After five Republican lawmakers and a union for corrections officers issued a statement asking the state to address an understaffing “crisis” and dangerous working conditions in state prisons, a spokesperson from Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s office says she has “full faith” in Department of Corrections Director Heidi Washington.
The Michigan Corrections Organization (MCO) says 13 state correctional facilities in Michigan have staff vacancy rates of 18% or higher, while five have vacancy rates over 30%.
The union says understaffing has created increasingly dangerous working conditions, and officers are exhausted from regularly working mandatory overtime.
In a statement released Tuesday, Republican state Senator Ed McBroom said Department of Corrections Director Heidi Washington has failed to find a solution.
“This leadership team has had enough time and it’s not working,” McBroom said. “We’re recruiting plenty of people, but they’re not sticking with the department, and retirements are happening too fast. So it’s time for a new strategy. And frankly, it’s desperate times in my opinion.
The Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) said in a statement it has boosted maximum pay for corrections officers by over $12,000 since 2019, and spent roughly $55 million on recruitment efforts and staff retention bonuses over the past three years.
MDOC data shows the headcount of employed corrections officers has fallen over 21% since 2019. A department slide deck published in 2019 said surveys show officers are most likely to leave the department within their first four years on the job.
McBroom says the department regularly violates a policy known as the “32 hour rule” meant to prevent corrections officers from being required to work consecutive 16 hour shifts.
McBroom says many corrections officers are working 80 hours a week. In his rural U.P. district, which includes five prisons, he says some officers also commute an hour or more to work.
“[Corrections officers] are despairing,” Mcbroom said. “Their families are despairing. Their home lives are often ruined by this. … the inability to have a family life is really awful.”
MCO Vice President Cary Johnson is a corrections officer at G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan. She said fatigued officers are more likely to make mistakes, and the department has started reducing the number of officers assigned to some shifts. She says in a level II housing unit (the second-lowest tier of security) she is sometimes the only officer on duty to supervise more than 90 male prisoners.
“Officers believe the bosses or the people that are in power just don’t care about them,” Johnson said. “They’re starting to just believe that nobody cares about their safety at all.”
The Department of Corrections did not grant an interview request with Director Heidi Washington. But a statement from governor’s office spokesperson Stacey LaRouche defended Washington in response to the statement from McBroom and fellow Republican lawmakers, Dave Preston and Greg Markkanen, calling for a new strategy to address understaffing.
“At the State of Michigan, we are proud to employ over 50,000 hardworking public servants, who clock in and out each day with their fellow Michiganders at the top of their minds. Michigan Department of Corrections Director Heidi Washington has served under both Democratic and Republican administrations, and under her leadership the MDOC has achieved historically low recidivism rates and leads the nation in programming, education, and supervision for those in the criminal justice system. We continue to have full faith in her leadership,” LaRouche said.
The statement from the three republican lawmakers calls for enhancing retirement benefits for corrections officers to make a long-term career with the department more enticing, and for increasing officer pay. Earlier this month Republican state Rep. Sara Lightner called for Washington to resign, and Republican state Rep. Kathy Schmaltz, whose district covers multiple correctional facilities around Jackson, Michigan, said more money should have been spent on prison staffing and recruitment efforts in the recently passed state budget.
MCO President Byron Osborn says nearly a month after writing an open letter to Whitmer asking her to deploy the National Guard into prisons to support the department, he hasn’t received a response. He says he’d like the chief executive of the state to “acknowledge the problem.”
Osborn says assigning officers repeated mandatory overtime is contributing to more officers leaving the department.
“We’re losing (officers) all over the spectrum,” Osborn said. "We’re losing them before they get a year (of service) in, we’re losing them with five years in, and we’re losing them with 15 years in.”
McBroom says the corrections officer shortage makes prisons more dangerous for officers and for prisoners. He says prisoners sometimes lose access to parts of the prison like the yard, gym or classes get canceled, just because of staffing issues.
“When we’re doing that on a regular basis because we’re short staffed, that’s going to lead to the inmates themselves becoming more dangerous and more hostile, and they’re going to want to make that frustration heard,” McBroom said. “That endangers their lives, endangers our state property, and endangers our state employees.”
McBroom says Whitmer should acknowledge the frustrations of corrections officers, and take their complaints seriously.
“Don’t just take the word of a few people in the top office in the department to say, hey, everything’s okay,” McBroom said. “Start looking into it and be a little skeptical.”
