We are in the midst of a profound crisis in our nation’s correctional system.
Across the country, our nation’s prisons are dangerously understaffed and overcrowded.
Policymakers must act now to protect the health and safety of correctional staff, incarcerated people, and the public at large.
Prisons across the country are dangerously understaffed, overcrowded, and plagued by rapidly deteriorating conditions.
One Voice United (OVU) and FAMM, two leading organizations representing correctional staff (OVU) and incarcerated people and their families (FAMM), have joined together to form the Safer Prisons, Safer Communities campaign.
For too long, our constituencies have been pitted against one another while the safety and wellbeing of our colleagues, friends, and loved ones has suffered. While it may be surprising to some people that we would work together to draw attention to this crisis, we know our fates are intertwined and we have a shared goal of ensuring the health and safety of everyone who works and lives in prison.
EndorseFor too long, our constituencies have been pitted against one another while the safety and wellbeing of our colleagues, friends, and loved ones has suffered. While it may be surprising to some people that we would work together to draw attention to this crisis, we know our fates are intertwined and we have a shared goal of ensuring the health and safety of everyone who works and lives in prison.
SAFER PRISONS SAFER COMMUNITIES
In The News
August 6, 2025
What termination letters to Tennessee's prison guards tell us about staff retention
A Tennessean analysis of TDOC termination letters from 2024 shows that at least 149 correctional officers, corporals and sergeants employed by the department were fired in the 2024 calendar year. Nearly all the letters include the reason the employee was fired, which was most frequently "job abandonment."
Prisons throughout the country have struggled for years to find enough people willing to work in their stressful environments, often for long hours and relatively low pay. TDOC had a 22.8% vacancy rate for officers, corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains and majors in 2024 in state-run prisons — excluding the four Tennessee prisons operated by the private company CoreCivic. While that number is much higher than it was 10 years ago, it is down from the 15-year high of 30.8% in 2021, TDOC data shows.
Discussions about staffing challenges in prisons are often focused on recruitment, but the information in the termination letters sheds some light on employee retention. Terminations are, of course, just one part of the retention formula. In 2024, 414 correctional officers or higher-ranking prison officials resigned, according to information from a TDOC spokesperson.
Read ArticleAugust 5, 2025
Hot weather kills. Who gets protected?
Texas has more than a hundred prisons. Two-thirds of them don't have AC. That means most of the 137,000 people incarcerated in Texas have no temperature control. For example, it was over 99 degrees for 16 days last August at a prison about an hour from the Gulf Coast. And those temperatures were taken by the prison agency staff inside the prison cells. Compare that to county jails and animal shelters, they're required to keep the indoor temperature between 65 and 85 degrees for safety reasons. State prisons don't have any such requirements.
Read ArticleAugust 5, 2025
National Guard soldiers still working in New York prisons, 5 months after corrections officers' strike
Updated numbers from the National Guard show very little change since April in the number of soldiers actively working inside state prisons, although the strike has been over for months.
The National Guard told me that 3,000 soldiers remain on the voluntary “DOCCS (Department of Corrections and Community Supervision) personnel mission.”
That is only 115 fewer soldiers than the 3,115 that were working in the prisons as of April.
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