Capitalizing on Boomer Veterans in Jackson County, Missouri:
Striking Gold with Retirees
Diana Knapp, MS, CJM, CCE
At every conference we’ve attended and every meeting of the minds of senior jail officials, we circle back to the universal challenge facilities are having recruiting and retaining employees. According to the National Institute of Corrections, many jurisdictions are in “full crisis mode” (Russo, 2019). Correctional officer vacancies in some areas are approaching 40% (Levin and Cumberbatch, 2022). Several factors have been identified that are contributing to the shortage, to include changing public perceptions of law enforcement positions, the impact of a global pandemic that hit hard in custodial settings, and mandatory overtime—officers working up to 16-hour days in many facilities, including the Jackson County Detention Center (JCDC) in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
Millennial and Gen Z employees, as a group, demand greater work/life balance than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations did. We know from ongoing discussions and firsthand experience that the support, training, and encouragement new staff receive on the job affects their likelihood to stay at your facilities and make corrections a career. The influences of your staff conducting first-line training can profoundly impact the career trajectory of your newest recruits.
This article will consider the contributions of Boomer generation staff, who are also military veterans, as a foundational contribution to new staff training and development in the Jackson County Detention Center Correctional Officer Academy cadre.
Attrition of Older Americans Affecting the Modern Workforce
I had the first thought for this article earlier this year in June, when we, as a nation, commemorated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. That invasion was key to ending the Second World War in Europe and saving Democracy. News articles, interviews, and social media posts highlighted how, with each day, the Greatest Generation, their wisdom, their experience, and their knowledge are slipping away. By the end of 2023, just 119,550 of the 16.4 million who served are still alive. According to the WWII Museum in New Orleans, 131 World War II veterans die each day.
This harsh reality led me to thinking about our Boomer generation, that great mass of Americans born just after World War II, generally agreed upon as those born between 1946-1964. In October 2023, Forbes Magazine (Dennison 2023) referred to an impending “Silver Tsunami” as a large portion of Boomers reaching retirement eligibility and gaining access to Medicare to replace employer health plans, making the economics of retirement more feasible for many.
As this group retires, facilities are impacted by additional losses in officers to fill posts, and see a great deal of maturity, institutional knowledge, and dedication walking out the door. One way to continue to capitalize on these seasoned and knowledgeable employees is by offering the opportunity for retirees to come back to work, doing the jobs they still love, but in pay plans that allow them to continue to collect their full retirement benefits so that the part-time pay is supplemental income and does not adversely impact their eligibility for Medicare, or other retiree program eligibility.
At the time of this writing, I could only identify a handful of Boomer associates still working here at JCDC. Key among them are several members of the leadership and academy training team. This article will spotlight these Boomer leaders and veterans, two of whom came back to the facility to work part-time following retirement from decades long service to corrections.
Professional Bearing and Discipline as the First Line of Defense
“Academy Class 138, attention!” the voice booms as I walk onto the floor where our newest group of green recruits are being formed into a cohesive team. The rookie officers come to attention, hands at their sides and eyes locked straight ahead. Retired Sergeant Larry Hollins walks around them, checking their uniforms, ensuring they are standing up straight. He misses nothing. Satisfied, for the moment, he dismisses them. “Fall OUT!” he barks. One of them isn’t moving fast enough. “Double time! Double time!” and they MOVE. The motto of this class, Academy Class #138, is “No One Left Behind” and so far, they are living up to it. Sgt. Hollins won’t accept it any other way.
Larry Hollins joined the United States Army on active duty out of high school. After serving his enlistment, Hollins found a professional home at JCDC as an officer back in 1985, nearly 40 years ago. He retired from his full-time position in 2013 and for more than 10 years has continued to serve JCDC part-time as an instructor in the training unit. When he came to JCDC, the officer corps was overwhelmingly male, and most of that generation had some military experience. For his age mates, transitioning into the culture of corrections was easy and familiar.
Hollins’ specialty is taking on new staff, who come to us from all walks of life—generally with no applicable training in corrections—and turning them into officers ready for what awaits them on the floors of this facility that holds a disproportionate number of detainees awaiting trial on violent felony charges.
It was the Army that taught him supply and transportation, and it was the Army that showed him the real meaning of command presence. Today, we teach our recruits this as a foundational premise. Incarcerated individuals will size them up every day and it begins the first time they enter the living units. How they look, how they move, how they carry themselves will be noticed by every resident in the module. It will frame the initial reference for them on whether a new officer is a likely “duck”, or a soft target for manipulation. Sgt. Hollins plans to stand in the gap and ensure that our staff are as ready as possible to fend off this threat.
Saving Lives Through Staff Experience
John Cloonan came to JCDC, the year after Hollins, after his discharge from the Army in 1986. Cloonan had served in nearby Ft. Riley, Kansas as an infantryman, and then in logistics. He was also trained as a Military Policeman. Like Hollins, he found a great fit transitioning from the military into civilian life in corrections. Cloonan would rise through every rank in the detention unit, serving as shift administrator and CERT Commander before being promoted to Major, the highest-ranking uniform position at JCDC. Also, like Hollins, he was drawn back to JCDC in retirement, believing he could help save lives by imparting to our new officers what he learned during his 36-year career.
Retired Major Cloonan helps the training team by sharing his very real experiences so they can learn from the mistakes he made as a new officer, and from the mistakes, and successes, of the hundreds of officers that he coached and mentored over the years. In the “Courtroom Chaos” class in the academy, Major Cloonan teaches recruits about the day he was transporting incarcerated individuals, after just six months on the job, and an incarcerated individual escaped from the transportation detail. The officers gave chase. The individual, who’d managed to get ahold of a handcuff key during a contact visit, jumped into the getaway car driven by his girlfriend and careened out of the parking lot—a desperate CO clinging to the rear of the car as it sped away. “This can happen to YOU! You HAVE to check restraints; you HAVE to check holding cells. You HAVE to, EVERY TIME.” He pokes a finger into the air to punctuate each word. He’s emphatic, his eyes flashing. The students are holding their breath. They are thinking about it. They are thinking about how they don’t want to be that officer clinging to the trunk of a speeding car. At least in this moment, they are getting it.
Cloonan would stay in the military, as a Reservist—the citizen soldier—for most of his career at JCDC, rising in the Army to the rank of Master Sergeant before he hung up his boots and focused more ardently on his hobby as an amateur angler. Luckily for JCDC, it was temporary.
It Still Takes a Village
At the helm of the JCDC Training Unit is Captain Lea Henderson, also with prior service. Henderson, who served in the Marines prior to her career in law enforcement and corrections, was featured in the 2023 issue on veterans. She sets the tone in the training unit. She has built the group into a cohesive team—each member focused on the needs of their trainees. They share teaching responsibilities, and most courses are co-facilitated. This ensures redundancy and exposes the recruit class to leaders from different generations, different backgrounds, and at different points in their careers. They tell them what they wish they’d known as a new officer and hopes the knowledge will save their lives.
Looking Forward
Of these new classes coming in, fewer and fewer have experience in the military. Here at JCDC, our prior military service frequently, though not always, have fewer challenges adhering to uniform policies, follow orders more readily, and struggle less with the rigors of early hours shift work. We will need to develop these skills in new recruits more organically as the workforce shifts and the US military relies more heavily on technology versus troops. The learning style and background experiences of new generations will have to be considered as we build training models to ensure their success and improve our retention of younger and younger employees. As our Boomer generation retires for the second, and last, time, JCDC will have to build the next level of leadership and rely on the legacy of these veterans who will be leaving behind very big boots to fill.
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Diana Knapp CCE, CJM, MS began her career with the Missouri Department of Corrections as a Probation and Parole Officer in Kansas City, Missouri. Her journey included work as an institutional parole officer and case manager, unit manager, and assistant superintendent at an adult male facility. After returning to Kansas City, she opened a juvenile residential program for delinquent youth aging out of foster care in the state of Kansas, followed by a period managing the juvenile residential and detention centers for the Jackson County Family Court. She returned to the Jackson County Detention Center as the Deputy Director of Operations in late 2017 and was appointed Director in 2018. Diana has an undergraduate degree in history and secondary education and a master’s degree in criminal justice administration. She is a current member of the AJA Board of Directors.
References
Dennison, K. (2023, October 11) The silver tsunami is on the way: how companies can prepare. Forbes. Retrieved July 8, 2024, from https://forbes.com/sites/karadennison/2023/10/11/the-silver-tsunami-is-on-the-way-how-companites-can-prepare/
Levin, M. and Cumberbatch, K. (2022, October 6) To address the corrections staffing crisis, think outside the cell, Governing. Retrieved July 8, 2024, from https://govering.com/work/to-address-the- corrections-staffing-crisis-think-outside-the-cell
Russo, J. (2019, December 1) Workforce issues in corrections. National Institute of Justice. Retrieved July 4, 2024, from https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/workforce-issues-corrections
