Corrections Center Had 55% Employee Turnover Rate in 2022

House of Correction sign.

Like the Milwaukee County Jail, and even the state prison system, the county’s Community Reintegration Center (CRC) has been struggling to maintain staffing levels.

Formerly known as the House of Correction, the facility had a 55% staff turnover rate in 2022. The steady loss of employees throughout the year is driving a larger understaffing issue. The facility hired 87 new staff members but lost 95 last year.

The key factors driving the attrition, according to an April report by CRC officials, are the lower pay relative to surrounding counties and the difficulty of the job made worse by forced overtime, which “led to low employee morale and made implementing additional training opportunities difficult.”

The facility even began accepting fewer transfers from the Milwaukee County Jail last year, with Superintendent Chantell Jewell citing staffing issues. “It would be unsafe for me to open more dormitories right now,” she said in September 2022. “My staff are stretched very thin.”

The facility did manage to hire more staff and finished the year with a lower net loss of employees than the year prior. The turnover rate was 39% in the final quarter of 2023. The institution of a $3.00 pay raise is credited with turning the situation around. The pay raise was initially implemented as COVID-19 pandemic premium pay, but once permanent “our turnover rate dropped 14 percentage points,” according to the report.

The staffing also makes providing programming in the facility more difficult. “Often when the institution is short staffed, program staff members would have to fill in and provide coverages in the mandatory areas at the CRC, thus canceling the program for that shift or day,” says the report.

Safety and Security

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the facility saw behavior worsen during lockdowns of the facility. As restrictions have loosened and programming has returned, the facility has seen violence in the facility go down.

Between 2021 and 2022, the facility saw a 38% reduction in fights and a 43% reduction in assaults, according to the report. The report notes that staffing remains a major hindrance to “providing a safe and secure environment.”

Adequate staffing improves employee morale, helps the facility provide security for inmates and ensures access to programming, according to the report. During the pandemic, when programming was restricted for COVID-19 precautions, the facility saw physical altercations spike.

The high rate of attrition also means the corrections officers are, on average, younger and more inexperienced than in years past.

“In my experience, it takes about a year or two to really fully be able to control a housing unit. And, you know, if we have younger staff, and they’re more inexperienced, there tend to be more disruptions in that housing unit,” said David Rugaber, assistant superintendent, in March.