‘Not going to stop the bleeding’: SC Juvenile Justice throws money at staffing crisis
The severely understaffed state agency that houses and educates juvenile offenders is taking steps to bolster its workforce following an employee walkout over pay and working conditions earlier this month.
The Department of Juvenile Justice, which is down more than 200 correctional officers since October 2016, is giving workers raises and bonuses and upping its advertising and recruitment efforts to help attract and retain frontline staff amid reports that employees feel unsafe at work and routinely log double shifts due to staffing shortages.
“We are keenly aware of the staffing shortage, and the primary goal is to hire a sustainable workforce that will increase staffing numbers to aid with safety, security and services for both our youth and teammates,” Juvenile Justice spokesman Jarid Munsch said in a statement. “We are always looking for new opportunities to further attract and retain qualified candidates for those roles.”
While staffing shortfalls and low pay are nothing new at the Department of Juvenile Justice, conditions have deteriorated in recent years as frontline staff leave the department due to exhaustion or injury and aren’t replaced.
The agency’s manpower shortages were laid bare in a recent audit that found the department failed to meet its own internal staffing guidelines and had experienced a surge in violence at its facilities as a result.
Reported incidents of juvenile-on-juvenile or juvenile-on-staff violence at secure facilities increased 42% from 2017-20, the S.C. Legislative Audit Council found, and nearly 80% of juvenile correctional officers reported not feeling safe on the job, a 25 percentage point increase from three years earlier.
Employee discontent over working conditions at the agency boiled over in early June when staffers at a detention facility in Columbia walked off the job to protest what some described as inhumane treatment.
Juvenile correctional officers alleged they were forced to work 24-hour shifts, or longer, without breaks and said the lack of staffing depleted officers, slowed their response times and left them vulnerable to assaults by juveniles.
Agency officials hope a better compensation package for workers and enhanced recruitment efforts can help turn the tide at the agency, which has increasingly struggled to find and retain workers willing to put in grueling hours at a dangerous job that pays just $30,000 to start.
As more staff leave, the more strained conditions become; and the more strained conditions become, the more staff leave. It’s a vicious cycle that’s resulted in more than 40% of juvenile correctional officer positions going unfilled, according to department data.
“The agency’s inability to retain and hire security staff has created a ‘snowball’ effect that not only creates conditions that are hazardous to youth and staff at its secure facilities, but limits the agency’s ability to correct those conditions,” auditors wrote in their April report on the agency’s operations.
The blistering report, which one lawmaker called a “damning indictment” of South Carolina’s juvenile justice system, spurred lawmakers to form a special panel to take testimony from auditors and question embattled DJJ Director Freddie Pough about their findings.
Pough’s critics have called on him to resign, saying his efforts to revive the agency have fallen short, but Gov. Henry McMaster has supported the director throughout the ordeal and touted his reform attempts.
Juvenile Justice redoubles employee recruitment, retention efforts
Juvenile Justice has for years sought to raise base salaries for frontline staff, who make thousands less than their counterparts at other state agencies.
Pough has requested between $4 and $5 million from lawmakers each of the past three years to provide correctional officers and case managers pay bumps, but until this year had received only $1 million total.
In the absence of salary increases, the department last year implemented sign-on bonuses for new employees and referral bonuses for current employees who helped recruit new hires. The agency sweetened the pot again last month, announcing that new officers, nurses, psychologists, case workers, mental health professionals and food service employees would receive up to $10,000 sign-on bonuses and that workers who refer them would get up to $1,000.
The bonuses are paid out in installments spread across as many as three years.
Department officials plan to assess how the incentives affect application submissions and impact the department’s vacancy rate over the coming months, Munsch said.
“DJJ recognizes current employees are our best recruiters, and we’re hopeful they’ll be encouraged by the referral incentive to spread the word about the great opportunities available within the agency,” he said. “We’ll remain committed to this effort over the long-term, and these new incentives are another positive step in the right direction.”
Juvenile Justice also recently approved $1,500 retention bonuses for nearly 900 critical-need and direct-care staff, which when combined with the $1,000 supplement they received in March, equates to the first-year installment of a new employee sign-on bonus.
The agency hopes to provide staff $2,500 bonuses annually going forward, as long as vacancy pool money is available, Munsch said.
In past years, Juvenile Justice held onto the money it was allotted to fill open positions, but as vacancies increased and it became clear that backfilling all open positions would be impossible, the agency began to explore ways to redirect that money.
Since May 2020, the agency has used roughly $900,000 of its vacancy pool money to pay out employee signing and referral bonuses, Munsch said.
Future bonuses will come on top of the raises that some frontline workers are expected to receive next month following passage of the state budget.
The state’s 2021-2022 spending plan, which lawmakers approved Monday, provides the agency more than $4.5 million for raises and should allow the Department of Juvenile Justice to bring the salaries of juvenile correctional officers and case managers closer, if not equal, to comparable workers at the Department of Corrections and the Department of Mental Health, officials said.
The agency will need to work with the Department of Administration to determine the exact salary increases, Munsch said, but has proposed raising base pay for correctional officers and case managers by $4,000 and $6,000, respectively.
The agency also has discussed enticing workers with paid educational leave and student debt repayment programs, but to date has not enacted those initiatives.
“I’d like to think we, as an agency, have really tried to show that good faith effort that the work is being put in,” Munsch said. “We’re trying not to leave any stone unturned when it comes to recruiting and retaining our staff and being able to resolve the organizational challenges that come with the staffing shortage.”
Juvenile Justice has purchased billboard space in several counties to promote its new monetary incentives and this month ramped up job fairs to recruit entry-level juvenile correctional officers and security specialists.
Until new employees can be hired and onboarded, the department plans to supplement security staffing at the Broad River Road Complex with private guards who will work the gates, staff control rooms and help with on-campus transportation so that trained correctional officers are free to work directly with juveniles.
The 40 new contract guards, who will make between $24 and $26 per hour, are being paid with vacancy pool funds, Munsch said. Initial hires are expected this week or next week.
DJJ hiring push is ‘too little, too late,’ lawmakers say
Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, said she thinks the agency’s recruitment and retention efforts are a positive development, but doesn’t believe they’ll be effective unless working conditions at Juvenile Justice facilities improve dramatically.
Officers are simply not going to encourage their friends to work a job where they constantly fear for their safety, she said, adding that trying to solve the agency’s staffing problems with bonuses is akin to treating an IED injury with a Bandaid.
“It’s not going to stop the bleeding,” she said. “It’s not gonna get better with what they’re doing right now. There needs to be a complete change in what’s happening.”
Shealy, who chairs the Corrections and Penology subcommittee reviewing the DJJ audit, said employees have told her that little has changed at the Broad River Road Complex since the walkout. If anything, it’s gotten worse, she said.
Lt. Ricky Dyckes Jr., one of the officers who joined the protest outside the Broad River Road Complex earlier this month and later testified about conditions at the facility, said Wednesday that officers there were still working long hours and facing frequent assaults.
He said employee pay bumps are greatly appreciated and will help morale a bit, but that higher-ups should have dealt with the department’s staffing issues years ago because things are now too far gone to rectify.
“Until they increase the safe conditions, who can honestly say, ‘Hey man , do you want to get a job at DJJ?’” Dyckes Jr. said. “It’s hard to reach out and recruit people when it’s not safe. Nobody wants to come in thinking they’re working 12 hours and they get up in here and are working 24.”
He said many current workers are looking for jobs elsewhere and would be willing to take pay cuts just to escape the brutal workload.
Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, one of Pough’s most strident critics, also questioned the agency’s renewed push to boost staffing levels.
“The problem I have with all of this is that Freddie Pough has been there four years now and all of a sudden he’s come up with all these innovative things,” the Richland Democrat said. “Where’s he been for the last four years? I think it’s too little, too late.”
Harpootlian said he didn’t think Pough, a former State Law Enforcement Division lieutenant, was qualified to run the agency and that children would suffer as long he remained in the post.
“I’m disappointed the governor won’t wake up and realize he’s got the wrong guy in a position that makes a huge difference,” he said.
Shealy echoed her colleague’s sentiment and said she thought Pough had lost the respect of workers and could never hope to regain it.
“When you have a group of employees that have the courage to stand up before you and say some of the things they have said, I think the only way to regain that (respect) is new leadership,” she said.
For the time being, however, Pough’s job appears to be safe.
Brian Symmes, the governor’s spokesman, this week reiterated that the director was not on thin ice with McMaster and commended his efforts to recruit and retain more frontline agency staff.
“The department’s struggle with staffing, pay, and retention is not unique,” Symmes said in a statement. “Criminal justice and law enforcement agencies in the state have been dealing with recruitment and retention problems for years.”
Shealy, who has met personally with McMaster to share her concerns about Pough’s leadership, said she feared it would take someone getting seriously injured or killed on his watch before the governor acts.
“I wish the governor would see that we’re trying to do the right thing,” she said. “We’re not trying to play hard ball, we just want to do what’s right.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘Not going to stop the bleeding’: SC Juvenile Justice throws money at staffing crisis."