PREA ineffectual with short staffing

Prisoner rapes teacher testing for high school equivalency, prison does little in response

This happened in Arizona, but it could happen here. How many jails in Minnesota are understaffed? 

How many volunteers are left alone with inmates due to low staffing?

The PREA is ineffectual without staff.

Correctional Officers are being asked to do more work with less staff and for less money.

Here's some excerpts from the story. Could this happen at your lock up?

PHOENIX — A teacher at an Arizona prison was alone in a room full of sex offenders before being stabbed and sexually assaulted by a convicted rapist, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press about an attack that highlighted major security lapses at the facility.... 

The teacher was administering a high school equivalency test to about a half-dozen inmates in a classroom with no guard nearby and only a radio to summon help...

After the last of the other inmates left, Jacob Harvey asked the teacher if she could open the bathroom and then attacked her, records show. Harvey is accused of stabbing her in the head with a pen, forcing her to the ground and raping her.

Private Prisons? For profit NOT safe!

With Only Your Wits and an Empty Can of Pepper Spray to Protect You

By Claire Gardner, Community Engagement Associate, ACLU of Tennessee at 12:27pm

Listen, Trousdale County, Tennessee, I get it: When a big, powerful corporation comes to town and promises 400 new jobs, that's a huge deal. Especially if you're a small, rural community of hardworking people trying to make an honest living.

So I get the impulse to be excited by the deal your commissioners just signed with the Corrections Corporation of America to open a new prison. But before y'all start submitting applications, let me tell you a little about working for the Corrections Corporation of America.

CCA has a track record of cutting corners to save money – often at the expense of their employees.

Just ask Sergeant Leonard King.

Like the people of Trousdale County, Leonard King just wanted to make an honest living working at a CCA prison over in Ada County, Idaho. At first, Sgt. King thought he'd work as a guard for CCA until he retired. Now he and his former co-workers are suing the private prison giant.

Sgt. King contends that staff were regularly put in harms' way so CCA could cut expenses – down to giving guards radios with dead batteries and containers of pepper spray with nothing inside, instructing them to "just fake it" if things got dicey. Understaffing was such a problem that at night, one guard would be expected to manage up to 300 prisoners by himself.

FULL STORY

Overtime sound familiar?

What causes $60M in overtime for state prison guards? 

"Figuring out what generates the bulk of the multimillion dollar annual cost of overtime in Illinois' prison system depends on who you ask.

The prison administration says the primary cause of this expense -- more than $60 million for all reasons last year -- is a requirement to pay time-and-a-half when guards and other key employees call in sick or are on leaves of absence.

The union says overtime costs are driven by a chronic failure to adequately staff the 48,300-inmate system, particularly when it comes to guard positions."

 Does this sound familiar at your lock up? Read more here: 

http://www.bnd.com/2014/03/23/3123406/what-causes-60m-in-overtime-for.html

Attack on Corrections Pension

Ind. CO rushed to hospital after inmate attack on Christmas

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — According to court documents, Officer Greer was collecting food trays from a cellbock where violent offenders are housed Wednesday morning, when Boykins struck Greer with a tray from his blind side.

The officer fell to the floor, then Boykins allegedly punched him at least 15 times with his closed fist, before striking him in the head one more time with a tray.

FULL STORY

No other profession faces this reality daily!

Teamsters and Senator Hayden working to weaken correctional pension

This speech was given by Mn DFL Sate Senator Hayden at the Teamsters Local 320 Christmas Party.

Hayden addressed his bill S.F. 998—the bill to expand the PERA Correctional Pension coverage to include 911 Operators/Dispatchers, Probation Officers and Hennepin County Security Officers.

“I have one particular issue regarding pensions,” said Hayden. “For those of you who are working county security and 911 and some of you who are probation officers, I know your jobs are tough. Some of those jobs are particularly stressful. You work with people who are in crisis or people that are the most dangerous in our society. Those jobs have a way of grinding people down, almost the same way as if you’re in a combat zone. I can’t make any guarantees, but Ed Reynoso (Teamsters Joint Council 32 DRIVE Political Director) and I are going to work very closely to make sure those jobs are looked upon as other jobs in corrections.” 

As mentioned in our previous post:

Pension Commission Considers Bill to Expand Correctional Plan

Traditionally, membership in the Correctional Plan or the PERA Police and Fire Plan (PERA P&F) is limited to individuals with jobs that expose them to increased risk of physical injury and death. 

This bill would add non-essential security guards and probation officers. If enacted this would demean the very reason our pension exists. It was never meant to be a "I want to retire at 55 because I'm stressed out pension," but a, "We need to retire early before we are killed or seriously injured pension."

Another reason to leave Corrections to Correctional Officers, not cops?

More than a dozen current and former "sworn officers" from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department are expected to be arrested as part of a wide-ranging investigation into allegations of abuse and misconduct inside the county's jails, according to sources familiar with the arrests. At least three people — including a lieutenant, a sergeant and a deputy — were taken into custody by FBI agents as part of a federal obstruction of justice probe into how sheriff's officials handled an FBI informant at the center of the jail investigation, one source familiar with the probe said.

FULL STORY L.A. TIMES