We are not getting drug dealer behide bars but users. User are very weak people who should be place under care. Our bestest drug dealer is our goverment. Where did crack come from , crack wasn’t on the streets before the War on drugs. Crack came about the time of war on drugs , which was designed to put Africa Americas behide bars. People really – we have to many people in prison . We have to figure something out. We have to make a change. That is if we want to save America. We need jobs so bad. We need education , very bad. It is the poor ,mental ill, and uneducated that is being effected by our criminal justice system. The young people – my God. Where is compassion? If we took these non-violent drug offenses in a systme that build our ecomony back up. It is taxes payers money that is keeping people behide bars. Part of your pay check. It need to stop , only hard criminals needs to behide bar, and they are still people.

Ok and prison is doing the job. Ending drugs. I don’t think so. If that was the case we would have less people in prison. People who do drug or drink are not bad people but weak people . You are a strong person , that is why you should be a light for those who fall. They are the youth that is now falling in the system. We have to find another solution for non-violent offenses. By the way we had less crime before The war on Drugs. That is an eye opener. If prison was ending crime , why do we have more crime than ever. It is not because time are different it is because we are not healing people and teaching people, how to live in society that is full of drugs and alcohol. Treatments work . All people are good . people do bad things, people can change if given a chance. What we need in America is a War on Poverty. People are now going to prison for being poor. More and more people are losing jobs and homes – while the rich banker and our government is walking free and taking middle class money that they had in the banks. That is wrong . Mid- class is getting poorer and poorer, while we still think it is our fault. Why are not some of these rich people be hide bars, no we are to busy putting non-violent offenses in cages. We have to rethink about what is really going on . We have to create jobs in America and start taking a stand against some of these laws ,big companies , and bankers.

No one is going to stop drug selling, possession in the US, its too lucrative for criminals, gangs, Mafia and thousands of others. You cannot rehabilitate a drug addict anymore than you can an alcoholic unless THEY are willing to change their lives. All the classes, rehabs and drug treatment programs are a waste of time and money when the criminal doesn’t participate or “slides” through the program. I would like to have a $1. for every ex-drug program inmate that was re-arrested and jailed for selling drugs.

Sorry about my spelling , another reason why we need better education.

By the way I said non-violent offenses. Which is over half of the people in prison. There is no Free treatment for long term help in America – only these five treatment center. Treatment costs people almost 15,000 to put a family member in treatment. There is money out there to create treatments for people. We have so many people in prison that it is crazy, and more and more are going , and it is young people at that. The war and drugs has to be healing . What I don’t understand is why is drugs illeagl but guns are leagl – a gun kills and drugs go through your system. People since the bible times has like to get high at some people or another – from wine- to pills you can get the the doctor. Truth is these pills we are able to get from the doctor is causing more issuses than any drug. Where is the help to get people off of these pain pills,

There is a really good doc. on Youtube on War on drugs. Where is the drugs coming from. Our goverment. Some people are weaker than others. Lets get these people who are puting the drugs and aclochol in our commutiy. It is the yough that is being effected by the prison system and lives that are being destroy by drugs and aclochol. We are not putting hard criminal behide bar but little weak users. We need to change the way we veiw crime in America. Truth is it is our Human right to put any thing in other body – that even drugs. No saying drug are Ok but i will say they are real and Amercia people need treatment, if we really want a war on drugs. Prison is not stopping it, but crating harder criminals. By the way the biggest drug dealer in my town is a Lawyer- why is he able to get by with it. That right it’s not the little – weak , we should be putting be hide bar – but some of these lawyers. We have to make a change in America. Please don’t miss understand me. I am not saying let criminals out of prison , but saying who is really be hide bars. They are people of are poor, mental ill, and uneducated class that has been effected by drugs and aclochol. What we need is the 23,000 dollars that is going to keep inmates in prison , go back into education and put non-violent criminal in Long term rehabilitation center that is design in a from of prison , but teaches people how to heal there lives through Arts and education , and when they come out they will have skills and a trade to maybe have a business or something where they don’t get back on drugs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W75JBgClSU

I mean no disrespect to you “Prison”. I do agree with some of what you say but, the real problem in America today is the Government wanting everyone to be politically correct. They hold no one responsible for their actions. States do hold you accountable. I did not put you on drugs nor did I encourage you too. As much as drug education is available as well as treatment programs, there is no excuse for a person becoming involved in drugs or alcohol and then committing crimes to feed their addiction. This is a left wing approach to everything. Blame the system not the individual. Each person makes decisions in life, some are good and some are bad. You and you only are held accountable for the decisions that you make. Why should I send you to a treatment facility based on whether your crime was a violent crime or not. Breaking into someones house or car has a lasting effect on that persons feeling of security. Although no violence occurs, to me, it is as bad. It doesn’t leave physical scars but, sometimes the mental scars are worse than physical scars. Now to make a better point, what does this have to do with working 12 hour shifts?

Prison is not end crime but a crime itself. More than ever in America’s history we have put more people in prison than ever. Now people like me are coming to see that prison is not ending crime but a crime itself. Our criminal Justice system has been sick with creed, and is destroying families. It is the poor , mentally ill, and uneducated that are being effected by the system. Our government hasn’t not try to put back into society – like free long rehabilitation against this war on drugs. This has become an ethical issues. We need a change. 73 percent of women in prison have some kind of mental ills. Who is standing on the behave of mental ills. Four out of five are in prison for non violent drug offenses. That mean one out five are hard criminals. We need to put our focus on healing America and not prison. Our taxes payers money should be going to Long term rehabilitation, and making prison for hard criminals. Our criminal system is effecting the youth more than ever and our human rights. We need a change , healing , and to end our money making business call prison. By the way have you ever notice that prisons are in the most races community. That is an eye opener. Look at the population of people of color in prison. If we put people in free long term treatments where they will learn how to get back into society- with a trade or skill- like a shoe maker. One thing you will notice most people in prison are our Artist , poets, amd music Gods, who’s live has been effected by aclochol and drugs. We are not all going to be doctors and lawyers, but we can be somebady. That is one thing that our school system has left out of the system , is teaching trades, so you get more people falling in the cracks and into our criminal system.

After reading your posts, I agree with a lot of what was said. Stress is a killer. Working in corrections in Ohio, we have to work a minimum of 30 years to draw 66% of your top 3 years. A bill is in the House and will be passed. This bill was concerning the 5 public retirement systems in Ohio. Each has had to make a change in the plans they offer. Some went with the employee paying more into the retirement others like the one concerning corrections OPERS, changed the following: 32 years or any number after 55 years old. Still 66% now based on average of top 5 years. The stress I believe, is due to changing your personality after you clock out. You have to hold in all that happens to you because your wife/husband/or whatever, would not understand what you go through. I am currently retired and worked my entire career at a Maximum Security Facility. While attending the academy in 1985, Inmates took over a cell block. I have been directly or indirectly involved in 5 hostage situations, 100’s of assaults on staff, 1000’s of fights and stabbings, very large number of successful suicides, homicides and two employees being murdered, not to mention a full scale riot involving 8 cell blocks, over 400 inmates and 10 officers were held hostage. This riot lasted 11 days. I am into 4 1/2 months of retirement and often think of the riot and other critical incidents that happened during my career. I do not miss working in the prison but, I do miss all my Officers and fellow security supervisors. They will always be in my thoughts. I have learned to manage my stress by working out and talking about it. All the years working there, we didn’t dare talk about it. Now, it seems to help. I feel totally better now then I did while working.

How to manage the stress is something that we need to deal with on our daily basis.
So we need to deal with this type of situation must the time in the correction world, so you have to find the way to cool down your emotions and put all your emphasis on a different way of to think.
Talking about the 12 hours, I think that is good, if you look the opportunity that you have to get 3 days off (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) every other week and 2 days off in the middle of the next week (like Wednesday and Thursday) fallowing by 3 working days, this give you the chance to have a good time off, so is not bad if you want to have a weekend off with your family and the opportunity to get a complete week off, if you want to take at least a week off for any reason. It’s not the best thing in the world but give you the opportunity to take extra time off that you are not allow to do with the 8 hours shift.

Wow brother, you got my head spinning…. too many numbers. I may have figured out why I have less difficulty with the pay, I own my house so I don’t have that pesky mortgage to worry about, and all my kids are grown. And as far as the 12 hour thing, one of the ways I break it up, I take advantage of my down time for relieving stress. I will go to the weight room and work out for a bit or even tour the less populated portions of the jail, you know as well as I do They all want something… And at the current time I am actually working for my AS in Criminal Justice Technologies(online classes of course), which while I was on night shift it was great because I could do all my homework while I was at work, as long as I made my tours. It’s a little more difficult on days but I’m managing.

I totally agree with you about the sick time, and my facility has figured that out and they tell us, if we are sick take sick time, they don’t want the other officers and the inmates sick. If the inmate get sick it cost them money to pay for the medical. Now at my facility we don’t get OT nor do we get straight time, at least not when we earn it, we get comp time which adds up. We have 40+ hours of required training plus we have the 8 hors earned every month for the time over the 160 hours, if we don’t call in sick that can be used at during the year, one could almost never take vacation days and only use vacation, of course anything over 40 hours is lost at the end of the year from our vacation time. Maybe I look at things differently, to me it’s just a job, and in todays economy we take what we can get, and in corrections as you well know we have job security, at least there is money coming in from somewhere andas long as we don’t place ourselves in a bad position we will always have a job. Maybe I am just taking the optomistic view on things..

gbeck, not trying to start a war with you either, so were on the same page there! My wife is always saying I need more tact…..I’m 37, one child, wife has to work full time ‘cause of my wages, house bills, cars are paid for, etc. funny, before the prison (15 years) I work in manufacturing. I have an undergrad and masters. It appears our lives are very similar. The article referenced was just one article, I found litearlly hundreds, so in my opinion the scientific evidence is clear on long work hours. granted, which job you do will affect it. They have found that sedentary jobs, i.e. office are just as bad for long hours as hard work: they both have the same effect in the end. On hours: there a total of 168 hour per week. 40 working leaves your 128 hours. 40 sleeping leaves you 88 hours of ff dutie time. Now, 48 of that is weekends. Leaves you 40 during the week. And this doesn’t include getting ready for work or drive, so you can probably wittle that down to about 30 hours of off duty, down time in the end. Whether you work 4-10, 5-8, or 3 1/2 12’s, you still work 40 per week. With the different shifts you get different blocks off. That’s all, not more time. Not till we slow down the planet’s rotation. What happened here in Ks is that the pilot program was 3 on 3 off, 2 on 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, (some combinations of 3’s and 2’s). Anyway, our bosses said that since they were working more hours they could more work. Instead of just letting the officers divide the work up between the two shifts, the managers added more duties because they were there more!!!! On top of that, out here we believe in the 40 hour work week. Daycare and sitters would not adjust! No one could find daycare after 5 and had to start relying on family and friends, and they were burning out. After about three months 1/2 of the supervisor stated that if they didn’t go back to 8’s,they would demote to CO’s )contract with KOSE prevents 12’s) or just quit. It was horrible out here. And the supervisors which had to work our seg units started burning sick time to stay away. We’ve already discussed how 12’s burn sick/vacation time faster. Anyway, they switched back to 8’s.

Speaking of sick time, when you burn 12, it’s a lot. Our sick inmates and staff went through the roof. At first our managers could figure it out till a couple of us explained it: when you are sick, you shoudl stay home. If you don’t you just spread it to everyone else. So supervisors were coming to work sick due to using 12, instead of 8 hours, to get well. They were spreading all sorts of nasty nasties to everyone else.

In my opinion, and it is my opinion, when you start laying out facts, it’s really hard to justify 12’s. Now, I agree that some officers like and 12’s work for them, that’s fine. But I would say most don’t, work or like. Which is why most agencies don’t use them.

pookiii, I think a little more tackt was needed in your reply, how ever I do see your point, the articals also state that long hour and stress “COULD” be linked to heart disease. You say we are type A personalities, at work I am an A type, but when I walk through those gates I am a type B. Now I don’t know which facility you work for but I know at mine, we have few, if any fights among the inmates, and as for the attacks on the officers, I can only think of once and that was due to the officer dropping his guard and not following procedure. I felt more stress in the manufacturing environment then I do in the corrections. I still believe and will follow what I said, relaxing and getting your mind off of the job is how one relieves stress. Now you also go on to say that you don’t get more time with the family, I would have to disagree, If I work on days I get a couple of hours each night and the with the rotating shift I get 3 days every other weekend. Basically I work 7 days and I have 7 days off out of every 14. Tell me if I worked at a manufacturing plant and work 10 hour shifts (OT) and they required me to work on Sturdays (4 or 5 hours), how much time do I have with my family then. I’ll answer alot less then what I have now. Now you also typed about pay, answer me this, how much money is enough? even though I make 1/3 of what I made on my last job, I still make enough to pay my everyday bills and still have money left over for play. what more do I need? Now don’t assume that I am young and live under someone elses roof, I don’t I am 47 years old and I have 3 other adults who don’t work living with me and 2 children. Sure one adult does receive support for the 2 kids and she helps out when needed but for the most part Idon’t ask for it. I assure you I make under $25k per year. I am not afraid of saying how much I make, but I also know that it will change I have taken my own measures to change it I have enrolled in college and am currently studying for a degree in Criminal Justice technology, This way I can move up and possibly move into administration eventually. There is alot more I can say but I don’t want to start a war with you. You have your opinion and I have mine.

gbeck, the research indicates that you are wrong. For just example: http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20110405/working-long-hours-linked-to-heart-disease-risk. They studies civil servant in this study. Most civil servants who work long hours tend to public safety, so…Stress from the job is related to how well you deal with it. People that go into pub. safety enjoy the job so arent’ stressed out by it, except for the obvious: fights, escapes, etc. What happens is a persons body just isn’t designed to work 10-12 hours per day, just isn’t. We are type A personalities so we “feel” fine, but underneath the skin, we are killing ourselves. Why do you think most agencies allow law enforcement to retire early! Because it’s much more stressful compared to most jobs.

A lot of people haven’t really thought about twelve hour shifts. To read that someone thinks they get more time with family? Really? A 40 hour work week is 40 hours, simple math. You don’t get more time with family. You may receive larger blocks at a single time, which is what is happening, but you don’t get more time. Some say you save on gas(the excuse they tried out here) The reality is most people don’t save on gas: they just do all their errands on one day, due to the larger block of time, verses running all week. then there’s the pay issue. If you get paid enough, then the spouse only has to work part-time. And day shift where they work. Out here in the midwest you would be very hardpressed to find a babby sitter daily willing to watch your kids till 7 at night when you come home. Like I said in a previous post: 12’s work if you make the money for it. With only one exception, no one wanted to say how much money they earned.

Actually The heart disease and dying around 56 is due to stress, not working 12 hour shifts, then the question should be what do we do about the stress? Well that is where family and freinds come in, they can help with your stress. Leave work at work and when you are at home think about things at home, have cook outs and such, anything to get your mind off work. I know this works, I go through it too. There is one sure thing about corrections, the job will be there when you go back (Job security).

As I have repeadtedly stated, the OT works if the state allows it. If not, they give you straight time, if anything at all. A recent study came out and stated that if you work more than 10 hours a day, your chances of heart disease is 6 times greater than if you work 8 hours per day. This would explain why the majority of those in ALL branches of law enforcement die at the age of 56. Sure, you MAY get the extra time now with the family (which is isn’t true — 40 hours is 40 hours, regardless of how you slice it) but you die early and miss out on the extras with the grandchildren. This seems to have been overlooked. Except by state/local legislators whom realize they won’t have to pay the pensions when we are all dead before we can collect them!

I personally love 12 hour shifts! What’s an extra 4hrs tacked on? It get’s you to your 80hrs faster AND there’s the OT factor too. I like having a few days off in the middle of the week as well to get stuff done without being jammed into Homedepot with the weekend crowd.

We work 12 hour shifts. 2 on then 2 off. 3on then 2 off. Most of us love it.
At night we take turns going to the gym to work out. It’s great for my family and the ATO’s in summer are great.

i love the shift , we work 4 days on then 4 days off , yes we deal with shi* bags but it all works out, I still get to walk out the gates at night and drive home to my family

My department converted from 8.3 hour shift to 12.2 hour shift about 3 years ago. We work 6-6:12 It was a difficult transition at first but it does have its benefits. One such benefit is we only need to use 24 hours of vacation to have 7 days off as opposed to using 40 hours of vacation leave to have 7 days off. Another benefit to the officer is you only have to drive to work 7 days out of two weeks instead of 10 days. This cuts back on my gas expense.

As far as negative side of 12 hours. To take one day off, you have to use 12 hours of leave instead of 8. The hours are long and some officers become tired towards the end of shift and take “short cuts”. Also, you are in contact with the inmates for the entire 12 hours instead of just 8. This means if you have an a**hole of an inmate, you have to deal with that individual for an extra 4 hours. If you have a family, the transition from sleeping during the day to sleeping at night on your days off may difficult. The 8 hour shifts gave staff more flexibility during their time away from work. You could rest and still have almost 8 hours of free time before you reported back to work.

I have worked the day shift and night shift and found the night shift to work best for me. As long as you discipline yourself during the day to receive enough rest, the night shift won’t be a problem. To be honest, I prefer the night shift more than days. I find some of the biggest challenges for staff at night is to keep their mind stimulated so they do not get into trouble from being so bored. I have seen staff become so bored they tend to create issues just to have something to do.

Depending on which squad you work, (we have four squads), the work schedule falls like this: Sun (off), Mon/Tue(work), Wed/Thur (off), Fri/Sat/Sun (work), Mon/Tue (off), Wed/Thur (work), Fri/Sat/Sun (off)….then repeats. Every other weekend we have 3 days off.

There are a few positions in our jail that use the 10 hours or 8 hours. These positions are what we consider our “specialty” positions and generally do not work in a facility. An example will be our medical officers or road crew.

As far as family issues go, I have two very young kids (17 months and 5 years old). With 12 hours, even working overnight, I manage to see my kids more often because I have more days off.

There are many other advantages and disadvantages. The trick is how each individual will modify their lifestyle to accommodate the 12 hour shift.

I think that you hit two nails on the head. First, shifts need to be facility specific. What works for one may not work for another. I just want people to remember that before any one jumps into anything head first, do the research. This is a good place to start. The second nail concerns what you stated about staffing. You stated that when you had 8 hour shifts, you did not have enough staff coverage. That directly proves the following: 12 hour shifts allow admin to reduce workforce by making employees work more! If a department, and I don’t care what agency they are, cannot obtain enough staff to work normal shifts, which in our society is 8-10 hours, then there is something wrong. Especially in this economy. BTW: How do you surive on 12.50 an hour. The national living wage standard is almost 14 an hour, so by that standard at least, you are way underpaid. Do you have a union? If not, get one. I wrote this an re-read your post and I’m reminded of the Sedgwich County, KS sheriff’s department jail They now start, unless they very recently received a pay raise, start at 13.97 per hour. Which is what they started 12 years ago when i applied only so I could move closer to family. They have received no pay raises. Of course, the road deputies have strong union and have all the glory so they receive their pay raises. Detention/Corrections Officers are the overlooked portion of law enforcement, which is why we need strong unions.

Deputies in my facility start at $12.50 an hour (which has been the starting rate for about 5 years now), but as I stated before, we currently receive OT pay for the extra 8 hours on the clock every other week. Currently there is no wage scale in place to award increases based on longevity, and we are now getting ready to enter the third fiscal year in a row where the county is not granting a pay increase. I was not intentionally skirting around the issue of pay.

In my local area there has been a lot of talk of deputy jailer’s pay recently as the various counties are trying to get their budgets approved. In reading some of the comments from those news stories, many people believe it comes down to the fact that in KY the jails are run by elected officials given the title of Jailer, where as most other states have their county jails being run by the Sheriff’s office.

As for our coworkers that work the 7p-7a shift, with the exception of 1 or 2 people, they chose to work night shift. And no matter which shift we get assigned to, our rotation gives us ample time off to spend with family now. We work 7 out of every 14 days (on assigned 12 hours shifts). When we were on 8’s, there were lots of times that people would end up working 15-20 days in a row, with a few of those days being 12 hour shifts because of mandatory OT. I can’t speak for everyone I worked with during that time, but I know for me personally, it definitely took a toll on my family time for several different reasons. I was single at the time and lived alone with a house and yard to take care of. The simple solution would have been to just do yard work in the mornings, but that was impossible because my mandatory OT days began at 10AM. Add to that the fact that I don’t live real close to my family, and it made seeing them anytime other than my off days very difficult.

Don’t take my comments as a complaint about the fact that I’m expected to work anytime I’m needed during a 24 hour period. I love my job and work whatever hours I’m needed, mostly without any resentment. Do I suffer from burn out when I end up staying after everyday for a couple weeks straight, yes. Anyone would. But it’s a lot easier to deal with being expected to stay over an hour or two when you know you’re still going to get your days off to be away from that environment. But I love what I do and can’t imagine being anywhere else. My comments were meant simply as an insight as to how this WORKS FOR MY FACILITY. I can’t speak for other places because I have not worked in other facilities and do not know what policies and procedures they have in place. I’m sure that the internal workings of a detention center or prison would make a huge difference is what kind of staffing needs they would have.

Treh: your example proves my various points. In your first paragraph, one could interpret that mean the following: evening and nights were okay, but days shift worked best. The rotating weekends was merely poorly implemented. At the local state hospital they do it also, but they get every third weekend off. The third paragraph mentions how the twelves ended up de facto due to short staffing. This is different than assigned 12’s. Additionally, you mention that staff on afternoons and nights had a difficult time with family. More on that later. Your fourth paragraph is interesting because you don’t address the issue, unintenionally for sure, about officers with families working the 7pm to 7 am shift: when do they see their family? I’m sure they are sleeping during the day. What is pay like? Daycare: how many daycare providers watch children until 8 at night?

You touch on a very important point: 24 hour jobs. A lot of people entering law enforcement, no matter what the branch, complain about working weekends, holidays, etc. These people have no business in the field. WHen one goes to work in the field, with desperation due to economic slowdown the exception, you know you are working a 24 hours job, like firemen or emt’s. Those that want that badge but have weekends off dont’ truly understand the field. And therefore don’t need to be in it. They are trying to have their cake and eat it also. I have worked all three shifts and I have family. IN my experience, ALL those who complain about 8’s and cannot see family don’t make the time to. Period. FOr example, when I was on afternoons, most have families. Instead of going home and sleeping, they stay up all night and sleep during the day. They only saw the family on their two days off. I say my family four days: weekend mornign and my weekends. Granted, it’s not seven days a week, but enough time. Instead of doing things I wanted to do, I would do what the family wanted. I made the most out of it. Wife and child had no problem.

What I find most interesting, still, without digging on you, is that no one really has replied about pay in those states with 12’s across the board and being propounded as good. Like I posted earlier: Ohio and Wisc. pay extremely well, so their spouses probably don’t have to work. In Ks: our pay is based off of a 80 hours two week period: we would not receive OT for the extra 4. If the economy gets bad enough, I suspsect Treh that they would change your law and take away that pay as well.

I have worked at a county facility in KY for over 7 years now. When I first started we worked 12 hours shifts and I was initially assigned to work the night shift, 7p-7a. Having taken this job after working in an office with banker’s hours for 8 years, this was quite an adjustment. I managed ok and was able to move to the day shift after about 6 months, which at the time, worked out way better for me.

About 4 years ago my facility decided to switch to 8 hour shifts to try and save money after a huge expansion. Initially the deputies working the floor were assigned specific days off, which we had to bid for based on seniority. It worked out ok for those of us that had a little time in, but for the majority, they were miserable because they never had weekends off. Even those of us that were first in line to pick off days were not permitted to have Saturday and Sunday together. After approximately 6 months of this, we went to rotating days off where our off days moved up one day every 4th week. This meant that every 4th week you had to work 6 days in a row. This also meant that although you would eventually get weekends off, you had to wait 6 months for it to rotate back around and you still had assigned on call days you might have to cover, which no one wants to do when they only get weekends off every 6 months.

We continuted on like this for a little over 2 years. Morale began to decline because we, as deputies, felt that we never had anytime to do anything except work. And although we technically were on 8 hour shifts, due to a high turn over rate and being short staffed almost constantly, we still worked 12 hour shifts at least twice a week. I think this was especially difficult for those of us that were assigned to work second shift (either 2p-10p or 3p-11p). It left us with no time to interact with family and friends outside of work. We either had to cut our sleep short to get up early in the morning to take care of business matters and such, or our families would try to accomodate us by extending get togethers and interrupting their normal routines. I was fortunate not to have a spouse or children at the time, but I still felt like I was missing out on life when I realized I hadn’t seen my baby niece for 5 months because of my work schedule. I do not know how my coworkers with families were able to cope with not seeing their children or spouses because of work.

My facility switched back to 12 hour shifts 2 years ago, and other than 1 or 2 people, almost everyone prefers our 12 hour shift schedule to the 8 hour shift schedule. We currently work 36 hours one week and 48 hours the next, Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then Wednesday, Thursday. Every other week we get a 3 day weekend, and although we still have assigned on call days we may have to come in for, we still have plenty of down time to do what we want and need to do at home. In fact, when staffing is thin, several people even volunteer to come in and work one of their off days to help out. We find that people don’t mind working an extra shift here and there when they are only scheduled to work 7 out of every 14 days. This rotation also makes it very easy to plan events out weeks or even months ahead of time. We are also lucky because the county we work for allows us to receive 8 hours of OT pay on our long week, so long as we have actually worked the entire week and not been off for training, vacation, or sick time.

I know that the statistics show that more errors are made when the work day is extended past 8 hours, but we found, at least with our staff, those that really started showing declining performance were the ones not cut out for this field anyway. I have worked all hours-days, nights, and everything in between. I’ve been called back in after only being off 2 hours from working the night shift all weekend, to assist with cell extractions. I’ve also volunteered to work 24 straight hours because of multiple call offs and not being able to get anyone else to come in for coverage. I know the overnight hours can be difficult, especially for someone whose body is not accustomed to staying up all night. Luckily, most of our staff is on the shift they would prefer.

As for the issue of a person being assigned to a single post for 12 hours straight, we also have a system in place for that. Most of the time, our deputies switch posts 5-8 hours in, depending on where they fall on the lunch rotation. Although my facility does not have a “seg” unit, we do have direct supervision dorms where the deputies are assigned to and can not leave unless relieved by another officer. These deputies are in direct contact with 64-80 inmates the entire time, and during the “quiet time” period at night, the evnviornment is completely silent except for the sound of people snoring. This can make for a very long night since there is really nothing much to do except make your hourly or semi-hourly walk throughs of the bunk areas.

For those that are assigned to the direct supervision units at the beginning of their shift, when they return from their lunch breaks they are assigned to take over in a different housing area where they are expected to be up and moving around. We do have a few single bunk isolation cells, but the majority of the inmates that are not in the direct supervision units are housed in 8-16 person cells. Although these housing areas are there to hold the more violent and noncompliant inmates, they do not have the strict quiet time rules like the direct supervision units. These inmates are usually up most of the night depsite their TVs and phones being off, and require more attention.

We find that moving from one area to another works out well for our staff because the 2 environments are completely different. Most of the deputies welcome the more laid back feel in the dorms, especially if they have been assigned to a particularly active area like booking for the first part of the shift. It also works the other way. For those that are in the dorms first, being in a rowdier setting after spending several hours watching people sleep helps to get their blood flowing again.

Quite a few road toads, as we call them here in ks, do 12’s. They, the public, catch a lot asleep. really. If the officer is liked, most people turn a blind eye. if they are known locally to be a jerk, usually they are fired by the end of the week.