Prison funds falling short

By Kristin Hale and Hailey R. Branson
State Capitol News Service

April 13, 2008 11:57 pm

— OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Public Employees Association is calling for pay raises for correctional officers, but according to Cleveland County legislators, chances are slim the payout will come this session.
State Rep. Wallace Collins, D-Norman, said raises are long overdue for correctional officers and other state employees. Collins has authored bills that would provide funding for personnel. The bills died the past two sessions.
Collins said legislators and the general public depend on correctional officers and commend them but will not give them the money they need.
“This past week we had four or five Department of Corrections employees here (at the Capitol) and recognized them as employees of the year and they got standing ovations,” he said. “I leaned over to my seatmate when that happened and said, “Why not put some money with that?”
The prison system already received supplemental funding this year. Collins said to fund the Department of Corrections, even at the low level they got last year, would be difficult a task for this session.
Collins also said employee turnover is a big problem within corrections and training new correctional officers is expensive.
“The state spends an average $4,000 to train a new employee,” Collins said. “About $85 million is spent on employee training each year because of the huge turnover rate.”
He said his bill would give a pay raise to state employees totaling $40 million.
This would cut the $85 million spent for re-training almost in half because more employees would stay with higher wages.
“We can save money by spending $40 million and keeping people on the job,” Collins said.
Rep. Bill Nations, D-Norman, is an advocate for alternative sentencing to reduce the strain on the prison system. He also does not foresee a pay raise this session for guards.
“Everybody up here wants to pay people as well as we can, but the budget is very flat and short of tapping the Rainy Day fund, we just can’t get the revenue to pay guards better.”
The Performance Audit of the Department of Corrections stated the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center operated at 68 percent of the authorized employee level in 2007.
“Staff shortages there are primarily due to staff transfers and employees leaving the department,” the audit stated. “During the first seven months of 2007, 13 security officers transferred out of the facility and six others quit.”
The LARC also had trouble hiring new employees because of the low pay rate, mandatory overtime work and a time-consuming hiring process, according to the audit.
Mike Carpenter, chief of security at LARC, said competing pay in other jobs makes Department of Corrections jobs jess appealing.
“We compete with the oil field which is booming right now and paying very well, and even 7-Eleven has comparable pay on their midnight shift,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter said that at times, LARC operates at the minimum number of guards it can, which is about 1,400 inmates to 22 guards. That equals about 64 inmates per guard.
“What pay boils down to is quality of life,” he said. “So as the price of basic life necessities — milk, bread, eggs — goes up and (the correctional officers’) purchasing power goes down, their quality of life goes down too.”