Op-ed: Alabama can’t solve its prisons safety crisis with a staff shortage of 61% (2024)

This is a guest opinion column

Last month the longest serving leader of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, John Wetzel, testified before Congress that our nation’s prisons are not merely in crisis; he said they are on “the brink of failure.” He’s right. And Alabama is right at the epicenter. It’s a public safety crisis that’s decades in the making and created by multiple sources. Yet one fact is unavoidable and solvable: years of chronic understaffing and neglect have put the lives of correctional officers and prisoners alike at risk.

This hits home in the Yellowhammer State. It seems as though every month brings another horrific story about an incarcerated person dying unnecessarily or a correctional officer being injured or threatened for doing their job. Just a few months ago, Alabamians were horrified as the state again made national news for the bleak revelation that 325 people died in custody in 2023 – a rate five times the national average. Families flooded hearings calling for oversight and reform.

We know the status quo is not sustainable, not just in Alabama, but in most states throughout the country. One of us worked as a correctional officer and has more than three decades of experience in and around the correctional system. The other experienced prison from a different perspective, serving 21 years in federal prison for a drug offense, before being the first person released under the First Step Act, a bipartisan series of reforms signed by former President Trump in 2018. Today, the two of us work for organizations that represent correctional officers and incarcerated people and their families.

For too long, we have watched our constituencies be pitted against one another while the safety of every person in and around America’s prisons suffered. Elected leaders of both parties have ignored repeat calls to prioritize the safety of the people who work and live in our nation’s prisons. So, as the reports of unsafe conditions, violence, and abuse pile up, we decided to combine our voices so that our pleas might finally be heard.

While it may be surprising to some that we would work together to draw attention to this crisis, we actually see our fates as intertwined. We want everyone who works and lives in prison to be healthy and safe. And we know that the current crisis has left officers and prisoners alike with higher rates of trauma, suicide, and mental health emergencies.

Understaffing is a common denominator. According to data reported by The Marshall Project, the number of full-time staff working in state prisons is down 10 percent since 2019 and now sits at its lowest level in two decades. The pandemic and other challenges to hiring and retention exacerbated this problem, but staffing levels have been falling for more than a decade. Prison populations, on the other hand, are rising again. Alabama’s data is worse: According to recent court filings, the staff vacancy rate at major facilities in Alabama sits at 61%, with certain facilities at a vacancy rate of more than 70%.

According to Jefferson County Circuit Judge Stephen Wallace,”Alabama’s prison population continues to increase, while overall fiscal costs, employee turnover, and violence reach unprecedented and intolerable levels. As of 2023, despite increased financial incentives, the Department of Corrections continues to hemorrhage staff with 727 positions remaining vacant. Without adequate staffing and supervision, inmate homicide, assault, rape, and drug overdoses - remain far too prevalent.”

Correctional officers and staff have stressful and often dangerous jobs. As a result, they have shorter life expectancies and higher rates of depression, suicide, divorce, and substance abuse than the general public. Understaffing is making their jobs even more difficult, as workers are forced to endure longer shifts and more overtime, which in turn leads to more danger on the job, more burnout, and higher rates of turnover. But high stress on the job is largely because of poor prison conditions and management, not the people held there.

Understaffing also deeply affects incarcerated Alabamians and their families. Lack of staff means more lockdowns, during which family members can’t visit their loved ones in prison and help them maintain the bonds that are proven to reduce reoffending. Understaffing diverts the workforce from rehabilitation to security, which means people in prison can’t access education, job training, or addiction treatment programs that are also crucial for reentry success and community safety. Tragically, understaffing is leading to medical neglect and preventable deaths, as the Department of Justice’s Inspector General recently reported to Congress.

Absent policy change, our national prison crisis will worsen. While it is easy to forget what happens behind prison walls, taxpayers are spending tens of billions of dollars for a system that is failing to deliver on its most basic mandates – chiefly, safety.

Cognitive dissonance by those responsible has become a part of a dysfunctional system. For example, most officials who make corrections policy have never visited a prison; so, we urge Alabama policymakers to visit a facility and talk to officers and incarcerated people.

The size and scope of the prison population is also exacerbating the accompanying staffing crisis. As all impacted voices join forces to ensure proper staffing levels in our prisons, we urge lawmakers to explore ways to reduce the high demand on our prison system through mechanisms designed to safely release individuals whose sentence is no longer necessary to protect and promote public safety – such as individuals who are chronically ill or geriatric.

We hope that as Alabama gears up to confront this issue, the Governor and Attorney General will create a commission to make expert recommendations; secure data, and work with corrections officers, public health, public safety and criminal justice experts, and inmates and their families to align around best practices; provide greater transparency about challenges, and pursue reasonable policy solutions that acknowledge the reality that recruiting and retention goals are not being met - even with major pay raises as an incentive.

We represent correctional staff and incarcerated people. And we are coming together because the crisis in Alabama’s prisons is so severe that too many lives are at risk. Now that we are speaking as one, officials must come together and work with us to find solutions. Addressing understaffing is a start.

Matthew Charles is a senior policy advisor to FAMM, a national nonprofit sentencing and prison reform organization, and was the first person to be released under the First Step Act of 2018.

Andy Potter is the founder of One Voice United, an organization dedicated to elevating the voices of correctional officers and staff in national conversations about corrections and the criminal justice system. Andy began his career as a correctional officer for the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) where he worked for nearly three decades.