TOPEKA — The secretary of the Kansas Department of Corrections said 12-hour or longer shifts required of uniformed officers at the El Dorado and Lansing prisons during the past 18 months due to an inability to recruit and retain employees was pushing workers to a breaking point.
Secretary Jeff Zmuda said extended shifts, mandated overtime and little prospect of relief from the workload was grinding down dedicated employees who stuck with the agency despite wages that couldn’t compete with offers in neighboring states. He told Kansas House members it was imperative stopgap financial incentives remain in place or risk a surge in job vacancies.
Job vacancies at state prisons in Kansas hovered at 380 slots for uniformed officers, including nearly 100 at El Dorado and Lansing prisons.
“I worry that we’re riding them hard and we’ve been doing it for a such a long time that we’re at risk of hitting a breaking point with many of them,” Zmuda said. “They can only do so much.”
He said the Department of Corrections closed units and mothballed 1,600 inmate beds to allow reassignment of staff, but the vacancy rate among uniformed officers across the prison system averaged 21%. Four of the state’s correctional facilities had vacancy rates above 25%. The state’s juvenile prison had a uniformed officer vacancy rate of 38%, which Zmuda declared “way too high.”
Traditionally, the corrections department focused on inmate bed capacity when dealing with the agency’s budget. The system has a maximum of 10,200 beds and currently served 8,700 inmates. The budgeting reference point has shifted, Zmuda said, to the number of officers at their posts and sections of prisons that could be staffed. The inmate population has been growing and the state could find itself in the position of contracting with county jails or out-of-state private prison companies to take overflow, he said.
