We're all aware that there's a serious staffing shortage at juvenile detention facilities. This includes Northampton County's Juvenile Justice Center. Over the past two years, NorCo Court Administrator Jermaine Greene has tried everything to fill the void, from creating assistant supervisor positions to increasing salaries to even hiring a private security firm. This staffing shortage extends to our jails and prisons as well. According to The Marshall Project, staffing at our nation's prisons has dropped 10% since the pandemic while jail populations have increased 2%. This increases the risk of assaults against officers and makes sleep-deprived officers more likely to use excessive force. What's the deal at Northampton County's jail?
Since he became Executive, Lamont McClure has hired or re-hired 376 corrections officers (COs). Five are in training right now. He's only been able to retain 27% of them.
This is a problem. The county jail should have 212 officers. It instead has about 150. Because it is a 24/7 operation, the county has no choice but to "mandate" officers to work 8 hours of overtime when other officers call off or have vacation days, which they must schedule a year in advance. As a result of this shortage, 14 COs were mandated to work a 16-hour shift on Monday.
Unfortunately, the way that the county imposes these mandates appears to be accelerating the staffing shortage, to say nothing of depressing morale. This must bother them even more when they walk by the jail administrators' parking lot on Friday afternoons and see it is empty.
I'll have more about mandates and how they are imposed tomorrow.
