The state prison system is seeing a decline in staffing vacancies after pay increases were approved in the last three years.
Corrections Secretary Jeff Zmuda on Tuesday told lawmakers on the joint corrections committee that the agency is filling more openings, although recruiting continues to be a struggle.
“Since April of this year, we’ve really seen an encouraging trend,” Zmuda said.
The number of vacancies for uniformed adult corrections officers has declined 38% from 405 in March to 252 openings last month, Zmuda told lawmakers.
At one point a year ago, vacancies in the prison system were expected to reach 800 without the boost in pay, creating a potential safety threat within state prisons and potentially to the nearby public.
When Gov. Laura Kelly took office in 2019 there were 358 vacancies in the department, of which 243 were corrections officers.
The system had been hit by four inmate uprisings in 2017 and 2018 at the state’s facilities in El Dorado, Norton and Larned.
Currently, the number of uniformed vacancies at Lansing has been running in the mid-30s, down from a high of 98 vacancies in February, he said.
The number of openings at El Dorado is running in the mid-50s, down from a high of 114 in June and July of 2022, he said.
The system’s female prison in Topeka had no vacancies during most weeks since late July of this year.
The state’s Winfield facility has had no vacancies for four out of the last seven weeks.
However, Zmuda said the state is still operating 12-hour shifts in El Dorado and Lansing.
They’ve been operating those shifts since July 2021, when vacancies started taking off during the height of the pandemic.
The state is now in its 28th month of running those shifts, he said.
“We’ve got to find a way to get off those 12-hour shifts,” Zmuda said. “It’s really hard on staff.”
Zmuda said the agency runs into hiring challenges in Norton and Larned, which have small populations to hire from and there’s a shortage of housing to recruit new employees.
“We’ve had folks that were interested in hiring on – specifically at Norton. Went to relocate, could not find affordable housing to either purchase or rent,” he said.
“So, housing is an issue for us.”
The agency also is seeing a gradual decline in vacancies at the Kansas Juvenile Correctional Facility as well as for parole officers.
In 2021, Kelly and lawmakers approved $18.3 million out of federal COVID-19 relief funds for a bump in pay for fiscal 2022.
They approved another $33.9 million from the budget for fiscal 2023 and $14.3 million for fiscal year 2024.
While the numbers have improved at Lansing, the facility is not to the point where it can open a renovated housing unit for substance abuse and work release inmates.
“We’d like to get to a point where we can get that open and get it operating,” Zmuda said.
Last year, Zmuda told lawmakers that without the pay plan, staff vacancies for adult corrections workers were projected to hit 800 by November 2022.
Looking forward, Zmuda said he had hired a national marketing firm that specializes in recruiting law enforcement personnel across the country.
“Those staffing vacancies are getting better, but slower,” he said. “We need to do more to generate interest and to increase our number of candidates at our facilities.”
He said the initial plan is to target El Dorado and the juvenile corrections facility in Topeka where the need is the greatest.
He said the recruiting program would run for two or three months. Corrections administrators would then assess the outcome before moving ahead any further.
“Assuming that we have good outcomes,we’ll spread that out to the rest of our facilities.”
