At the State Capitol, the Joint Appropriations Subcommittee held a meeting early this session to discuss how to increase non-security staffing at state prisons.
Prison staff hires are lower now than in previous years and reflects a national trend. State prison officials say they are concerned that non-security administrators feel unsafe in their work environments.
“Staffing levels for correctional officers are low across the country and also at a federal level this leads to insufficient staffing patterns and exiting staff do not feel safe,” Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver said.
Governor Brian Kemp came up with a solution that would fix the staffing shortage and outdated training methods. It includes increased compensation for the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) correctional officers since they earn less than those in neighboring states.
According to GDC’s hiring website, the current salary for correctional officers starts at $44,044 per year with correctional sergeant majors earning $50,313.80 per year. Correctional technicians, who are not security officers, earn $34,581.82 in their first year.
The governor is proposing increasing starting salaries to attract more applicants.
“The near-term challenges evolve around two primary areas staffing security and non-security staff and aligning facility infrastructure with offender security needs,” Oliver said.
To address these two major issues there are new compensation suggestions from Guide House Inc., a company hired by state officials to recommend solutions. It proposed changing the salary schedules of commanding officers and command sergeant majors. The other recommendation is hiring 882 additional officers to decrease the ratio of officer to offenders from 14:1 to 11:1.
In additional to salary and more hires, Commissioner Oliver noted that training of personnel needs to be updated to include use of technology in their daily job duties. He said implementing tablets across the state will lead to consistent training procedures and record keeping.
“Staffing patterns and training needs, need to be updated to meet the needs of the modern workforce compensation for GDC CO’s is slightly behind neighboring states,” Oliver said.
Commissioner Oliver also said the GDC will increase its marketing efforts to recruit staff.
“What we’re going to do is working with our current vendor, Chaney group, to really focus on targeting more advertising in those hard defined areas,” Oliver said.
