Another deterrent is that inmates are likelier to be serving long mandatory sentences that offer no incentive for good behavior and are more likely to be mentally ill and have drug problems, corrections officials say. Have feces thrown at you. People don't advertise the job that way, but that often is what they have to deal with. Staff turnover rates have risen steadily in recent years, with several states losing more people a year than they are able to hire. An average of 16 percent of officers left in 1999, up from 9.6 percent in 1991, according to the Corrections Yearbook, published by the Criminal Justice Institute.
Turnover is especially high among new staff.
And in Alabama, which is short 412 corrections officers, even after lowering its minimum age to 20 from 21, John Hamm, a corrections department spokesman, estimated that last year 180 officers were hired, but 240 quit. In some states, the problem is so serious that it has contributed to prison breaks or attacks on staff. Mr. Hamm said the escape in January of six inmates from a prison near Birmingham was the result of having 41 officers instead of 58, and leaving three of four towers unmanned. In Arizona, corrections officials claimed that short staffing contributed to a November assault of a nurse by six inmates in a Phoenix prison. And it was staffing problems at Lansing that contributed to the 1998 rape by an inmate of an officer who was alone in a three-person post, said the warden, David McKune.