Oklahoma prison guards more likely to stay on the job
OKLAHOMA CITY — As the economy sputters and unemployment creeps up, more prison guards in Oklahoma are staying on the job.
The Department of Corrections hired 1,052 new employees this past budget year — and kept 452 of them. That’s a marked improvement from the 70 officers gained the prior year, according to an analysis by the state Public Employees Association.
Though positive news for prisons, which have long struggled to hire and keep officers, those who monitor staffing there is still much work to be done.
“Our concern is, we still lose way too many of them,” said Sean Wallace, policy director for the Public Employees Association.
Prisons last year still lost 590 employees who either quit, retired or were fired, said Wallace, whose association began tracking turnover in the department due to its “terrible” record of keeping new employees.
Recent success aside, the department is still looking to fill about 800 vacancies for correctional officers.
Wallace said a recent uptick in hiring may be “kind of a fluke, unfortunately.”
Prison officials admit to their woes in finding and keeping good officers for a host of reasons, including tough working conditions and low pay. As many as 46 percent of new recruits traditionally quit or are fired in the first year.
In hopes of weeding out unsuitable candidates before investing too deeply in their training, the department started a mentorship program and now puts recruits in a job-shadowing program before sending them onto the academy for training.
In the past 10 months, those programs and a recruiting strategy aimed at veterans and reserve military personnel has lowered turnover to 37 percent, said Don Grigsby, the department’s new recruitment coordinator.
That’s a key improvement, noted Grigsby, who joined the department in August. Guards who last a year on the job are more likely to stay long term.
Grigsby said the goal is to push attrition closer to 30 percent.
Prisons spokeswoman Terri Watkins said some attrition is inevitable, as recruits who spend time behind the tall fences topped with barbed-wire decide the job is not for them.
Grigsby said he’s focusing efforts on recruiting through social media, as well as hiring veterans and service members who are accustomed to the military-like structure of life inside a prison and a job as a correctional officer.
“The thing is, if you have more qualified applicants who have proved themselves in other ways, they’re more likely to stay in this job,” he said.
Recruiting for the prisons is also helped by a continued downturn in the energy sector, which has shed thousands of jobs in the past two years. Statewide unemployment nudged upward to 4.7 percent in May, mirroring the national average for the first time in 13 years.
“We’re getting a ton of people from the oil fields,” Wallace said.
Lawmakers recently boosted pay for correctional officers. A new recruit makes $12.77 an hour — about $24,500 a year — plus pension and benefits, Wallace said.
The same cadet could make as much as $50,000 to $60,000 working in the oil fields, he said.
“They readily admit, as soon as the oil field jobs come back, I’m out of here,” he said.
Pay aside, Wallace said prisons could go a long way toward improving morale and retention by paying staff twice a month, like most other state agencies, rather than monthly.
The department should also monitor retention by prison, he said. Higher rates could reflect poor leadership or other problems in specific locations.
Gus Blackwell, director of the Oklahoma Corrections Professionals, which lobbies for 3,000 correctional employees, said they are beginning to “see a light at the end of the tunnel,” with improved morale amid higher staff counts and new leadership.
“That the pressure and stress of the job has caused a high turnover is understandable,” he said. “The public, in general, and the Legislature, in particular, are beginning to realize that inmate population at 120 percent of capacity is unhealthy.”
Janelle Stecklein covers the Oklahoma Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jstecklein@cnhi.com or follow her on Twitter @ReporterJanelle.