Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding talks about jail overcrowding. Noah Stubbs / Courier & Press
EVANSVILLE. — Not only did the County Council approve its 2020 budget Wednesday but members also learned the Vanderburgh County Jail has a confinement officer shortage. They are short 27 members.
The Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office is having a hard time retaining and recruiting officers, according to Chief Deputy Sheriff John Strange. He told Council the national issue plaguing other public safety agencies is hitting Vanderburgh County too.
"We are having a hard time filling the jail officers' positions," Strange told Council members Wednesday. The council appropriated 11 new positions earlier this year. They haven't been able to fill those vacancies and have even more positions unfilled at this time totaling 27, Sheriff Dave Wedding said.
"In the last five years, I've hired over 120 confinement officers," Wedding said. "But now, they're just jumping ship or moving on to other occupations. The stress related to working at a jail is very taxing on people. A lot of people that work in jail aspire to be police officers. We just don't have a large influx of people applying to be a jailer."
With 27 confinement officer positions open — which is a quarter of their total staff —current jailers are putting in overtime to help fill gaps, Wedding said.
"It's routine that officers work overtime in the jail," he said. "All of our shifts are covered, but we do have people working overtime. A lot of times we have confinement officers assigned to overtime to make sure the shifts are covered."
Wedding told C&P in 2017 that it takes 85 confinement officers and 11 supervisors to run the county jail.
"We hire routinely," Wedding said. "We hired about four classes this year at minimum, and we try to get anywhere from six to eight people in each class. It's not from lack of effort. We're just losing them faster than we can replace them."
Vacancies funding additional technology
On Wednesday, the Sheriff's Office requested a $267,000 fund transfer to purchase an Uninterrupted Power Source or back up generator for the jail, to make upgrades to its technology servers and to update its software licensing.
Finance Chairman James Raben said funding for those upgrades will come from the unstaffed confinement officer positions, stating, "they're taking money out of the established salary lines where they (the jail) don't have staffing."
After a lengthy discussion on jail staffing and the transfer, the Council decided to approve the transfer.
Raben questioned whether the Council needed to spend nearly $300,000 more than what was originally budgeted.
"We're transferring $131,000, $267,000 and $27,000," Raben said. "I can see that one (transfer) is a one-time expense. We're only able to do this because we haven't filled our staff up. If our hope is to fully staff the facility, what are we going to do to budget for these items in 2020 and going forward?"
Strange couldn't say for certain whether the request would be reoccurring or just a one-time expense. However, he did elaborate on the Sheriff's Office's plan to recruit more confinement officers.
So, what's the plan?
Strange said Vanderburgh County is losing officers for various reasons. To date, three officers have resigned and are working in Warrick County. He said while the pay is the same, "the stress is less."
"We are all competing for that same small group of people," Strange said. "We have competition now with Warrick County. They're recruiting people away from us."
The Sheriff's Office is planning to recruit at local career fairs, through billboard advertisements and social media. Wedding said he is considering lowering the hiring age from 21 to 19.
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