Unemployment is down and wages are up in Kansas. But one sector is struggling. Corrections officers are leaving the state in large numbers because of low pay, reports The Topeka Capital-Journal.The exodus has triggered a public safety crisis. Legislators are grappling with the issue on top of trying to fix the state’s budget crisis. Starting pay for Kansas corrections officers is 33 percent lower than the state’s average hourly wage of just over $20. And their overall wages are a quarter lower than the national average. At thirty percent, the job has an extremely high yearly turnover rate.
More than 180 officer positions remain open at state prisons or juvenile centers. That’s about 9 percent of the state’s roughly 2,000 corrections jobs.
In July, the state Department of Corrections began allowing 18-year-olds to become officers, despite misgivings about the teens’ maturity and judgment.