Summary
Survey Summary
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Correctional officers.
Issues related to correctional officers--recruitment, retention, educational levels, wages and benefits--have not been surveyed by Corrections Compendium since the year 2000 as reported in the March 2001 issue. In the interim, little has changed in the field in those categories as shown in the current survey on the topic. Recruitment and retention continue to be major problems for the various correctional agencies. Forty-seven U.S. correctional systems and five Canadian correctional systems responded to the survey questionnaire.
Officer Recruitment While 20 U.S. reporting systems listed no one overwhelming problem affecting recruitment of potential correctional officers, the remaining systems, primarily Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio (for its female facility) and Wyoming, indicated that their prison facilities' rural locations presented an obstacle to recruitment. Two other major challenges to recruitment were the lack of comparative wages that could be earned from other employment opportunities in the local area, from private industry as well as from local law enforcement agencies and the stressful environment in which correctional officers work. The Canadian reporting systems stated that they have not experienced recruiting problems. With the exception of the correctional officer population in Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi and South Carolina, the majority of correctional officers in the U.S. reporting systems are white and 76 percent are male. The reporting correctional systems have primarily used advertising to recruit people for job openings, although 13 U.S. reporting systems and three Canadian reporting systems have no formal recruitment practices in place. The correctional systems also use job fairs, college class presentations, exhibits at the state fair, Web site announcements and general mailings to aid recruitment. Several systems indicated they pay higher starting wages to their recruits than that paid to other local entry-level employees or award bonuses to current staff who provide referrals. Idaho has an agreement with the Veteran's Administration whereby the first year of on-the-job training is paid through GI Bill educational funds. Mississippi monitors plant closings and targets its recruitment efforts toward employees who are potentially being laid off. New Mexico offers employees one day off for sponsoring a new correctional officer who completes one year on the job. Washington specifically targets its recruitment practices to minorities or other underrepresented group...See the full content of this document
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