Union warns of ‘staffing crisis’ in Michigan’s prisons

LANSING, Mich. ( WLNS ) — Earlier this week, Michigan corrections officers picketed outside three state prisons in the Upper Peninsula, working to call attention to what the Michigan Corrections Organization calls a staffing crisis.

Corrections officers say there are staffing shortages in about half of the state’s prisons.

“We’re running these prisoners with far less officers than are supposed to be there,” said Byron Osborn, the president of the Michigan Corrections Organization, the union that represents corrections officers. “We’re at the point the officers can’t keep going year to year hoping that something is going to change because it hasn’t.”

One of the prisons affected is the Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson, where the union says the vacancy rate for officers is as high as 36%.

“What that means for correctional officers is that it’s forced mandatory overtime,” Cary Johnson, a corrections officer at Cotton, said.

The union says officers are often working 16-hour shifts, violating the department’s overtime rules.

“For a corrections officer, it’s a difficult and dangerous job already,” Johnson said.

She said a work-life balance is crucial for dealing with the challenges of the job.

“When you’re forced to work that amount of overtime, those things tend to get pushed to the side,” she said.

“We need our elected officials in the House, the Senate and the governor’s office to take a real hard look at finding a long-term solution,” Osborn said.

The MCO recently sent a letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer asking for a a temporary deployment of the Michigan National Guard to help with staffing. It says she didn’t respond. Instead, she referred the request to the Michigan Department of Corrections, which is pushing a House bill that would remove college credit requirements for new officers.

“What they’re not telling the media is it’s going to have zero impact on the current situation because, for the past number of years, there’s a waiver in place so you don’t have to have the credits to get hired,” Osborn said.

“We need help,” Johnson said. “It feels like we’re forgotten sometimes, that we’re doing this job and it’s just unsustainable right now.”

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