Topic: The Club House / Private Prisons

I work in Folkston, Georgia for Cornell Companies, at D. Ray James Prison. We currently house about 1860 inmates, and do not have nearly enough officers to adequately monitor the inmates or keep ourselves safe ( I believe we are somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 officers short). Unfortunately, it seems that the company could care less about anything but profit. They just opened a new U.S. Marshalls Detention Center and are set to break ground on yet another facility. When the U.S. Marshalls Detention Center was opened, it’s staff was drawn from the already short-handed D. Ray James state prison. I am currently responsible for trying to maintain order for 200 inmates by myself on a daily basis, as are many of my fellow officers. Too many of the officers there now are so overworked, and the management has yet to reduce the movement of the inmates to accomodate the staff we have to manage them, they just tell us to do our jobs and don’t want to heat complaints. There is no way to maintain our own safety or assure the safety of the inmates we monitor. All officers have to tolerate physical assaults, verbal threats of violence and death, being masturbated on and verbally disrespected on a daily basis, the whole while, the management states that we need to always maintain a professional demeanor when talking to inmates…even if they are threatening towards us. Most recently, inmates have assaulted a Captain, A Major, 2 Lieutenants and several Corrections Officers. The word through the inmate grapevine is “You have not seen anything yet, wait until this summer and Officers will be falling left and right in the facility, because some inmates are planning it right now”. I think private facilities are more concerned with lawsuits which could affect their bottom line then they are the safety of their officers or the inmates they house. We have problems with drugs and cell phones being brought in by “dirty officers” and it seems nothing can be done about it. While I agree that there is a fair amount of inmate dealings that has been presented in the form of the female officers who get tied up with inmates and have sexual relations with them, it seems that they are so preoccupied with “watching” the female officers that they let they male officers get away with anything they want to. I have seen male officers sit and watch movies with inmates, sit at tables and play games with inmates, take bribes, steal cornell property, and yet, if a female officer has an inmate speaking to her, she is soon advised that “they” are watching her because she was talking to an inmate. I have no idea who to turn to with my issues, any advice would be greatly appreciated!! I like my job very much and still believe in what I am supposed to be doing. Starting pay right now is $8.56 an hour. After training, you go to $9.15 an hour,and, after 6 months, you go up to $11.15 an hour, overtime is plentiful, your insurance benefits kick in on the first day of the month following the month you were hired with; company paid and employee paid optional life insurance, medical, dental, vision, limited health, 401K, short term and long term disability..while you do pay for those benefits, it is not unreasonable. The company matches your 401 k contribution, and provides a $50 reimbursement per pay period to off-set the cost of your limited medical plan (which is pretty much an emergency room plan, you have to be there a full year before the “good” BCBS medical plan kicks in).