Where I Stand -- Mike O'Callaghan: Big danger and little pay for correctional officers

SO YOU THINK you have a tough job? Don't be too upset because there are thousands of Nevadans who probably have even more difficult tasks to feed their families.

Let's take the men and women who work in our jails and prisons. Their jobs are not only strenuous but oftentimes dangerous. Every day they are working with people who have refused to live according to the general rules expected in a civilized society. The correctional officers have to be skilled in identifying problems, promoting positive programs, protecting themselves and protecting the weaker prisoners from the bullies in the prison population. And this, in crowded facilities, is no small task.

In addition to their basic jobs, these highly trained officers must strive to help prisoners improve their conduct and skills before being released back into our communities. That's right, more than 70 percent of the prisoners under state control will someday be returned to your neighborhood and mine. That's why today I'm writing about the men and women working with some real hard cases in our state prisons.

More than 20 years ago, I advocated the building of a super-maximum prison to handle the tough troublemakers for the states of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Correctional experts convinced me that if the nastiest 1 percent of the prisoners were removed from the prison more could be done to help the others. The ACLU whined about this idea and so did a few sociologists but since then some states have done this on their own. This is a subject for a later column.

Every week Nevada courts send people to prison for everything from murder and rape to selling dangerous drugs and narcotics. Few of us ever hear of them again until they come home. That's unless they are killed or kill another prisoner, file a lawsuit or are involved in some news-making incident. Very little, if anything, good seems to make news in our prisons. All during this time, fellow Nevadans working night and day are with the people who we sent away because of the danger they were to our friends, families and neighbors.

Don't, for one minute, believe that every prisoner is a killer or can't learn to adjust to outside society. It's important that inmates guilty of nonviolent crimes are protected from prisoners who prey upon them. Too often prisons have been run by the physically strong and brutal inmates. This kind of situation is not only dangerous, but can't be tolerated by a responsible society. Families with loved ones in confinement expect that their brother, sister, father or husband will someday return to them and assume their role in the family. The trained correctional officers are the people held responsible for this transition to take place safely.

What are these dedicated state employees being paid? Not enough when compared to what correctional officers are being paid in Clark and Washoe County jails. Then when you compare what all Nevada correctional officers are being paid with the California Department of Corrections, none of our people are being paid enough.

A note from some of our state correctional officers tells me: "It is sad to say that a State of Nevada employee, the newly hired correctional officer, is qualified as a borderline welfare candidate. That individual, married with two children making the entry-level salary of $25,797 per year, less retirement of 14.75 percent ($3,805.06) and paying HMO dependent coverage of $4,212 or $2,052 in the Self-Funded State Plan, leaves little left for any viable savings, much less a decent living. To reach the top level of salary range requires eight years service. Note: Officers of California DOC costs for dependent coverage is $246 per year with the state paying $4,932."

Kenny and Jan, make note of this when preparing the state budget for the next two years. What's fair is fair, but right now we aren't being fair with the people holding the toughest jobs in Nevada state government.

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