10 NOVEMBER 9-15, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | less of each other than ever, and a twelve- hour workday can be especially grueling for employees expected to be on their feet and vigilant most of the time. “These offi cers are overworked and ex- hausted,” says case manager William Row- land. “You’re dealing with people who are in the worst part of their lives, and you’re expected to be a role model and an authority fi gure. If the long-term goal is to protect the public, then we’re not doing our job.” Rowland previously worked in correc- tions in Missouri and for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in Florence. When he fi rst moved to the CDOC, he worked at Limon, but found the eighty-minute commute from Colorado Springs too draining and sought transfer to headquarters in the Springs. He now works for the Division of Parole, assigned to Terri- torial. He suggests that the staffi ng problem could be addressed by more competitive pay incentives. “We’re short because the pay is too little for dangerous work,” he says. To improve pay equity, Colorado WINS has pushed for “step raises” for state work- ers, tied to the number of years an employee has served. Still, several CDOC veterans say that better pay may get people in the door but won’t necessarily keep them there — not unless the leadership is prepared to invest in changing the divisive, toxic environment found in most prisons. “You can’t do prison reform if you are critically understaffed,” says Caterina Spi- naris, founding director of Florence-based Desert Waters Correctional Outreach, a nonprofi t that has worked with dozens of corrections agencies across the country on developing healthier workplaces. Over the past two decades, Spinaris has done extensive research on an array of occu- pational stressors — including understaffi ng, overtime, bullying, noise and trauma — that contribute to what she describes as “cor- rections fatigue.” Her group offers training courses designed to promote teamwork and a better work-life balance for staff; most U.S. prison systems are still far behind their European counterparts in treatment of staff as well as inmates. “There’s something fundamentally wrong with the way we’re doing correc- tions,” Spinaris says. “The key, to me, is building cultures where people feel psycho- logically safe. I’ve seen it done, so I know it can be done. But it takes a different mentality. Do you care about people, or are you just looking for a warm body to plug into a post?” “I think we’re coming into a time of reck- oning,” says Hilary Glasgow, executive direc- tor of Colorado WINS. “Corrections used to have a certain cachet. It used to have more respect. But we’ve become so distracted, we don’t really think about the people and the jobs that really make the state operate. We’ve got to get the staffi ng up or we can’t run pro- grams. And if we can’t help the incarcerated to reduce recidivism, that affects us as a state.” Back Behind Bars After serving nearly two decades in prison for a violent offense, Jorge found out that he was being paroled last summer. The news was delivered ten days before his release date by another inmate, who shouldn’t have been in possession of that information, rather than his case manager, who told Jorge he was too busy “playing cop” — reassigned to correc- tions offi cer duties — to deal with the matter. Fortunately, Jorge had family members willing to take him in and a supportive parole team helping him navigate the paperwork. (“Jorge” is a pseudonym; he asked that his real name not be published because of con- cerns about possible retaliation from CDOC offi cials.) “I had nothing,” he recalls. “No birth certifi cate. No Social Security card. No driver’s license. No warning.” Not that Jorge wasn’t relieved to get out. Conditions at his prison for inmates as well as staff had become acutely more diffi cult since the staffi ng crisis began. Jorge saw experienced offi cers and teachers get fed up and quit, only to be replaced by waves of rookies who never seemed to last. “I would see all these new faces, and all of a sudden they’re gone,” he says. During the COVID outbreak, prisoners spent months in lockdown, but quarantine pro- tocols kept changing. Jorge says he was moved frequently from one unit to another, which he believes merely increased his chances of exposure. He endured two bouts of contracting the virus, months apart. “They were treating us like it was our fault if we got sick, but we didn’t have any choice about it,” he says now. The virus eventually went away. The staff shortages didn’t. Jorge had trouble obtaining refi lls for his thyroid medication, going without for several weeks because of a bureaucratic snafu. There were fewer cell shakedowns, he says, more illicit drugs coming into the facility than ever before, more gang-related assaults. At Jorge’s prison, the move to twelve-hour shifts added to the tension; to accommodate the thin staffi ng of the graveyard shift, inmates were now locked down for the night at six o’clock, four hours earlier than before, giving them more idle time to stew over and less chance of making phone calls to family members who may be reachable only in the evening. But the most troubling development, from Jorge’s perspective, was the prolif- eration of poorly supervised, inmate-led programs, coupled with an influx of in- experienced staff. The programs, which shifted some responsibilities from staff to inmates and offered special privileges to those who achieved honor status, such as computer use or “outside” food from ham- burger stands, attracted inmates who were on “God trips,” he says. A program called “Bridging the Gap” was referred to among prisoners as “Cripping the Gap” because of the gang members who had insinuated themselves into its leadership, deciding who would have access to its goodies and which “undesirables” to keep out. “All the manipulators were now in charge,” Jorge says. “It got to the point where inmates were doing everything.” The adolescent-looking new corrections staff didn’t seem to have much of a clue about the realities of prison life. With basic training for offi cers cut from 25 days to fourteen, the new people didn’t know about the old rules. Jorge recalls spending several minutes in fl irtatious conversation with a young female offi cer, learning a great deal about her back- ground, where she lived and her off-duty activities. He then chided her for volunteering such personal information to a prisoner. No one had told her not to do that, she replied. The transition to younger, more diverse and largely untested new hires has generated notable episodes of culture shock. Dozens of offi cers recruited from Puerto Rico to work at the Buena Vista Correctional Complex were offered cots in cubicles in an offi ce area of the compound for $200 a month, a bar- gain compared to seeking affordable shelter elsewhere in booming Chaffee County. But accepting the deal also meant working all day at the complex, then sleeping there as well. Last summer a nineteen-year-old offi cer told Colorado Newsline that the Puerto Rican recruits were treated “like we were offend- ers,” including middle-of-the night searches of their personal property by a captain. The subsequent uproar prompted CDOC chief Moses “Andre” Stancil to meet with the recruits and seek to address their grievances. (According to a department spokeswoman, the CDOC is investigating the claims of mistreatment at the facility, has abolished night-time inspec- tions, and is taking additional steps “to provide access to afford- able housing for our workers.”) The prospect of having of- ficers as young as eighteen responsible for supervising of- fenders who’ve had plenty of practice gaming the system fi lls retired captain Harms with un- ease. “Personally, I could never have worked that job at eigh- teen,” he says. “I hope these peo- ple have the maturity to do it.” Donner says her organiza- tion has heard from officers as well as prisoners who are uncomfortable with the situation. “Some of the strategies they’re using to put a body in a job are actually exacerbating the frustra- tions of the existing staff,” she says. “There is nothing more frustrating than working with someone who’s not competent. You need to have confi dence that the people next to you know what they’re doing.” Colorado’s efforts to replenish its ailing ranks of prison workers will be undergoing an acid test in coming months. After years of decline, thanks to sentencing reform and other issues, the prison population is creep- ing back up. Last spring the state legislature authorized funding for the CDOC to add 542 new male prison beds, on the heels of a supplemental budget request that okayed another 300 beds. Where the agency is going to fi nd the bod- ies to manage those additional prisoners is not clear, but Donner believes the move will only deepen the staffi ng crisis and ratchet up the pressure to suspend or eliminate inmate programs, from GED classes to re-entry as- sistance. She says the legislature is indulging in “magical thinking” by expanding a prison system that appears to be strained to its limit — not by the increasing number of inmates, but by the vanishing breed of people willing to work inside prison walls. “You can say you have the funding to do it, but it doesn’t matter if there’s no one who wants the job,” she says. “They’ve got the money for it, but they don’t have the staff.” Email the author at [email protected]. The Hard Cell continued from page 8 As staff shortages rose at the Territorial prison, case managers and teachers were reassigned to security duties; Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition executive director Christie Donner says higher pay won’t solve the problem. CCJRC.ORG CDOC.COLORADO.GOV
