Letter: Disputing pay of corrections' officers

In reference to Dana Moss' Oct. 14 letter regarding corrections officers being overpaid: First of all, a state corrections officer's starting salary is $1,832 per month (pay grade 27-1) and a Metro corrections officer's is $2,864 per month (pay grade 35-1).

State corrections officers are severely underpaid. A corrections officer is asked to keep people that no one wants in their neighborhood anymore. Take the worst people you know and put them all in one place and this is what kind of neighborhood we walk through everyday. Would you want your family living in this neighborhood?

As a state corrections officer, I can say we do a job very few people can do. The Nevada Department of Prisons has the strictest physical agility requirements in the country to become a corrections officer, yes, even harder than Metro.

Privatized prisons and jails are not saving anyone any money when you add in all of the indirect cost, etc. They cost more if anything. They are not peace officers and can only watch as inmates walk away from their institutions.

They can only call 911 and have our tax dollars try to capture these escaped inmates while they still get paid for an inmate they no longer have -- pure profit!

If Dana Moss thinks the job is so easy and could pass the physical, written and verbal requirements to become a corrections officer, then what is keeping Moss from entering this field of work?

Richard Absher

archive