Now hiring: State Corrections Department has 200 openings

CARSON CITY -- Despite Nevada's highest-in-the-nation 12.6 percent unemployment rate, the state Department of Corrections has 200 correctional officer vacancies.

Deputy Director Sheryl Foster told the Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice on Tuesday that recruiting people to fill those jobs is difficult because in rural areas, guards often quit when better-paying jobs open in mines. In urban areas, they leave to take better-paying jobs with city and county governments.

Foster said state prison pay is similar to minor league baseball farm team pay compared with pay earned in the big leagues. Annual correctional officer trainee pay in Nevada starts at $37,563. Correctional officer pay ranges between $40,862 and $60,405, depending on years of service.

Even maintenance workers in prison often leave once they are trained because they can find better-paying union maintenance jobs with cities and counties, Foster said. And because of the state budget crunch, experienced professionals such as electricians today are hired at beginning pay grades, she added.

Members of the committee, led by Assemblyman William Horne, D-Las Vegas, made no comments on Foster's concern about low pay hurting the recruiting and retaining of prison workers.

State employee pay is set by the Legislature, which does not meet for another year. Committee members include Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Supreme Court Justice James Hardesty.

But Vishnu Subramaniam, chief of staff of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 4041, attributed the large number of vacancies not only to poor pay but also to a decline in morale from a 4.8 percent pay cut and reductions in health care benefits.

"You would think there would be many applicants because of the high unemployment rate, but these people are performing a very dangerous job for modest pay," he said in an interview. "How many of these extremists who complain about public employees would volunteer to work in a prison?"

He noted that two correctional officers at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center have taken their own lives in the past four months and attributed their deaths not just to personal issues but also to work stress and low morale.

While Corrections Director Greg Cox has implemented 12-hour shifts in most Northern Nevada prisons as requested by the union -- which lacks collective bargaining rights but has about 600 officers as members -- that option is not available to many Southern Nevada prison workers, Subramaniam said.

About half of the officer vacancies could be filled in the next few months because of current training classes, Foster said, but the prison system lost eight guards from the last training class in part "because they decided they did not want to work in a prison."

Thirty officers were laid off because of the recent closing of the 147-year-old Nevada State Prison in Carson City, Foster told the commission. All are eligible to fill vacancies at other prisons. If they choose not to relocate, they can take jobs at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center and conservation camps in the Carson City area when openings occur.

The old prison won't formally close until April, Foster said. The closing of the prison will save the state $15 million, she said. The 700 inmates were transferred to newer prisons where it costs less to take care of them. The average annual cost per inmate in Nevada is $20,381.

The prison system has authorization to hire 2,431 employees. It houses about 12,500 inmates.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.