Shifting responsibility isn't the answer
I like my job as a correctional officer, but I am alarmed by the lack of concern for public safety and the safety of officers who work at our prisons.
Our governor declared that the state Assembly lacks guts to cut prison costs. I find that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lacks the experience to lead our state. He has shifted the burden for the state's debt to counties and cities by taking badly needed funds from their budget to fix the state's budget.
Shifting responsibility is not an answer. It's a cowardly way of making someone else deal with a problem that's wholly the state's responsibility. Shifting inmates to overcrowded county jails and disregarding sentencing guidelines by creating new ones, and letting inmates go to save money, only sends a signal to cities and counties that the state will disregard public safety in order to shirk responsibility to protect the public.
Right now the governor will not even concede that the furlough program for safety officers such as California Correctional Peace Officers is a miserable failure. Officers are often paid overtime to cover furlough days. When staff positions are left vacant, increasingly overburdened staff is left to deal with assaults on staff and inmates.
It's ironic that an officer can be sanctioned with pay reduction or even the loss of his job for being "less than alert," but the state itself is responsible for the staff shortage that requires them to work a 16-hour shift. Of course most of us are not allowed to take the furlough days but must forfeit the three days' pay, and when morale has hit an all-time low, the state has decided to send Internal Affairs to search staff for cigarettes and cell phones.
I presume that they have figured out those officers who do smoke at home would probably sneak a smoke while working the 16 hour shifts, not to mention using their cell phones to contact the family they will not see.
I will leave you with this. I have had friends and co-workers who have been seriously assaulted (and one killed) in the line of duty. We are not the knuckle-dragging guards you see in the movies. We go to church, are foster parents to special-needs children, coach Little League; we're fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.
The state Legislature has a hard job to do in reforming the prison system. I am thankful that they take the time necessary to make comprehensive changes that don't create new problems or shirk their responsibility.
Michael Smith of Bakersfield is a correctional officer at California State Prison Corcoran.
