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A new report on Hawai‘i’s understaffed prisons and jails warns many of the guards are exhausted and struggling with psychological and other health issues, with nearly one in 10 correctional officers saying they seriously contemplated suicide in the past year.

The report by the cites mandatory overtime for employees as a major problem, with corrections officers in some facilities regularly required to work 16- or 24-hour shifts.

“Chronic staffing shortages, mandatory overtime, insufficient health resources, and workplace stress have created an unsustainable environment that threatens staff retention and recruitment, further compounding these issues,” according to the report.

The report notes that the staffing problems have worsened over several years and are now at “a critical state,” but staff and leadership “are doing the best they can under challenging circumstances.” 

The Legislature created the five-member commission in 2019 to oversee the correctional system, but it is only advisory. Commission staff prepared the report based on a survey of more than 800 employees of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The report was presented to the Senate Public Safety and Military Affairs Committee at a public hearing on Wednesday.

The report highlights “longstanding challenges in many areas, which we continue to be committed to systematically, methodically addressing,” Tommy Johnson, the department’s director, told the committee.

“We are committed to improving operations, morale, and providing for a safer and more humane environment for those in our custody and care, and a better working environment for our dedicated staff,” Johnson said.

Correctional workers reported troubling mental health conditions, including alcohol and substance abuse disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

The survey found more than 40% of staff in Hawai‘i jails say they developed depression since they began working in corrections, and 57% said they developed alcohol or substance abuse disorders. Nearly one in three said they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“There’s always been health issues,” said Mark Patterson, chairman of the oversight commission and a veteran corrections officer and warden. “We’ve always known that a lot of our peers, they don’t last too long after retirement.”

“There’s alcoholism, there’s substance abuse, there’s divorces, there’s domestic violence,” Patterson said.

Patterson said he has also had former colleagues who committed suicide. The survey found that 8% of jail employees and 4% of prison staffers reported seriously considering suicide in the past year.

The report offers 30 recommendations from prison and jail staffers, including proposals for better training and burnout prevention.

“There is a strong need for continuous, meaningful, and consistent training that covers all necessary areas, including professional development, crisis intervention, suicide prevention, and trauma-informed care,” according to the report.

One of the recommendations was for higher pay for corrections staff to speed up recruitment, reduce vacancies, and cut down on overtime.

Johnson told the committee he is working on that.

A new corrections officer makes $69,576 after completing probation. Johnson is proposing to reinstate salary steps for corrections officers, as well as bonuses for officers who complete training and make it through their probation periods.

For more senior officers, Johnson is proposing a “longevity bonus” if they show up for work at least 80% of their shifts. That bonus would be designed to address absenteeism, which forces other employees to work overtime.

Huge Vacancies, Long Shifts

Hawai‘i has 1,535 authorized officer positions for the state’s eight prisons and jails, but the corrections department reported 434 of those were vacant at the end of November.

The department has been aggressively recruiting new officers and running extra training classes, but its vacancy rate remains at 28%. That is slightly better than the 31% vacancy rate last year, but prison and jail staffers are still required to work long hours to cover essential posts.

The correctional system paid out more than $18 million in overtime last fiscal year to ensure essential posts were manned.

Corrections Sgt. Paul Kyles, who has worked at the O‘ahu Community Correctional Center for 25 years, said the grind of mandatory overtime has been exhausting in recent years.

Officers understand they may be held back without warning at the end of their regular shifts to work an extra eight hours of overtime, Kyles said. But asking staff to work five consecutive 16-hour shifts, week after week, “is insane,” he said. “Nobody can maintain that.”

The OÊ»ahu jail, the state’s largest, paid out nearly $7.8 million in overtime last fiscal year, an increase of more than 5% over the previous year.

Patterson said short-staffing can cause visits and programs to be canceled, with inmates locked down in their cells. That raises tensions in an already overcrowded jail, he said.

“Everything just compiles, and the environment becomes more toxic than it normally would under normal conditions — if there was ever normal conditions in a correctional facility,” Patterson said. He worked as a corrections captain at the OÊ»ahu jail, the Halawa Correctional Facility, and the state’s women’s prison.

The report found that “staff generally believe they treat people in custody with respect and positively influence their lives,” but they were concerned about the adequacy of inmate programs and opportunities to prepare for them for release from custody.

Staff Under Pressure

The report also reflects the physical and mental strains on staff in prisons and jails where there are suicides and outbreaks of violence, Kyles said., which cause suffering for staff as well as inmates.

“Say you’re involved in a situation where you cut someone down, and you try to attempt CPR and you can’t save them, or you are in a situation where you see a severe beatdown or a suicide where it’s bloody and gory,” Kyles said in an interview. “There’s no one for these officers to talk to.”

The survey also demonstrates “a definite failure of the department’s leadership” to retain, recruit and keep employee morale up, said Kyles, who is a chief steward at the OÊ»ahu jail the United Public Workers union.

“You get new people who come on and see what the conditions are, and how we are treated, and it’s rough — it’s rough to retain them. They’re like, ‘I’m out of here,'” he said.

The report found that about two-thirds of staff members at the prisons and jails said they would quit and go into another line of work if they could earn similar pay.

Johnson said the department got state funding last year to train corrections officers in “trauma-informed care” through Windward Community College, and he hoping to expand the training to civilian staff members.

Staff who witness or are involved in traumatic events in prisons or jails are provided information about , he told the committee. The department’s chaplains are also asked to talk to staff.

The department has been using emergency hires to fill some gaps in the staffing, but Kyles said those new workers are not properly trained for difficult posts, including in jail housing units for inmates with mental illness. There is also a shortage of supervisors to provide on-the-job coaching, he said.

The report recommends shortening the state’s notoriously slow hiring process and conducting initial training at the facility where recruits will be working. Mentorship programs were also recommended.

Kalani Werner, UPW state director, declined a request for an interview, but said in a statement she hopes the report “will encourage the administration to listen to our calls for change.”

Read the report below.