Correctional Officers

Correctional officers are central and integral staff members working in adult or juvenile prisons, jails, or reformatories. Their duties involve primarily those activities associated with the security and order of the institution. They supervise inmates in housing areas, in perimeter towers, in institutional work areas, or in institutional service areas. They are [Page 324]responsible for ensuring that escapes do not occur, that institutional and personal disturbances are controlled, that institutional routine is followed, and that work is performed properly at appropriate times. These officers are also called upon to respond, within institutional guidelines, to emergency situations when they arise. While all persons working in correctional institutions are, to at least some degree, responsible for the security and order of the institution, those persons who hold the title of correctional officers are those largely responsible for those functions.

Correctional institutions exist at three levels of government in the United States: federal, state, and local. In addition, there are private companies that contract with governmental agencies to house prisoners on a contract basis. The American Correctional Association (2000a) identifies a total of more than 3,500 facilities or agencies (which includes confinement institutions) in the United States. Institutions serve either adults or juveniles, not both. The rapid expansion of prison and jail populations in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in considerable expansion of the correctional officer workforce at all institutional levels. The total number of prison beds doubled in the 1980s (Silverman 2001). The number of state and federal adult community and confinement correctional institutions increased from 1,287 in 1990 to 1,500 in 1995—a 17 percent increase (Stephan 1997). The total number of correctional staff in these institutions increased from 265,201 in 1990 to 347,320 in 1995—a 32 percent increase. The number of correctional officers assigned to the custody or security function outnumbered other correctional employees by almost two to one, increasing from 169,587 in 1990 to 220,892 in 1995—a 30 percent increase. At the federal level, 41 percent of the employees were assigned to the custody or security function; at the state level, 65 percent were assigned to custody or security.

By 1998, there were 223,023 correctional officers in state and federal institutions (Silverman 2001). In addition, there were 10,400 working in private institutions and approximately 130,000 (Bureau of the Census 2000) working in the more than 3,300 jails (Stinchcomb and Fox 1999) in the United States. Approximately 60 percent of correctional officers work in state institutions, 3 percent in federal institutions, 2.7 percent in private institutions, and 34 percent in local jails (Bureau of the Census 2000). Those working in local jails are usually employed by a sheriff's office, a police department, or a nonjurisdictional district. Turnover rates among correctional officers in state and federal correctional agencies ranged between a low of 1 percent in Vermont to a high of 51 percent in Kentucky in 1992; the average turnover for that year was 11.6 percent (Camp, Camp, and Fair 1996). It averaged 12.9 percent in 1996 (Camp and Camp 1997). Turnover rates are not readily available for local jails, but it is estimated that they exceed the turnover among state and federal institutions. One study found that the attrition rate among thirty-four jails participating in the study ranged from 7 percent to over 28 percent (Clem, Krauth, and Wenger 2000).

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