The hard truth about correctional workers

WINSTON, Miss. (WCBI)- Underpaid, underappreciated, understaffed, and extremely important.

Correctional facility workers keep inmates under control and deal with dangerous situations.

When it comes to hiring good correctional workers, one of the real challenges is often keeping them.

Often that comes down to what they make.

“In December we hired seven new employees at our correctional facility, and we lost seven employees at our correctional facility,” said Sheriff Jason Pugh.

$9.09, barely over minimum wage, that’s the starting pay at a local facility.

And that paycheck comes with lots of sacrifices.

“It’s very difficult. We have a very high turnover rate due to several factors. One, as we are not able to pay a whole lot, it’s not the best paying job in the world, and it’s also a very stressful job. You have long hours, you work holidays, you work weekends, and you work with inmates every shift you come to work can you work with inmates and all the problems that come with that,” said Neal Higgason.

And when workers are faced with low pay, they sometimes look to those on the inside to supplement their income.

“Mostly for money, there’s a lot of money, and contraband officers are offered money to bring in contraband, and they’ve got bills to pay sometimes they make a poor decision,” said Higgason.

“Convicts are good con men a lot of times they are constantly after those guards, ‘hey I’ll pay you X amount of dollars to bring me this I’ll pay you X amount of dollars to bring me that.’ Evidently, a cell phone can we worth as much as $400 inside of the facility, so that is a very good payday for somebody who has financial distress,” said Sheriff Pugh.

Often the problem arises from an occupational hazard unique to correctional officers: working around the same people every day but being discouraged from forming relationships with them.

“One of the problems with working in correctional is fraternization with an inmate. It’s human nature to interact with people that you’re around, but when you’re working with corrections, you cannot develop a friendly relation with inmates. That’s one of the things that does lead to contraband issues, security issues, and it’s just not allowed,” said Higgason.

But what can be done to improve the situation?

“That’s one of the million dollar questions in the world, and I would say a pay increase would help that, and I think it would, but in reality, it was still the problem will still exist,” said Sheriff Pugh.

To help reduce the amount of contraband coming in all workers are searched before and after each shift and work in a buddy system to keep everyone accountable.