Wanted: Guards and teachers
Typically, the Mississippi Department of Corrections prefers to avoid disclosing its problems. So its announcement last week of a significant staff shortage is one sign that this problem is a serious one.
It certainly sounds that way. Corrections Commissioner Pelecia Hall said that more than half the inmates at MDOC’s prison in Leakes-ville are on lockdown due to a shortage of security officers.
The Leakesville prison, which houses 3,000 inmates, has a staff vacancy rate of 48 percent. Two other large sites have a similar problem: 42 percent of the jobs at are unfilled at the state penitentiary at Parchman, as are 46 percent of those at MDOC’s Rankin County prison.
Last week’s news release said MDOC has a total of 671 security jobs vacant. While that includes more locations that the three prisons, it’s a pretty telling signal that more people have decided that the safety risks of working in a prison aren’t worth the relatively low pay.
Hall wants the Legislature to spend $7 million to raise the entry-level salary for prison guards from just below $25,000 to the $28,000 to $31,000 range. She may get her way on that, as the tough-on-crime Legislature would undercut that stand if it refused to raise pay to a level needed to recruit more guards.
Lawmakers are likely to step delicately, even though it’s an election year, when they are more prone to raise pay for state employees. If the Legislature set the starting correctional officer’s salary at $30,000 a year, that’s probably not too far from what public school districts pay their first-year teachers.
Teachers appear due for a raise this year too. However, there are plenty of unfilled education jobs across Mississippi, too. The pay certainly is one reason for this. In both fields, and probably a few others, the state is going to have to come up with some extra money for its workers.
JackRyan, Enterprise-Journal
