Tennesseans watching the Super Bowl earlier this month might’ve noticed a local pitch in between the celebrity-stuffed commercials — come be a prison guard.
The ad was part of the Tennessee Department of Correction’s effort to fill hundreds of correctional officer vacancies in short-staffed prisons across the state. Staffing shortages have been a problem in Tennessee prisons for years, and state audits have pointed to them as a danger to both prison staff and incarcerated people.
The department has been trying to entice potential hires with the promise of a $5,000 signing bonus. Starting this week, it is increasing the starting salary for correctional officers to $51,204, with tiered increases bringing it to $60,720 after 18 months. Officials said the pay bump would amount to a $31.9 million cost increase for the department.
Prisons Commissioner Frank Strada appeared before a state senate committee this week for a budget hearing, and he began by addressing the staffing issues.
“Like most correctional agencies across the country, our department has been challenged with reducing our correctional officer vacancy rate,” he said. “Over the past two years, I have made recruiting and retaining quality staff one of my top priorities.”
Strada said the state’s overall correctional officer vacancy rate has dropped by 2% since last year, but it still stands at 26.6%. Valerie Murtha, the department’s assistant commissioner for finance, told legislators that the turnover rate for correctional officers last year was 31.8%.
Notably, Strada said, the officer vacancy rate at CoreCivic’s Trousdale Turner Correctional Center — which is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice — is higher than the state’s overall rate at 33.7%.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.