The Michigan Department of Corrections has launched a new initiative to improve security and increase safety in facilities across the state. This comes amid a years-long corrections officer staffing crisis in state prisons.
According to a MDOC press release, the Safe Prisons Initiative has five primary areas of focus, or pillars, which officials said will expand pre-exisiting efforts to monitor safety and security standards in corrections facilities.
The five pillars include:
- Prisoner classification - ensuring prisoners are in the right facilities and assessing infrastructure availability
- Crackdown on contraband - enforcing new mail policies and package standards to reduce amount of drugs coming into facilities
- Programing and technology - increasing day to day effectiveness and implementing "evidence-based prisoner programming to promote positive behavior"
- Training and leadership - continuous training for staff and officers in all MDOC institutions
- Recruitment and retention - expanding long term and short-term efforts to hire and retain staff to reduce staffing shortages
State data shows that 10 of Michigan's 26 corrections facilities have an officer vacancy rate of at least 20%. The average vacancy rate is 15.8%.
Jeremy Bush has spent his career with the MDOC. First as an officer, and now as deputy director for the corrections facilities administration.
In an interview with WCMU, Bush said MDOC has already started to streamline the hiring process for prospective corrections officers.
"When I first hired in, I was filling out an application and taking a test," Bush said. "People don't have to do that anymore. You can click on a button, you can go to our website, you can contact somebody that knows corrections... We'll get you connected to a recruiter, get you into a job pretty quickly."
He said newly-hired officers are able to go into the same facility they were referred by, but from there placement would be based on vacancy needs.
Facilities in the Jackson area and Upper Peninsula are hotspots for the officer shortage. Bush said five of six facilities in the UP are significantly short staffed, and the same is true for three of four Jackson area facilities.
In general, tactics employed by the Safe Prisons Initiative will used at all facilities. But, Bush explained, some of the strategies to increase staffing will be implemented in one group of facilities at a time.
"In the Jackson area, we've started a new initiative where we assign an entire [officer academy] class to one facility," Bush said. "Our strategy here is to give the facility enough staff at once to hopefully make a reset on some of the issues that are going on, lower the pressure a little bit, allow it to make the most difference at one time."
He said although other facilities won't get staff from that graduate class, the difference at facilities in Jackson will be greater.
"It's feasible because this is a complex area," Bush explained. "Jackson is four facilities that are very close together. [It] can possibly work in other areas, but we still need to look at this closer to see if we're getting the results that we're looking for."
As the crisis continues, officers and their families have suffered the affects of the shortage as the demand for mandatory overtime shifts takes a toll physically and mentally.
"I think about the sacrifices our staff make every single day," Bush said. "We can't afford to let up on our recruitment efforts, and we need to be able to demonstrate to people that we're doing everything that we can to get the staff where they need to be."
Outside of MDOC, legislative efforts to help ease the shortage have stalled. Last year, the state legislature passed three bipartisan bills that would increase post-retirement benefits for corrections officers, but House Republicans did not send them, or the six other bills involved, to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's desk.
The bills wait in limbo as House Republicans hash out a legal battle in the courts. A Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that they must send the bills to Whitmer, but could not order House Republicans to do so.
House Speaker Matt Hall told the Michigan Public Radio Network they plan to appeal the ruling.
