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County’s prisons short on guards
Published September 27, 2003
HUNTSVILLE — An intense recruiting effort and a tougher job outlook in the private sector are helping ease a shortage of corrections officers in Texas prisons, state officials said Friday.
“It’s certainly better than what it’s been in some time,” said Gary Johnson, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “I hope we’re sort of turning the corner and will continue to see some gains. I’m very encouraged.”
The Texas Board of Criminal Justice, meeting Friday in Huntsville, was told 6,349 officers were hired in fiscal year 2003, which ended Sept. 1. That left the department at 91.2 percent of its authorized number of security positions, equal to 2,320 vacancies.
“Even though we’re still a couple of thousand officers short now, the shortages are more concentrated,” Johnson said. “Previously, we had units all over the state that were 75 or 80 percent staffed but the majority of our units now are 90 percent or more staffed.”
Two years ago, there were 3,345 vacancies.
Brazoria County’s prisons have been affected by the corrections officer shortage, according to figures from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The Clemens Unit has 33 vacancies, Darrington has 60 full-time and one part-time vacancy, Ramsey I has 35
full-time and one part-time vacancy, Ramsey II has 27 vacancies and Wayne Scott has 23 vacancies. Vacancies for the C.T. Terrell Unit were not available Friday.
The officer shortage drew national attention in 2000 when seven inmates escaped from the maximum-security Connally Unit in South Texas. The mother of a Dallas-area policeman slain after the prison break blamed the criminal justice department in part for her son’s death.
Texas legislators reacted by approving a nearly 10 percent pay raise in the starting salary for prison guards and raised the top annual pay to more than $31,000.
Under a program known as Reductions in Force, part of a statewide effort this year to trim a state budget deficit, the criminal justice department lost 1,117 employees, but none of them were corrections or parole officers, Christina Crain, the prison board chairman noted.
Anyone affected by those job eliminations “had first crack at any other job that opened,” she said.
Figures from the prison system’s human resources department show 52 percent of those have rejoined in other capacities, some of them as corrections officers.
“We have a number of people that said: I’m just thankful to have an opportunity to stay in a job, keep my benefits,” Crain said. “We’ve got people who have gone from an administrative position to correctional officer and they’re fine with it.”
“The economy probably has helped us a little bit as jobs have been more difficult to get in the private sector,” Johnson said.
Wardens at most of Brazoria County’s six prisons said in April that the only effect their units had felt from the job cuts was a loss of recreation specialist jobs. The duties of coordinating recreational activities for inmates, typically handled by one or two recreation specialists at each prison unit, now will be assumed by other employees, they said.
Areas where the prison guard shortages are highest include Palestine and Amarillo, and to a lesser extent, Huntsville. Palestine and Huntsville have major concentrations of prisons.
“When you move farther north and into rural East Texas, your employment base is not as large,” Johnson said. “In the last couple of years, there’s been a couple fairly large businesses go into the Palestine area. So it’s a real tug of war trying to retain employees.”
“In the last few years, our (human resources) department has done a tremendous amount of work going out to local communities, going to job fairs, community colleges,” Crain said. “They were even standing in front of Wal-Mart where our biggest competitor was Wal-Mart.”
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