Conditions improve at one federal prison — but one big piece is still missing

A new warden and direct hiring authority for correctional officers have improved conditions at one troubled federal prison. But staff at the Federal Correctional Institution Thomson, in Thomson, Illinois, aren’t paid enough. And they still deal with too many unfilled positions. That’s according to the president of AFGE local 40-70, Jon Zumkehr, who joins me now on  the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin
It sounds like you’ve got sort of a mixed bag out there in the long troubled Thompson. There’s a new warden that seems to be making the right moves. And there is direct hiring authority for correctional officers that you badly need, but yet you still have officers that are not filled, the positions are not filled. And there’s some other issues. Give us the rundown.

Jon Zumkehr
Yeah, we’ve actually, turned Thompson around. We’ve actually focused on programming, we lead the bureau right now in inmate programming. 91% of the inmates participate in programming right now, which is leading the bureau. We do visitation five days a week. Why is that important, is to keep the inmates active to keep them busy, to keep them from doing bad things. However, that being said, we are short staffed just like we’ve been before, just like when Thompson opened when the state of Illinois opened it. We’ve been short staffed, so we have the retention bonus that Representative Bustos, Senator Durbin and Senator Duckworth fought for we secured. Director Peters in December cut the pay at Thompson.

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Tom Temin
This is Bureau of Prisons Director Peters.

Jon Zumkehr
Yes, she is the director of the Bureau of Prisons. She cut the pay, and says we no longer need it because of the mission change. We said from day one, like no, it’s just the opposite. You need to find out what we’re doing first and the numbers, and when we ran the numbers, were authorized 474 staff. We’re currently short 124 positions at Thompson. And we went back to our members of Congress and said, You need to get this point across to her that we need this retention here. And the response that we’re getting, and I actually talked to the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons last week, when she testified in front of Congress. We talked to her, and I said to her, you cut the law enforcement pay at Thompson for the staff, we are hurting, we have 124 vacant positions. We lost 60 staff this year since you cut the pay. And she said Jon, retention is just a band aid. And my response to her, is we are bleeding out and we need this band aid until we get Congress to do their job and to fund the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Tom Temin
Sure.

Jon Zumkehr
The director is actually heading the right direction on some of these issues. She requested a special pay rate, she said in her testimony under oath, she said it’ll cost 600 million to fund her her special pay rate. We appreciate that. But we also know how Congress works. And again, just an alarming fact is the House of Representatives went on break. They have 13 working days left until the election, and we have the appropriations bills that are sitting in limbo.

Tom Temin
Well, let me just back up for a moment. Let’s review for listeners. The fact that Thompson a couple of years ago switched from being a maximum security prison. There were issues of violence to becoming, I think a mid level security. Is that fair way to put it?

Jon Zumkehr
Yeah, we’re a low security institution. We house a medium low security inmates.

Tom Temin
And so it sounds like the issue then is not dangerous inmates per se. But the fact that Thompson is just such an isolated location within Illinois, that might be one of the issues in recruiting people you think.

Jon Zumkehr
That’s 100% is the Office of Personnel Management has said, on the record, that we are remote location, we’re hard to fill location, and the desirability to work at Thompson because of a lack of childcare in the schools. There is no disputing that fact, everyone, even the director acknowledges that. So we cannot get lumped in to every other prison that’s facing the same recruitment and retention crisis when we have these additional factors that we’re facing. And that is where we want people to understand that you have to separate parts to fill locations. It’s no different than the NASA standard that the NASA used to fill their people in Houston. So that’s kind of the same thing. We need the pay increase across the board in the bureau.

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Tom Temin
Sure.

Jon Zumkehr
But we also need address a hard to fill locations and take those into account and get a special pay rate for these locations in general. That’s the safety, I look at the safety is a staffing shortage is a safety problem. One of the reasons the senator Duckworth and Durbin and Representative Bustos push so hard is we had five deaths in a short amount of time at Thompson due to one of the factors were short staffing. So my question to the lawmakers is does another person have to die before you guys act? And that is the question. We’re coming to you before this and say, we have the most vacant positions in a standalone prison in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, does someone have to die before Congress acts? And that’s a question that we’ve been saying and again, it’s getting Congress to appropriate the money to fund these positions.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with John Zumkehr. He is Bureau of Prisons correctional officer and president of AFGE local 4070. So the direct hiring authority is not working. And I just want to touch on another issue you mentioned, because we’ve talked about this in the past, and that is having the programming for the inmates such that their lives are better that makes the correctional officers lives and the rest of the staff lives better. And you have a new warden that has promoted that idea of having those opportunities, educational and so forth for the inmates. Talk about some of those changes. That is least made life better for those that do work there.

Jon Zumkehr
Yeah. So the one programming, eventually people are going to go back in society. So what some Senator Durbin, the one conversation we had with him is he wanted to make Thompson the premier programming spot in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we share that idea with them. And that’s why we take the serious. Talk is cheap, we are actually leading the bureau with 91% inmate participate in programs. That was in the last three months. We’ve expanded a welding program we have, because that’s a life skill. People can get a real job with a real certification when they go out. We also have a truck simulator that we’re in the process of getting, to get people certifications for jobs. These are real things that are happening at Thompson, that hasn’t happened before. And that’s kind of where if we don’t have staff, these programs won’t happen. And that’s where we need people to understand this, like, without staff, the first step back does not happen. People will not be going to programs to better themselves, because it takes staff and the whole point of augmentation is it makes a prison less safe. And an analogy I just want to share is, if we have 100 staff that are supposed to be working at the prison, and you take 10 staff away and put them in other roles to work as an officer, you now have 10 less staff working in that prison. It makes the prison left safe. And this is what we’re fighting for to keep the staff and the inmates safe.

Tom Temin
And I wanted to ask you, with that staff shortage, what does that translate to in terms of the daily life of the people that do work there? Correctional officers are close to the inmates. So you forced to be double shifting, what is the practical effect of the staff shortage?

Jon Zumkehr
We’ve had times you about three weeks ago, that we had a whole shift get mandated. We augment 10 to 12 staff a day, my daily thing is that we have 10 to 12 staff that come in, and they get reassigned to a different position. And that’s a new normal, and those are people that are not doing their jobs, as teachers, as nurses, they’re just not doing the job, because they’re put in a different area and then nobody does a job after that. So it steals from Peter to pay Paul. That’s kind of where it makes the prison less safe. And that’s why we just need to fully fund the prison, we need for Thompson, like we have a good thing. And the director acknowledges that we know we’re heading in the right direction. But if we don’t have staff, and the one thing is I want to highlight is the union has done so many job fairs. So we’re not just complaining about a problem we’re actually active in the solution of the problem is get people and I have a voice to say that when we have an issue, we need to be transparent about it. And again, like the whole time, the good stuff that we went through. And the bad stuff we went through is number one thing that we’ve said on the record is we need to be transparent with the good, the bad and the ugly.

Tom Temin
I was gonna say what’s the selling proposition at a job fair for coming to the Bureau of Prisons, and becoming a correctional officer.

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Jon Zumkehr
So there’s up to the $10,000 recruitment bonus for working in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we have direct hire authority now, which we’re thankful for. It takes a while to get that ball rolling. But that’s where it’ll cut the red tape, and hopefully we can get the person in within three weeks when they apply, if all the qualifications are met.

Tom Temin
But I mean, for the job itself, what do you say to people that you’re trying to recruit? Why they should become a correctional officer? Because externally it sounds like pretty tough work.

Jon Zumkehr
Yes, it’s a pretty tough work. The stressors of the job is a lot. However, it’s a gateway into the federal government to working as a federal worker. I’ve been doing this now for 18 years and when I got the job, I only thought of going to be doing it for a year. And 18 years later, I’m still here. And the benefits, retirements great. We just need to get the pay fixed at Thompson, and we’ll be good.

Tom Temin
But there is satisfaction in working with the inmates too. Does that go with the job.

Jon Zumkehr
Yeah, it’s communication. It’s seeing the work that we’ve done at Thompson. Again, like, we got a lot of people complain that we were expanding the visitation to five days a week, because it’s not something done in the bureau. But what we look at it as, it’s a programming tool, it’s giving people more time with their family, and if they have more time with their family, then if they do something bad, that’s something we can pull back, but it’s something we’re hoping that more family time will result in less violence inside the prison.

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