A Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) official explained on Wednesday that the agency seeks to hire and retain 600 new correctional officers following an audit that revealed Tennessee prisons continue to face “critical staffing shortages” and a high employee turnover rate.
As TDOC seeks to fill these positions across Tennessee, NewsChannel 5 recently reported the agency is offering incentives, including a $5,000 signing bonus. One prison warden told the outlet the work is challenging but rewarding. Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation warden Taurean James explained, “it is a job for individuals seeking a structured environment” and “looking to help individuals.”
“It’s a job where you may not get those ‘thank yous’ but sometimes you get to see your thank you when you’re out in the community,” James told the outlet, after noting that 90 percent of Tennessee prisoners will be “released back into the community” after serving a finite sentence.
The latest hiring drive from TDOC comes after an audit from the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office found the agency continues to face a “critical” staffing shortage despite taking actions to increase its ranks. According to the report, both TDOC and private prisons managed by CoreCivic are also “facing an ongoing and deeply rooted challenge of attrition within their ranks.”
Correctional officers start with an annual salary of $44,500, according to NewsChannel 5, and their pay is increased to $46,752 after a one-year probationary period. However, the report found that CoreCivic employees who are brought in from out of state are paid at a much higher scale than Tennessee residents, a practice labeled unsustainable by the auditors, which they also said contributed to the low morale.
Additionally, the report revealed that correctional officers claim to be forced to work alone in the prisons. One officer interviewed for the report claimed it was common knowledge that, should violence erupt, any correctional officers separated from other staff members would be abandoned by their colleagues.
As the Tennessee prison population swelled by nearly 2,000 individuals in 2022, the state’s crime rate fell.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) reported earlier this month that Tennessee saw a 7.9 percent increase in the total number of people incarcerated in 2022, consisting of 1,615 new male prisoners and 125 new female prisoners. Tennessee was one of just four states to see more than 1,500 new prisoners over the course of the year.
During the same period, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) reported in December that crime was down across the board, with a 9.54 percent decrease in murders, a 4.47 percent decline in aggravated assaults, and a 1 percent decline in the number of sexual offenses.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Corrections Officer” by CoreCivic. CC BY-ND 2.0.
Ricky and Joe,
Does that include J6ers who are still awaiting trial? Any other people awaiting trial? Who would run the factories, and who would benefit from any profits? What would they produce? Would there be incentives on law enforcement to increase the arrest rate in order to boost profitability?
That last question is actually a valid, currently applicable, question, as most jail/prison budgets are determined by the population of incarcerated men and women.
I am not familiar with the jail/prison system here in TN, however in MA (where I moved from, and spent more than a decade ministering in the jails across the state) there are very often cases of men and women who are incarcerated while awaiting trial who are held longer than the potential sentence for which they are accused. Not only is this wrong if they are found guilty, it is extremely troubling if they are indeed innocent. Their inability to afford proper representation is usually the cause of their plight (whether they have committed a crime or not).
Ricky, prisoners were once required to work for their keep but legal beagles sued and now the prisoners can sit on their butts all day and file frivolous law suits. But I agree that they should be required to work for their keep just as I have to. And it appears that there should be many hundreds more convicts but the court system just put them back on the street to commit more crimes.
it’s time to rethink prisons in America seeing as how our justice systems have been compromised by foreign and domestic enemies of America to destroy America from within and profit from prisons. I would rather see tax dollars going towards building factories that prisoners work at to pay for their own meals and security and restitution to crime victims. Those that refuse can have an option of the death penalty and that my friends is how you take a bite out of crime permanently without any of the recidivism. I’m just saying many criminals might choose to work in a factory instead of laying in a box forever.