State prison officials are continuing to struggle to recruit prison guards for the complex of Jessup prisons where a guard was stabbed Friday, the second correctional officer stabbed there in the last year.
Corrections Secretary Gary Maynard told a Senate budget committee Monday that there are currently 165 vacancies for prison guards in the Jessup area of Anne Arundel and Howard counties. “It is extremely difficult to recruit people” when conditions are unsafe, said Maynard, who has been on the job only four weeks. This is especially true at an outdated prison such as the House of Correction, which was first built in the 1870s.
“My goal is to make it a safer place to work,” Maynard said. “You make it safer to work” and more people will sign up.
Maynard and Gov. Martin O?Malley had lunch Monday with about two dozen correctional officers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Sheila Hill of AFSCME?s statewide corrections unit said O?Malley had committed his department to regular meetings with front-line correctional officers.
Last year, starting prison salaries for correctional officers were raised almost 10 percent to $34,313 per year, and signing bonuses were added. Deputy Corrections Secretary Lawrence Franklin said the raises have helped increase the pool for hiring.
In 2006, the correction department tested 5,700 people for correctional jobs, almost twice the number it had tested in 2005. But still the department was only able to hire 17 percent more guards than it hired the year before, 1,098 in 2006 compared to 935 in 2005.
“That?s been a tremendous turnaround,” Franklin said. “We?re obviously able to hire more people.”
The department told a legislative budget analyst that the top five reason applicants are not selected include: a drug history, a criminal record, poor work history, false information given to an investigator and falsifying the application.
In December, 10 percent of jobs in the prison system were vacant, about 750 jobs. O?Malley?s budget is asking for 177 new positions.
“There doesn?t seem to be a line forming to get these jobs,” said state Sen. James Ed DeGrange, whose Anne Arundel County district includes most of the Jessup prisons.
One of the biggest problems in the Jessup area is lack of transportation, Franklin said. The department is developing a request for proposal for a private contractor to provide door-to-door service from Baltimore to the prisons in Jessup.
