Kansas is a good state. Good for you.

You are not going to get an argument from me regarding the errors that occur after the 8 hour mark. One study of the health care field showed that after 8 hours the charting became more sloppy; after 10 hours, shortcuts were made on decisions regarding critical care; nearing the 12-hour mark they didn’t even want to post the number and type or errors.

12 hours in seg would not be nice. But, think of the officer working a single officer assignment in a unit for 12 hours! The mental aptitude decreases after 8 hours just as production. What is the chance of that officer “dozing” off near the end of his/her shift? Any errors that occur due to fatigue, etc., will NOT be considered “collateral damage”. They will be pinned on the employee as it is THEIR responsibility, not the department’s! It’s all about money, and the employee will suffer in the process.

No, I am NOT for 12-hour shifts, especially in Corrections.

Capt, I work in Ks. I researched the 12 hour shifts also. What I found was that there was a distinct difference in the studies between corpate studies and NPO studies. Coorporate studies were almost always self-assesment whereas NPO studies were scientific. One could infer that with the private business the workers had a motive to not be honest considering it may affect their job employment prospect. that’s why double blind studies are the best. I wikipedied (sp?) 12 hour shifts and the references used had almost nothing positive to say about them.

What I find interesting is the pay issue/spousal issue. Again, look at OHIO and Wiscon. They pay extremely well for CO’s and cost of living is not much more than here in KS, and that’s limited to housing. I am strongly suspecting that there are some Admin. here advocating 12’s to drum up support.

You are correct about the error rate for sure. ALL the research indicates that errors increase exponentially after 8 hours. I don’t think that in Law enforcement they would accept the "errors’ The lawyer for the person accidently shot or excessive use of force would say in the settlement meeting “Okay, so the CO used excessive force but we will ask fo rless money due to a 12 hour shift.” No, I would bet that we’d be hung out to dry, no matter how tired we were.

Concerning the fed, I applied for a couple of jobs. They have the LEOAP: Availability Pay. they pay that well so that people can retire after the 20 year mandatory time. if you have a BA, you can start at the BOP with about 48K. If you have a masters, it’s about 56K. When I talk to younger CO’s, they seem to like 12’s. But when you talk to the CO’s with a couple of years, they don’t.

To me, here’s all one needs to ask: do you really want to work Segregation will all that screaming and feces throwing for 12 hours for a whole one year rotation? if you cannot say “Yes” then 12 hour shifts should be avoided.

Pookii…what state do you work in (just an FYI)?

As far as my statement that the documentation is “for it”, if you Google information regarding 12-hour shifts, there is a ton of info out there regarding studies of people working 12-hour shifts. A very large majority of these studies indicate that staff adapted well to the shifts, productivity did not decrease, morale increased, sick leave usage dropped, and on and on. However, I do acknowledge that the studies were mainly done in the health care and production fields, NOT corrections.

Furthermore, I conducted a personal survey of speaking with staff from several different agencies and jobs from the Federal level law enforcement to local private business. I must say that ALL the staff I spoke with not only preferred 12-hour shifts, but in their words they “…love them!”

Please keep in mind that I, personally, am not for 12-hour shifts at our facility. I don’t think I can physically or mentally do them. I think the process is for the benefit of the agency only and put a great deal of stress on the employee working the shifts. Furthermore, we don’t have plans to “rotate” shifts meaning that those on the night shift would be there FOREVER!

I’ve also read studies that have shown that more errors occur after the 8 hour point, especially in high stress jobs (i.e., nursing, law enforcement, etc.). Apparently, the organizations are willing to accept the increased errors as part of the process, since there are so many reports that prove it.

The National Institute of Corrections has reported that the average life expectancy of a Corrections Officer after a 20 year career is age 58. In addition, working “shift work” can decrease that number to age 53. For a “normal” person (if you can define that), the average life expectancy is 77.6 years. I don’t believe it matters how much money you are paid, they can’t pay you enough money to knock 25 years off your life!

I’m going to try to address this topic without inciting a riot. First, I would love to read surveys, not “everybody seems to like it.” Our admin. did the same thing. They took a vote of the supervisors before the supervisors had a chance to vote. Get it? Second, scientific research outweighs antecdotal evidence. Sure, some guys like 12’s, but the research done in scholarly journals point to the opposite. Additionally, switching from nights to days every couple of weeks and/or months is horribly punishing on the body. Most leo’s are type A personality and they “think” they are okay. But take them to a doctor and put them through a stess test and I bet the Dr. will tell them something different. Capt. Burrhead: when you say the documentation is for it, what’s “It”? For or against the 12’s. Like I posted earlier, if you have a spouse which can pick up the kids and drop them off at school, great. If not, someone’s looking for a new job. Since 25% of teh American economy is the health industry, I’d bet it would affect a lot of CO’s.

Again, how do you rotate nights and days with a working spouse with children? You just cannot, unless your spouse doens’t have to work full time AND you don’t have kids. The fact that that facet has not been addressed in this forum implies a lot in my book.

Ohio is now talking about going to 12.5 hour shifts. That will be GREAT for someone working the day shift, but it will be a looooooong night for those on the PM shift.

My prison tried to go to 12’s for the MstSgts about five years ago and it failed miserably. They were burnt out after only three months! Most had already openly declared their intention to quit if things weren’t changed back. I put together a report for these guys from research I had conducted showing that 12’s were horrible. At least two of them stated openely that from then on any mistakes made after 8 hours wasn’t going to the their fault. 8 hours shifts were reinstated. Money is the problem because admin spends it on things we don’t need, in my opinion. For example: why do all my dept. heads, and others, need Droid’s and Blackberrys? They do not. Prisons operated just fine without them. Buy Trac phones if they need them for emergencies. We throw away half of the food we serve the inmates. There’s a waste of taxpayer dollars.

12 hours shifts abosultely do not work unless as entry CO you are making 55-60K per year so the spouse doesn’t have to work. End of story

I’m not Admin, but I’m a Captain. Unfortunately, that means I don’t categorize as Admin and I don’t categorize as shift staff…unless it suits the organization.

This is why I started this post. My research shows that the staff that work 12-hour shifts love them, however, like you mention, work performance decreases. If I were on a 12-hour shift, my time away from work on working days would be spent sleeping as I have a 45 minute drive to and from work. I would spend no time with my family until my days off, which I would have more of, but now I see my family 365 days a year as opposed to 180 days a year.

If one has children, that poses an even larger burden. Many choose to work night shift to accomodate baby-sitting. 12-hour shift would cause them to have to hire a baby-sitter or not see their children’s evening activities.

I can tell you why departments want to go to 12-hour shifts: money! At our facility with 265 officers, we would lose 20 right off the top! That’s 20 staff out of a job. Overtime decreases and staff aren’t so willing to burn 12 hours of sick leave as opposed to 8 hours. The bottom line is the almighty dollar!

I’m 51 years old and I don’t know if my body can physically handle working 12 hour shifts, let alone mentally. In MI, they are now talking about bargaining with the officer’s union to make them go to 12-hour shifts, also, with an agreement that they work 84 hours per pay period of straight pay…no overtime.

Nobody wants to work Corrections anymore. You can’t hire decent staff anymore. The last few classes have produces maybe a dozen quality officers out of 200. It’s not like hiring for police departments. In fact, they can’t even get enough applicants to fill a full academy! When you look at the calibre of staff being hired and then put them on 12-hour shifts where performance drops…you are asking for trouble!

Without trying to flame: how many admin. post here? Seriously. With twelve hour shifts you can completely fire your night shift. SO they are now unemployed. Plus, the extra four ours of OT is possible only your state law allows it. In many states LEO get paid for a 80 hour two-week period. Plus: how do you see your family if you work 6 PM to 6 AM? 12 hours work great if you get paid a lot. If you are a normal CO, which means you recieve at most 75% of road patrol pay, your spouse will need to work. My wife works in a hospital. At night. So getting the children to and from school becomes an issue. What else. Oh yeah: ever worked 12 hours on a seg unit. EVERY staff I know is tired after 8.

Then there’s the safety issue. A lot of research has been done on what is the best length of shift. Most in hospitals because that’s where about 80% are done. after 8 hours misdiag. and charting errors increase. After 10 hours they go up dramatically. At the 11 hours mark, well, let’s just say it isn’t pretty. This is why most hospitals are shifting away from 12 hours shifts.
12 hours work great if your make enough money and don’t do any serious brainwork. Corrections is not. I bet if one that works twelve hours compares how they treat staff now vs. when they worked 8 there’s is no doubt it is much, much different.

Most of our staff love them. We also have 8’s as well. I like them for the ATO accumulated Time Off as we work 84 hours every two weeks.

Our staff on days don’t have much of a problem, because they just work an extra 4 hours. Nights is the same. Afternoon shift, of which I am on, gets screwed as we lose our entire shift?

I’m only 2 years away from retirement and 12 hour shifts are for the kids. I have a hard time just working my regular 8 hours! I don’t hear too much negative about it, but it sure doesn’t look appealing to me.

We have a simple 12hr shift that we follow and all our staff seem to like it very much.
We run two shifts that are fixed days and nights, two shifts that rotate from days to nights and back every two months. The staff on the rotating shifts are the ones that decided to rotate every two months.
the hours are 7am to 7pm and vise versa. 3 days on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off. Every other weekend is a three day weekend Friday, Sat, Sun.

Here in Ohio….they just announced recently that they are going to 12 hour shifts at six “Pilot” Institutions. Not sure how everyone feels about it —good/bad—-but I know there are concerns.

Ours is pretty simple. Four on, Four off. Most everyone seems to like it pretty well.

Everyone at our center loves the 12hr shifts.Its a fight to get on them. However every area has a different 12hr rotation. A good rotation is 2 days 2 nights four off, repeat x2 then 2 days 6 off. in an 18 week rotation with 4 staff on shift and 18 staff posted to that unit..
Hope this helps.

I know this topic came up before, but it’s been a while. Our facilities in MI run with a Capt and 2 Lts and Sergeants depending on the size of your facility. They just cut one Lt per shift to save money! Stupid idea, I know, but even worse is that they now want to come up with a schedule that prevents OT!

We run three 8 hour shifts. Capt on weekends off, Lt/Sgts on 10-4 with every other weekend off.

If your state/facility has tried or is doing 12-hour shifts or a combination of 12/10/8 or whatever, can you let me know what your schedule looks like and if your staff like it? Most of our staff are against it, but all the documentation I find is generally for it.

Your help is appreciated. Thanks.