The State of Mississippi, which has the second-highest incarceration rate in the country, is in desperate need of quality prison guards. But it can’t seem to pay for them.
The salaries are the lowest in the nation, at $24,670 a year, nearly $4,000 less than the state's overall median. Guards get only four weeks of training, compared with 16 weeks in Michigan and 12 months in New York. The combination ends up making corrections officers particularly susceptible to trafficking in contraband — and relying on violence, says Jody Owens, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center. And the same conditions have led to a stunningly high turnover rate: Last year alone, more than half of them (806 officers) quit.
[For more of this story, written by Eli Hager, go to https://www.themarshallproject...ow-pay-high-turnover]
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