I agree with you. You hit the nail, right on the head. The way people are treated is why we are 8,000 plus officers short. It’s not the money, as some claim. Sure, more money is nice, but a lot of employers pay less than TDCJ pays and have a much easier time keeping employees. As a matter of fact, I have known some very good TDCJ employees that left for jobs that pay less. Chances are, you and everyone here has, as well.
I haven’t heard it in a while, but for years TDC blamed the officer shortage on the high paying oil field jobs. I can count on one hand, the number of employees I know that left for the oil field. That’s the biggest line of bull, I’ve ever heard.
The bottom line is we are short because of the way the agency treats employees. Yes, there are some other factors that play in to it as well, but the main reason is the way people are treated.
The staff shortage was going on back in the mid 1990’s. The problem has been ignored for almost three decades. It’s been allowed to continue, until we ended up where we are now. To be honest, I don’t know how to totally fix the situation. You get to the point, where you are so far down in a hole, you can’t dig out. We have a reputation for being a bad place to work. This is particularly true in places with a high concentration of prisons, like Huntsville and Palestine, just to name two.
I think you could probably double the pay and the problem would still exist. A change of administration is definitely needed and has been, for a long time, but that still won’t fix our problems. I would like to see wardens, supervisors and administrators be given sone sort of a reward for each employee that has say 10 years or more in the system. The wardens, supervisors and department heads with the highest number of employees leaving, should be called on the carpet to explain. Consequences should follow. Yes, I’m dreaming. I know this won’t happen.
When I hired on, we had an officer on shift that came to work for TDC, in 1962. We had several that had been around since the late 60’s and a whole lot from the 70’s. They had so much knowledge to share with new boots, like me, when I drove up. We were often paired up with them. That kind of experience is lost forever. Today you have people with a year in the system training the ones right out of the academy. You have hall bosses with two months experience. You have desk bosses with a year in the system. Heck, you have friggin wardens with 15 years in the system, that came out of classification!! Go figure.
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