senator said if he can get his colleagues to agree, he’d like to update the aging prison, which turns 100 later this year.



“I have filed a bill this year for a $308 million bond package that would add additional beds to 10 facilities,” the senator said, and 1,200 of those would be at OSP. “We’ve got a critical bed shortage.



“What happened is that the Legislature has continued, in the last several years, increasing the length and punishment of certain crimes," he said, "and we’re not fully funding corrections enough to take care of the ones we have."



Taking care of all those inmates is done by a total of 278 correctional officers who work at OSP. Because of sick leave, annual leave, vacations and transporting prisoners to other facilities, the ratio is sometimes one officer per 27 inmates. Sometimes it’s even higher — in the inmates’ favor.



Jamie Keith, field operations coordinator for the Division of Institutions, said the prison is authorized to hire 402 correctional officers, although Massie said there is enough funding for 82 percent of that number.



James Beaty writes for McAlester (Okla.) News-Capital.