TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – Recent inmate disturbances at a maximum-security Kansas prison aren’t tied to staffing shortages there, the state’s top corrections official said Thursday, even as he warned state lawmakers that low pay is creating high turnover and a less-experienced work force.
Corrections Secretary Joe Norwood also told a legislative committee that the El Dorado prison’s former warden recently took a new job within the Department of Corrections because doing so was “in the best interests” of the prison, though Norwood called him a valued employee.
The department has confirmed three disturbances at the El Dorado prison in May and June involving inmates who refused to return to their cells, as well as two pairs of inmate-on-inmate fights on July 28 that sent one inmate from each altercation to a hospital with stab wounds. Norwood has attributed the disturbances to newly arrived inmates who were transferred there from other prisons.
All of the prisons struggle with turnover among corrections officers, but the El Dorado prison, east of Wichita, has the highest annual rate at 46 percent, compared with 33 percent for the entire system. The department reported an increase in staff vacancies in the last days of July, and Norwood disclosed that 21 El Dorado employees left the prison last month.
But when reporters later pressed Norwood about whether staffing shortage make the prison riper for disturbances – as suggested by some workers, their union and some legislators – he said staff numbers “did not have any bearing on it.”