Last week the State Legislature passed the Department of Corrections Budget with
approximately $50M in cuts. These cuts will come in many forms however the one that sounds the greatest alarm – for officers, prisoners, and the community at large - is a
reduction in staff to a prison system already strained by short-staffing and rife with
violence.
"The Department’s plans to eliminate two positions per facility statewide will put another hole in the ‘wall’ we form when we walk those blocks every day," states Michigan Corrections Organization President Tom Tylutki who represents the state’s corrections and forensic security officers. There are almost 1,000 fewer corrections officers on the job today than 6 years ago with the same number of inmates. And during that time, the level of security threats, injuries and critical incidents has steadily climbed. "How can you continue to eat away at the single most important role in a prison in light of these trends and continue to believe it is safe?"
The Kinross Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula, a Level II facility, has had two stabbings, a Food Service Worker’s face burned with scalding water by an inmate, an officer assaulted in the Segregation Unit, an attempted prisoner suicide and a successful suicide, an attempted escape, and a group of inmates robbed another group of their store goods while threatening them with homemade shanks. All within the last few weeks.
At Marquette Branch Prison in the low security dormitories, a group of eleven inmates gathered around an officer at the officer’s station and refused to disburse. All eleven inmates were eventually locked up for threatening behavior.
And, at the Carson City Correctional Facility the keen observation of officers uncovered an escape attempt by several prisoners who were digging a tunnel through the cinder block wall.
And just this past weekend, a prisoner at the Level I Cooper Street Correctional Facility in Jackson refused to submit to a search and assaulted four correctional officers, one of whom required further medical treatment for their injuries.
These are just a handful of the events that occurred around the state within the last week…many more go unreported.
In Michigan we have been lucky. Recently, other states haven’t shared in that luck. A corrections officer was brutally raped and killed on June 25th at the Tomoka Correctional Institution in Florida, and another was violently stabbed to death by two inmates on June 13th at the US Penitentiary Atwater in California. "The death at Atwater has been blamed on continued short staffing in the Federal Prison System as a direct result of budget cuts. Do we have to wait for a tragedy like this to happen on our soil before anything is done? The signs are all there, now it’s just a waiting game."
The state continues to face a structural deficit and continues to address it with cuts rather than fixing the inherent problems. Thus, it will perpetuate this problem for years.
"We understand that the budget has to be balanced. But how you go about doing it can make the difference between a safe and secure prison system and being the next national headline."