46 of state’s 50 prisons at emergency staffing levels
BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
TALLAHASSEE— Florida’s Deputy Secretary for the Department of Corrections said the number of vacant security positions in state prisons has grown by over 50% in the last seven months.
Ricky Dixon told a Florida House subcommittee that although standards require three to four correctional officers to supervise around 200 inmates in a dormitory, a single officer is now watching over those inmates during each shift in the vast majority of the state’s prisons.
“Having only two staff in a dorm like that is extremely dangerous, and it should only occur for short periods of time,” Dixon told the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Subcommittee during a Sept. 22 hearing. “At least with two staff, the concept is that if something happens to one, the other is available to call for assistance. Never should a facility run with less than two staff (in a dorm).”
Dixon told lawmakers that because of staffing shortages, correctional officers are now working under dangerous conditions.
“The reality is at this very moment most of the housing units…throughout the state are operating not with two staff but with one staff present,” he said.
“That’s the case at this moment. That will be the case this evening when the inmates are most active, and that will be the case tonight when we’re all sleeping safely in our beds.”
Hire 200, lose 400
Dixon told the lawmakers that the dangerous working conditions, in addition to mandatory overtime that requires officers to work 16-hour days for up to three days a week will likely increase the department’s vacancies.
“It’s just a vicious cycle,” he said. “The more of them that leave, the greater the overtime burden for those staff left behind.”
He showed the house members a chart that tracked a systemwide officer vacancy rate of 2.79% in December of 2010 to 28.46% in September 2021.
“Keep in mind that adequately and safely staffing a prison requires a vacancy rate of around 3% and we’re at 28%,” he said.
Dixon said that each month, the department hires 200 correctional officers and loses 400.
He added that in February, 18 of the department’s 50 facilities were at urgent staffing levels with over 20% officer vacancies. Now the number of prisons at urgent staffing levels is 30, with all but four of the system’s prisons at emergency levels with between a 10% and 20% vacancy rate.
Overtime costs have risen from $35 million in 2015 to $103 million this year.
“I remember when we spent $6 million a year on average and we thought that was high,” he said. “Now we’re spending $103 million in overtime.”
Dixon said that a few years ago, pay was the primary reason correctional officers left the state for better paying jobs in county jails.
“Now, it’s a combination of the pay combined with the conditions,” he said. “Staff are leaving in record numbers because of the exhaustion, the work environment (and) the safety issues.”
Dixon said that some of the department’s probation officers are working second jobs in restaurants just to make ends meet.
“In some cases, they’re working next to the very inmates they supervise,” he said. “We have correctional staff supervising inmates in our community release centers…where the inmates in the service industry are making more than our correctional officers who supervise them. I think we’d agree this is just not the way we want to treat our professional staff.”
Drastic steps
Dixon told the committee members that a drop in prison population due to the COVID-19 Pandemic has allowed the department to close 188 dormitories across the state to provide some staffing relief.
He added that knowing that courts are ramping back up which will increase the inmate population, the department is in a race to fill staff positions to keep pace with the increasing number of inmates.
Dixon said the department has also suspended 431 work squads throughout Florida, reassigning work squad staff to dormitories. He said the move also idled around 4,000 inmates who were working in communities.
“So now those 4,000 inmates are sitting idle in our prisons,” he said, “and anybody knows idleness is a recipe for disaster in a prison system.”
Dixon added that work squads which do not require department staff supervision: squads which are supervised by department-trained employees of other entities, remain active.
He also said the department has closed 27 work camps and three institutions.
He said New River Correctional was closed to provide immediate staffing relief to Florida State Prison and Union Correctional, two of the department’s most critically understaffed facilities.
Dixon added however, that moving inmates from New River to other lockups was difficult because the inmates in New River were minimum and medium custody inmates while the two, close-by institutions are maximum security facilities.
Therefore, the New River inmates had to be placed in emergency beds.
“Emergency beds are temporary,” he said. “They’re not meant for long-term use; they’re for cases such as hurricanes and natural disasters, but that’s the situation we’re in at this moment.”
Dixon said the department had to evacuate Cross City Correctional Institution because of flooding and transferred inmates from Cross City to Taylor Correctional, two hours away.
“The problem is now staff are leaving because we’ve added a two-hour drive time on top of their often 16-hour day,” he said, adding that the department is providing transportation to Taylor and is offering additional pay to persuade officers to stay on.
Dixon said closing Baker Correctional and moving inmates to Columbia did not trigger similar staff departures, because the two prisons are a 10-minute drive apart.
“But here’s the problem with that,” he added. “That’s not a long-term, sustainable solution because as the population grows in our system, we’re going to need those beds back on our inventory to avoid system-wide prison overcrowding.”
Cuts to programs and maintenance
Dixon said cuts to the department’s programming and maintenance budgets in previous years have also increased risks for violence and unrest.
Programming includes education and other activities that keep inmates active and engaged throughout the day.
Examples include anger and stress-management classes, wellness programs and art, writing, vocational and library programs.
Dixon said that when such programs are not available, inmates are left to themselves.
“We have prisons with 1,500 inmates with a large majority of those inmates having very little or absolutely nothing to do,” he said. “Inmate idleness has contributed to some of the major, notorious (prison) disturbances throughout our nation over the years.”
Dixon added that falling behind on facility maintenance can also contribute to inmate-on-inmate violence, or worse.
“When you compress a large number of men in an area and they have to compete over functioning sinks, showers and toilets, coupled with all the other conditions I’ve described, it certainly causes a potential (for) unrest,” he said.
Higher starting pay and innovations
Dixon said that the governor’s budget this year includes raising starting pay for state correctional officers from the current $33,500 to $41,600. When comparing the state’s pay to that of the pay in the state’s 67 county jails, the wage increase will move the state’s starting pay from 50th in the state to 22nd.
Dixon also highlighted what he called success stories in the system under Corrections Secretary Mark Inch’s leadership.
He said the department has isolated inmates with less than one year remaining in their sentences, keeping them at a separate facility.
“Historically, these short-term inmates have been dispersed throughout our system,” he said. “Since we’ve been keeping them separate, we’ve reduced violence against them.”
Dixon added that the department launched an inmate-led mentoring program for new inmates, using longer-term inmates to mentor them.
“In targeting this population,” he said, “inmate violence has almost come to a standstill in these settings.”
Dixon said the department has also expanded incentivized prisons that are intended to motivate cooperative behavior throughout the system.
“Inmates strive to meet the eligibility criteria to go to locations closer to home and with enhanced privileges,” he said. “Some of these facilities have not experienced an assault in over a year, which is unheard of in prisons.”
Dixon said one of the innovations the department’s administrative team is most proud of is extracting the most dangerous and problematic inmates from prisons across Florida and concentrating them in one facility: Jackson Correctional in the panhandle.
“This had an instant positive effect at those facilities where we pulled them from,” he said. “Now, you’d think this would be a very dangerous prison, taking all those dangerous inmates and putting them in one place, and it is, but we staffed it correctly. We ensured that 100% of the security posts associated with that mission are filled.”
Dixon added that the department eliminated idleness at Jackson C.I., filling every hour of the inmates’ day with work details and programs.
“We’ve been operating this prison for over a year now,” he said. “We have the prison housing the most dangerous inmates in our state in an open population setting, experiencing the least amount of violence to include inmate-on-inmate assaults and inmate-on-staff assaults.”
Dixon said the success of Jackson Correctional is an example of what the department can accomplish with the appropriate resources.
