Jail Staffing: The New Reality

Rod Miller and James M. Hart, CJM, CCE

Faced with continuing staffing shortfalls, managers must adjust policies and operations while still maintaining a safe and secure correctional environment during this time of “new reality.” Our seventh staffing article confirms the challenges and suggests needed changes in policies and operations.

Crisis Confirmed

It is official: the field continues to face a staffing crisis. The U.S. Senate acknowledged a “national corrections staffing crisis” at the Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary hearing on February 28, 2024. Former Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel told Senators:

“The most significant challenge our correctional systems face is insufficient staffing. Inadequate staffing presently affects our local, state, and federal prisons and jails. And it is a problem that is not going to go away anytime soon.”1

Before serving as Corrections Secretary for 11 years, Wetzel spent more than 20 years in county corrections, ending as Warden of the Franklin County Jail in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He went on to assert:

“The critical infrastructure resource of corrections is alarmingly close to failure. It has long failed staff and incarcerated people. You can see that failure in outcomes around their health and safety and what happens when both staff and the incarcerated leave the corrections system.”

“Marginal solutions” fall short, according to Wetzel:

“Let’s be clear: this problem is not going away. It will not dissipate with time or marginal solutions. We are at a tipping point. There are signs of failure that we must not ignore, signs which the Bureau of Prisons Inspector General has written about and which we cite to in this testimony.”

At a September 29, 2022, “Oversight of the Bureau of Prisons” hearing, Shane Fausey, President National Council of Prison Locals, asserted that the Bureau faced “a staffing crisis of epic proportions.” In a follow-up letter to the Committee, Fausey identified needed mechanisms, including:

  1. A proper and accurate staffing metric must be very specific, down to each facility, and each building within the facility, and exactly how many correctional officers are directly supervising the offenders in that building.
  2. Variances must account for older facilities that routinely require additional officers to accommodate inefficient floorplans and layouts.

Fausey suggested increased pay, funding that is earmarked for training, and an emergency appropriation to address the “$2-billion-dollar backlog in maintenance and repairs in our infrastructure…”

He cited a growing gap between the number of officers requested in the President’s budget and the number of officers “on board,” growing to 36.3% in 2022.

Defining and Responding to the “New Reality”

We presented a workshop, “Staffing: Closing the Gap Between Supply and Demand,” at the 2024 AJA Annual Conference and Jail Expo in Ft. Lauderdale. The topic attracted nearly 100 attendees. We showed this slide on page 40 early in the presentation, suggesting fundamental and evolving changes in the daily reality of jail staffing and operations.

After explaining this slide, we asked the audience: “Does this sound right?” Attendees seemed to agree, some suggesting that we:

  • Tell this to my sheriff.
  • Tell my commissioners.
  • Tell the jail inspector.
  • Tell our federal monitor.

We told them we would. This article presents the findings and suggestions we plan to convey to sheriffs, commissioners, inspectors, and other stakeholders in articles in the publications of their professional organizations.

Describing the “New Reality”

On the ground, the New Reality looks like this: The number of staff who report for a shift is frequently less than needed to “do everything” according to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

SOPs are based on state standards and statutes, nationally recognized accreditation standards, and sometimes consent agreements.

In many jails, “full staffing” on a shift is the exception. Some jails have not had sufficient staff on shifts for months or even years.

We sometimes forget that Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) describe operations when a shift is fully staffed. That’s the “standard” part of the term; we might call this “normal” operations.

Some jails anticipate contingencies, such as understaffing, and describe changes that must be made in their SOPs.

Responding to the “New Reality”

Managers and other officials must provide written guidance that describes changes in operating procedures in response to understaffing on a shift. We suggest that operations must change because trying to “do everything” with insufficient staff:

• Increases risk.

• Increases stress for staff and other stakeholders.

• Often unfairly forces individual employees to decide what will, and will not, get done on a shift (and how things will be done.)

Managers must provide written permission for specified employees to make these changes to close the gap between staff supply and operational demands on a shift.

Managers must anticipate the varied magnitude of understaffing on a shift and describe a range of responses that may be implemented and the order in which these responses should be implemented.2

These instructions must be tailored to each shift, on each day of the week. One size does not fit all shifts on all days.

Supervisors must ensure that these operational and other changes are recorded in writing during each shift.

Strategies, Texts, and Tools

The first six articles in this series provide information, approaches, responses, resources, texts, and tools that may be helpful during the duration of this “New Reality.” (see box on page 41).

Reports from several counties, “Developing a PREA-Compliant Staffing Plan”, a series of 21 articles published in National Sheriff magazine, and Jail Vulnerability Assessment tools are also resources to use.

____________________

Rod Miller has headed CRS Incorporated, a nonprofit organization, since 1972. He has authored many texts and articles on staffing analysis, standards, vulnerability assessment, case law, and jail work/industry programs. He is the co-author, with Jim Hart and John Wetzel, of Jail Staffing Analysis, 3rd Edition, 2016, funded by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC). For more information, he can be reached at rodcmiller@gmail.com

Jim Hart, CJM, CCE is a Jail Management Consultant with the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service where he provides technical assistance and training to counties in Tennessee on jail management and operational issues. Jim is a Past President of the American Jail Association and is a Certified Jail Manager with the AJA and a Certified Corrections Executive with the ACA. For more information, he can be reached at jim.hart@tennessee.edu

Resources

National Institute of Corrections (NIC), Jails Division and National Information Center (https://nicic.gov/)

Staffing Analysis Clearinghouse (https://correction.org/staffing-analysis-clearinghouse/. Download the 3rd Edition, Jail Staffing Analysis, developed with funding from the National Institute of Corrections (NIC), Excel-based staffing analysis tools, sample staffing analysis

Endnotes

1. Testimony to Senate Subcommittee… etc. February 28, 2024.

2. Some jails provide supervisors with a “shutdown list” that identifies activities that may be cancelled, in order of priority.

Contents of First Six Staffing Articles

Managing the Jail Staffing Crisis. September/October 2022.

Conference attendees identify concerns including recruitment, retention, and resource management. Promising strategies identified by group, and from a review including Davidson County, TN, Retention Specialist. More strategies found in AJA’s iConnect posts.

Increasing Supply by Outsourcing Demand. November/December 2022.

Uses “supply and demand” framework to analyze issues and solutions and illustrates in the context of nine steps of the staffing analysis process. Explores shifting work from agency staff to other entities and using task analysis to redefine post duties.

Attracting and Retaining Staff with Informed Scheduling. January/February 2023.

Identifies elements and attributes of shift configurations, use of staff surveys, and opportunities to improve staffing with creative scheduling.

Shift Work, Sleep Deprivation, and Jail Schedules. March/April 2023.

Presents research on scheduling and the impact on staff performance and health.

Closing the Gap Between Supply and Demand: Strategies and Tools. July/August 2023.

Identifies a range of actions and strategies employed by jail managers and stakeholders to reduce the gap between demand (what needs to be accomplished on a shift), and supply (employees who show up to work).

Increase Staff Efficiency by Improving Daily Operations. November/December 2023.

Focuses on improving efficiency of daily activities using staffing analysis tools. Provides example of “before and after” daily activity schedules. Also emphasizes the importance of explaining jail operations and needs to stakeholders.