The prison system has lost more than 500 security staff employees over the last 18 months, according to court filings.
“We had horrendous understaffing in this department and something has to be done,” U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson said during a status conference Friday in the long-running lawsuit over prison health care.
The state has used pay raises and recruitment efforts to boost officer numbers, but has been hindered by a tight labor market, Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the state argued. “It has kind of fallen off a cliff for lack of a better word. It has dropped from 1,800 officers down to a little over 1,300 in the last year-and-a-half … They are a lower number today than they have ever been,” Van Der Pol said.He said the tight labor market has many industries searching for workers and that that is a “difficult headwind” for the state’s effort to hire and retain staff. Increasing staffing has been a priority for the department, said Lunsford.
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