Recruiting, retaining jailers is no small feat / By Maria Sprow
Recruiting, retaining jailers is no small feat / By Maria Sprow
It is difficult to lure good people work to work in the county jail.
Consider the official job duties of most detention officers, according to a job posting by Williamson County:
And then there are the environmental factors: “Continual contact with persons accused or convicted of crimes. Contact with inmates who might be infected with contagious diseases. May receive verbal abuse from inmates.”
All this, for $31,666 a year — roughly $15 an hour.
So, any takers?
Chirping crickets make great bait, right?
Going Fishing for Staff
Sheriffs and jail administrators must deal with several challenges in order to increase recruitment successes. The first challenge, sheriffs say, is gaining the attention of qualified applicants.
“We give a test and on any given test date, we’re probably testing at least 50 applicants. As simple as the test is, we’re weeding out about 30 percent of the applicant pool. And it’s not a job-training test, it just has to do with comprehension and reading,” said Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk, adding that other applicants are eliminated for having criminal backgrounds.
According to the National Institute of Corrections, sheriffs and jail recruitment officers should look for ways to target “priority applicants,” such as bilingual minorities who may be better able to communicate with some inmates, as well as criminal justice students and discharged soldiers.
Criminal justice students generally are interested in law enforcement careers; sheriffs are reaching these students by talking (and even teaching) at local community colleges, working with career counselors at schools and hosting booths at job fairs, according to the NIC.
Discharged soldiers are likely to possess useful skills and personal characteristics beneficial to the job. Military personnel generally begin looking for jobs back home about six months to a year before leaving the service, so agencies can either post jobs on the Internet or tap into the regionally administered Transition Assistance Programs that are available for soldiers and agencies to use.
But size and location do play a factor in which recruiting methods are best. Agencies in larger areas can be more successful with targeted recruiting and are more likely to view job fairs as an effective recruiting tool — especially since many have trained officers dedicated to jailer recruitment — whereas smaller agencies are more likely to have success recruiting in the classified section of the local newspaper, according to the National Institute of Corrections.
Agencies both small and large can also use their own staff to recruit jailers. Word-of-mouth can be a convincing advertisement. Some agencies have formal incentive programs where a jailer may earn a small bonus for recruiting a new hire, but others just remind staff that working conditions are better if good people are recruited.
“A lot of people that do come and work here, a lot of the times, know people that already work here. It’s rare you see someone that comes in that knows nobody,” said Collin County Detention Officer Richard Cass, who has held his position for more than two years.
Cass is one of the jailers the county managed to hire via word-of-mouth. He was attending a police academy where he met a couple of detention officers from Collin County who told him how much they liked working in the jail. The officers also talked about the county’s growth and the jail’s growth, emphasizing the opportunities for detention officers to get promoted.
Cass liked the guys and liked what he was hearing, especially about the possibilities for advancement and promotion. He went on a jail tour and was hooked. He is patiently biding his time to move forward with his original plans and has no plans to leave, he said.
“My original goal was to be a police officer on the streets, and I just thought this was a good way to start – start here, learn how to deal with people who committed misdemeanors,” he said. “That’s still the number one plan. Right now I’m trying to work my way up to patrol here. I want to stay here; I want to retire from here.”
Increasing salaries and benefits are also an obvious recruiting tool. Detention officers in Collin County start out making about $31,890 a year, or about $15.33 an hour. That’s higher than many other areas around the state, according to job postings:
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office pays $31,158 a year to start — but that’s after a recent significant pay raise. The Houston Police Department advertises that it pays jailers anywhere from $18,018 to $30,290 a year. Juvenile detention center officers make even less.
Cass said the pay was important to him, but not as important as the promise of advancement.
“To me it was really important because I’m married and I have a daughter,” he said. “The pay is good when you first start, I have a house here, but eventually, I want a bigger house.
“There’s not a better place to work than the county,” he added.
Keeping Them Hooked
Jails in smaller or non-growing counties may find it more difficult to offer all their jailers career-advancement opportunities. Instead, they may find it necessary to focus on recruiting applicants who are interested in the job itself — applicants who aren’t using it only as a stepping stone. That’s slightly more difficult.
“I think it is more perception of the job, plus there is shift work, working weekends and holidays. That makes the job more difficult once people get in, because a lot of these people are single parents,” said Collin County Jail Administrator Randy Clark. “The job has a certain potential for danger to it, since you’re dealing with potentially violent criminals. It’s a stressful job. The hours they have to keep and the days off aren’t the best.”
There are many factors that sheriffs and jail administrators can focus on when it comes to retaining those who applied just because they needed a job. Having a positive working environment, keeping the jail clean and maintained, expressing pride for law enforcement and the importance of jailers within the agency, conducting public outreach programs, and working with the media to improve a jail’s reputation can all lead to a more satisfied staff.
A jail’s reputation and that of the agency is as good a lure as anything else.
“I think the way the facilities are designed, how they are presented in their local communities, whether they are well-maintained and well-operated, I think that is going to change the perception of the public, and a positive public perception is going to be one of the biggest draws,” said Clark. “We do a lot of public education through touring.”
Even with the opportunities for advancement, Cass said he may not have worked in the Collin County Jail had its reputation not been in tact — had the jailers who worked there not said such good things about it, had he been reading negative things about it in the newspaper or had the jail staff not backed up the good things he had heard during the jail tours.
During his police-academy days, Cass said, students went on several jail tours.
“This is the cleanest jail I’ve ever seen. I’ve got a 4-year-old daughter and I don’t want to take anything home to her. I don’t want to go to work where there’s all this stuff I can catch,” Cass said, adding that cleanliness and safety go hand-in-hand. “I would let my wife come up here and tour this jail because I know nothing is going to happen.”
He wasn’t always so confident. Like most new jailers, he battled the public perception of his job, too. Even though he had wanted a career in law enforcement, he still hadn’t known what feelings to expect until actually beginning the job.
“It was nerve-racking. If I ever train anyone, that’s the first thing I’m going to tell them. This job is not meant for some people,” Cass said, adding that his job seemed particularly intimidating at first, since Collin County has a direct supervision jail in which the detention officers must stay in pods holding groups of free-roaming inmates.
“It was just weird to me. There’s 72 inmates and I’m in a room with them. When you think about jails, you don’t really think of the county jail, you think of state prisons. I was like ‘Oh, man, this is like prison, these are people who want to kill me.’” Cass said. “When I first started, I said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it.’”
Soon, though, he figured out that most of the perceptions he had about jails and inmates didn’t come into play where he worked. He forgot about the prison movies about inmate rape, gang violence and cold-blooded murderers, and learned that inmates care about respect more than they care about harming the guards.
Most of his work hours now aren’t spent in the pods. His duties involve moving around the jail facility, going wherever he is needed and answering calls whenever another detention officer needs help. Some days, he said he feels like he has walked 20 miles, responding to different calls throughout the jail; other days getting to move around is better than being stuck in the pod.
“There is a fight every couple weeks,” Cass said. “We’ve got 900 inmates and if you stick 72 males in a pod, sometimes in the summer or if it is cold, it does happen, just like high school. We don’t allow them to gamble and play poker or games like that, in order to prevent fights. At the end of the night, we all want to go home.”
Sheriffs said they spend a lot of time trying to explain the inner-workings of a jail to applicants, hoping that applicants who get through the interview process will not be overwhelmed by the job or go about it in a stereotypical way.
“I conduct the last interview with every potential employee, along with our jail administrator, and I tell applicants that I have the expectation that they are going to treat every inmate with the respect that every human being is deserving of,” said Kirk, the Brazos County sheriff. “Some come in with a preconceived notion that the inmates are going to be fighting and combative and problematic, but if a member of our staff uses their head and shows the respect that any human being is deservEven with the opportunities for advancement, Cass said he may not have worked in the Collin County Jail had its reputation not been in tact — had the jailers who worked there not said such good things about it, had he been reading negative things about it in the newspaper or had the jail staff not backed up the good things he had heard during the jail tours.
During his police-academy days, Cass said, students went on several jail tours.
“This is the cleanest jail I’ve ever seen. I’ve got a 4-year-old daughter and I don’t want to take anything home to her. I don’t want to go to work where there’s all this stuff I can catch,” Cass said, adding that cleanliness and safety go hand-in-hand. “I would let my wife come up here and tour this jail because I know nothing is going to happen.”
He wasn’t always so confident. Like most new jailers, he battled the public perception of his job, too. Even though he had wanted a career in law enforcement, he still hadn’t known what feelings to expect until actually beginning the job.
“It was nerve-racking. If I ever train anyone, that’s the first thing I’m going to tell them. This job is not meant for some people,” Cass said, adding that his job seemed particularly intimidating at first, since Collin County has a direct supervision jail in which the detention officers must stay in pods holding groups of free-roaming inmates.
“It was just weird to me. There’s 72 inmates and I’m in a room with them. When you think about jails, you don’t really think of the county jail, you think of state prisons. I was like ‘Oh, man, this is like prison, these are people who want to kill me.’” Cass said. “When I first started, I said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it.’”
Soon, though, he figured out that most of the perceptions he had about jails and inmates didn’t come into play where he worked. He forgot about the prison movies about inmate rape, gang violence and cold-blooded murderers, and learned that inmates care about respect more than they care about harming the guards.
Most of his work hours now aren’t spent in the pods. His duties involve moving around the jail facility, going wherever he is needed and answering calls whenever another detention officer needs help. Some days, he said he feels like he has walked 20 miles, responding to different calls throughout the jail; other days getting to move around is better than being stuck in the pod.
“There is a fight every couple weeks,” Cass said. “We’ve got 900 inmates and if you stick 72 males in a pod, sometimes in the summer or if it is cold, it does happen, just like high school. We don’t allow them to gamble and play poker or games like that, in order to prevent fights. At the end of the night, we all want to go home.”
Sheriffs said they spend a lot of time trying to explain the inner-workings of a jail to applicants, hoping that applicants who get through the interview process will not be overwhelmed by the job or go about it in a stereotypical way.
“I conduct the last interview with every potential employee, along with our jail administrator, and I tell applicants that I have the expectation that they are going to treat every inmate with the respect that every human being is deserving of,” said Kirk, the Brazos County sheriff. “Some come in with a preconceived notion that the inmates are going to be fighting and combative and problematic, but if a member of our staff uses their head and shows the respect that any human being is deserving “Millennials,” or Generation Y. Workers born between 1965 and 1980 are Generation Xers; those born between 1943 and 1946 are baby boomers; and those born before 1943 are “veterans.”
The guide differentiates between the needs and wants of different generational workers. Retired veterans are likely to remain satisfied with a part-time job that offers flexible scheduling. Baby boomers are most satisfied if they are given leadership opportunities, if their experience and skills are being taken advantage of and if they are working in a team. Members of Generation X are happiest working with new technologies and working in an environment open to change and new ideas. Jailers and employees just out of high school and college are looking for flexible schedules, career development, skill-building opportunities and mentoring programs.
Even if a jail cannot offer to send its jailers to law-enforcement academies and isn’t growing enough to offer promotions, jailers are still learning skills they may not have had before. There are some psychology and managing skills that are built from interacting with inmates, some telecommunications skills necessary for communicating around the jail, and some technology used for monitoring and safety. Organizational pride is important, too.
“We have them read the Code of Ethics out loud during the final interview,” said Kirk, in Brazos County. “I want them to understand that there are ethics in our profession and I expect them to follow them. I talk to them about wearing the uniform and the badge, and how they are demonstrative of the duty given to them. The uniform represents our department specifically, and the badge represents the whole group of people that pin on a badge. I ask them, can they wear the uniform proudly and never bring disrespect to the badge?”
When There’s Not a Will, There’s a Cycle
All across the state, somehow, county jails are able to recruit applicants to work as jailers. Some do it better than others, but in many counties, jailer positions are available on a continuous basis. That’s not surprising, given the reasons detention officers accept the job in the first place, and the reasons they leave.
“All parts of the state are affected by this problem of recruiting jailers, but not all agencies are affected,” said James MacMillan, a former Bandera County sheriff who is now a law-enforcement specialist with the Texas Association of Counties. MacMillan spends his days trying to help sheriffs solve their problems, and jailer recruitment and retention are some of the more persistent concerns, he said.
For counties where recruitment is difficult, it may be essential to increase efforts just to maintain minimum jail standards according to law. In areas that don’t have enough jailers to oversee jail populations, jails often face other problems as well. Cleanliness and inmate health care may become issues, as well as inmate and staff safety. If minimum jail standards aren’t being met or if inmates or jail employees are getting injured due to poor conditions, the jail faces repercussions from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, up to and including being shut down. Jails can face public and legal repercussions as well. Several activist groups, including the Texas Jail Project, focus on inmates’ rights and actively seek out complaints against county jails.
The Texas Jail Project was founded by Diane Wilson, an activist who was arrested on trespassing charges and jailed. According to the organization’s Web site, Wilson was astonished by the things inmates told her about their care in jail. (Her list of complaints included not having access to a law library, not having a copy of minimum jail standards available for inmates, alleged cases of poor health care, not being told what time it is, not having a window that lets in sunlight and not allowing inmates to bring in outside reading materials.) The Texas Jail Project gained some media attention by publishing other inmates’ complaints — justified or not — on the Internet. Just one major media report can tarnish a sheriff’s reputation or lead the way to a damaging lawsuit. Once a negative cycle starts, it is difficult to stop. If a jail’s reputation has been continuously questioned in the media — whether because of staph infection outbreaks, allegations of brutality against inmates or overcrowded conditions — recruitment becomes more difficult.
The public perception about the job is difficult to combat. It is not glamorous, fun nor exciting. When the job does get exciting, it’s more in a could-get-stabbed kind of way. The job is thankless — the inmates aren’t going to be patting anyone on the back. Jailers often are portrayed in movies and television as being loud, demanding and unlikable, which are not qualities most job applicants find in themselves. And many people who would consider working in a jail — other than those interested in law enforcement — seem to consider it because they’ve been there before. Having a criminal record disqualifies applicants.
Other obstacles contribute to the problem as well. Jail populations are rising in many counties, meaning that the need for jailers is greater. County jails aren’t getting any younger, and whether a person wants to work for an agency depends partly on the building’s condition and environment. And the entry-level workforce is coming from a different generation that values different benefits than their predecessors, which means the job may have to be restructured or re-marketed.
“You have to become creative to make them feel their job is important and worthwhile,” MacMillan said.
Turnover or Retention: Which costs more?
Detention has never attached itself to the community service and heroism aspects of the other law enforcement divisions. Most young qualified detention officers come to the jails because they want a career in law enforcement. They are looking for training and certification opportunities, then for advancement.
But some counties don’t offer many training opportunities, partly out of fear that training is a waste of money, since other nearby agencies may offer higher salaries or be in a more popular location. Why pay to train a jailer who will move on at the first scent of a raise elsewhere?
That kind of thinking may be logical, but also harmful. If losing employees means having to replace them with new employees, not doing what is necessary to retain jailers is sort of like having to go buy a new fish each time someone gets hungry. It is better to learn how to fish, or better yet, stop getting hungry.
“To retain officers, you have to start when you hire them. The younger generation of employees, they want training. They want to feel important,” said Carmella Smith, a member of the TAC law enforcement specialist team. TAC’s law enforcement specialists estimate that annual turnover at county jails varies from about 14 percent to more than 60 percent in extreme cases.
State law requires all jailers to receive basic jailer training, so sheriff’s departments are already spending some cash every time they hire a corrections officer. Turnover has other financial costs as well: advertising for open positions, performing background checks, psychological and medical fitness tests, academic reading and comprehension testing, and manpower for having existing staff double up on shifts with untrained officers. Smith, a former county sheriff, said that back in 1996, she tried to figure out how much jailer turnover was costing her own county. She came back with a figure of $2,500, and that was only for the hiring and certification process. The figure didn’t include the cost of salaries during training.
In order to hire a jailer in Brazos County, the sheriff’s department does a thorough background and records check, talks to previous employers and references, and conducts testing and jail tours. Employees who are hired spend 12 weeks in training, Sheriff Chris Kirk said, acknowledging that a lot of money and effort goes down the drain due to turnover — and his jail’s turnover is relatively low. “It takes a full-time effort to do the background checks and the testing and the job fairs,” Kirk said. “We advertise in the newspaper and we have an Internet Web site for the county that catches applicants.”
Add in the $600,000 the Brazos County Sheriff’s Department spent out of its detention budget last year on jailer overtime, required because the jail staff must fill in for those ghost bodies.
In December, the detention officers there were filling in for 13 ghosts. “In the 11 years that I have been sheriff, we one time were down to where we only had one vacant position,” Kirk said. “Most of the time we are carrying out five or six vacancies.”
Collin County Jail Administrator Randy Clark estimated that it costs his county about $6,000 to get a jailer hired, trained and on the job. Turnover at the Collin County Jail is at 16 percent, and the average length of service is 5.6 years.
The National Institute of Corrections uses a simple formula to calculate how much turnover costs per employee who leaves an agency within one year: Take one-fourth the annual salary and add it to one-third the annual cost of benefits. That means that if a jailer is making $30,000 a year and quits after four months on the job, the county threw away more than $7,500.
Having a mostly inexperienced workforce can lead to other indirect costs as well, such as liability and workers’ compensation claims. New jailers may not know how to respond to an escalating situation between two inmates as well as someone who has been on the job for years, and they may be more likely to get hurt on the job — especially younger detention officers.
“One of the things about Generation Y (born between 1981 and 2000) is that they are not good communicators,” Smith said. “They were not raised in a communications environment. They are great with e-mail, but face-to-face, one-on-one, they are not that experienced. You have to build that with your employees, and it takes a long time to get them to where they can deal with inmates and not get tricked.”
Some sheriff’s offices have taken big steps to recognize detention officers’ hard work and to ensure that they feel like they have a career ladder. Denton County started its own Law Enforcement Academy. Brazos County had a career-advancement calendar and set aside money for merit-based salary increases.
(The program was disbanded two years ago when the county decided to give raises across the board.) Both Brazos and Collin counties offer to send their best-performing jailers to state law enforcement academies.
“We have a real nice career ladder here within the sheriff’s office,” said Clark, in Collin County. Detention officers who have been with the county for more than one year are encouraged to apply for patrol and supervisor positions, so many of the jailers are interested in making law enforcement a long-term career path.
“The opportunity for advancement is one of the top things I hear about from applicants,” Clark said.
Building the Career Ladder
Creating Training and Educational Opportunities Can Benefit the Bigger Picture
Denton County started its own law enforcement academy in April 2006 to give jailers a chance to earn their peace officer certifications. So many of the jailers were interested in getting peace officer certification through the program that the county had to limit the number of enrollees to just 36, down from the 110 who applied.
The Law Enforcement Academy won Denton County Sheriff Benny Parkey and his office a Texas Association of Counties Best Practices Award.
“It gives us a qualified labor pool for promotions. It increases the professionalism
of the department and it helps us retain qualified people who ordinarily may be looking for a job somewhere else,” said Tom Reedy, the Denton County Sheriff’s public information officer, adding that jailers are enthusiastic and proud of the program and its graduates.
“When we had the graduation, almost every jailer who wasn’t working showed up,” said Reedy. “Every one of our jailers passed the (law enforcement
license) test with a week, and that was also a really good point of pride.”
The academy has been a solid recruitment tool, especially since it allows the sheriff’s office to tap into military educational programs.
“We get people just out of the military service and they know that if they come here and they do a good job while they are a detention officer, they can get put into a line to get them into the academy, which offers all kinds of doors for them,” said Lt. Lin Jones, the academy’s director of professional standards and career development coordinator. “Then, when they are going to school, they can draw their educational benefits, so it gives them financial incentives too.”
Jones does not expect the academy to impact jailer turnover. Jailers are still leaving the jail — but mostly because they are being promoted within the Denton County Sheriff’s Office.
“We’re not losing them because they go somewhere else,” Jones said, adding that from the 36 graduates so far, 10 have already been promoted within the Denton County Sheriff’s Department, while only a few have gone to other agencies.
Overcoming Public Perception
Video focuses on professionalism, role of jailers in criminal justice
In order to combat troubles with recruiting officers, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office recently created a series of promotional recruitment videos. One of the first scenes involves a training squad using what appear to be plastic explosives to bust their way into a room.
“Much of the difficulty concerns perceptions of the job… some of it is generational though. Many in the younger generation that we’re recruiting now need to have something that holds their attention or entertains them, for lack of a better term,” said Lt. John Martin, adding that the videos are action-oriented – down to the musical composition, which includes alternative-rock-sounding lyrics: “Everywhere we go people want to know who we are, so we tell them we’re the S.O., the Harris County S.O., that’s who we are…”
The jail recruitment video shows four detention officers, starting with Sarah Malkowsky, a young, good-looking blonde, an advertising exec’s dream. “I could do a lot of things, but I prefer this,” she says in the introduction. The video shows her lining up inmates, telling them to put their feet back and spread their legs.
“They will test you. They will jump out at you, raise their hands. I have had to take inmates down several times. Physically, take them down,” says Malkowsky, adding that she has a degree in psychology and criminal justice.
“I use my psychology degree every day,” she says. “When I converse with these inmates in the booking process, in the releasing process, they are not only answering the questions that I am asking them, they are trying to work with your mind.”
A narrator informs everyone watching the video that the inmates refer to Malkowsky as “boss lady,” and Malkowsky is shown smiling. “I do like being the boss lady,” she says. “I have gone up against a male that is probably three times my size and been able to use the techniques in my favor and been able to take him down. It’s cool. It’s a good feeling to know that you can actually do something like that.”
Malkowsky talks more about being able to help people who may be mentally ill or need help; others on the video mention being able to “do anything you put your mind to” and “being a good Samaritan.”
“I love what I do because it’s basically taking those committing crimes out in the street, out in the community, and it’s helping us maintain control and custody of them so that the recurring violence doesn’t continue in the community,” says detention officer Ruth Recio, a member of the National Guard who recently finished a tour in Iraq.
The video recruiting detention officers is shown alongside videos featuring members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, whose work is classified; Covert Operations, the squad that busts into homes to target drug dealers, prostitutes and illegal gambling; and the Bomb Squad. The clear point: We’re all part of the same team. “Everything in the video is accurate; however, it’s intentionally presented in a way that will hold someone’s attention,” Martin said.
Even with the extra recruiting effort, 65 of Harris County’s 771 detention officer positions were vacant in December, partly because the county opened up additional positions during 2007. For the whole year, 91 jailers left their jobs, and 242 were hired. Few detention officers stay to the five-year mark.
“The most common comments during our exit interviews is that the environment is not what they thought it would be, they’ve decided to pursue other careers, they want to be a peace officer but they could not qualify for the (Harris County Sheriff’s Office) Academy, they decided to go to another agency … they decided to go back to school,” Martin said.
The videos can be viewed online at www.hcsojobs.com.