Testimony on the Budget of the
Ohio Department of Youth Services

Annie Person
DYS Assembly President
Ohio Civil Service Employees Association/AFSCME
April 3, 2007

Good afternoon Chairman Patton and members of the subcommittee. My name is Annie Person. I am an activist for Ohio Civil Service Employee Association and serve as the union’s DYS Assembly President.

I am also a Juvenile Correction Officer for the Department Of Youth Services.  I have been with the Department for 13 years and I currently work at Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility which houses sex offenders who have been committee to the Department. 

I feel fortunate to work at Circleville because the environment appears to be controlled and stable.  The ratio of youth to staff on the living unit is lower – 24-to-2 – on our first shift than at other DYS facilities.

I know you have heard higher inmate-to-correction officer ratios that are common in the adult prison system. Our situation is a significantly different. First our facilities and housing units are much smaller than adult prisons. However, at my particular workplace, our youth also have to be single bunked because they are largely sex offenders.

However, I must tell you that at other DYS institutions the ratio is much higher on the living units. For example, some first shifts have ratios of 48-to-2 creating conditions for more dangerous and  unpredictable activity by the offenders.

Although the Agency’s programs and service are important to the well being of each youth committed to the Department, I ask that you keep in mind the uphill struggles that we as staff working in this Agency have encountered in recent years.

One of the obstacles is that we continue to experience second-guessing or gross exaggerations about how we control the youth. For example, in 2004, an over zealous prosecutor charged 12 of my coworkers with assaults They were fired or suspended because of the mostly phony allegations that were made against them.  They had their names dragged through the mud for over two years. In the end, however, charges against eight of the 12 were totally dropped and three had charges reduced to simple misdemeanors. Only one was found guilty of the original assault charge, and he rightly lost his job at DYS. Unfortunately, the other 11 still have been permanently stained by the original charges.

Another obstacle we face is naivety regarding the type of youth we are responsible for. RECLAIM Ohio provides the juvenile courts flexibility and funding to develop community programs for young offenders. At the same time, RECLAIM Ohio encourages judges to commit only serious and chronic delinquents to DYS.  I repeat, commit only serious and chronic delinquents to DYS.  In other words, youth that make it into a DYS facility are offenders who are so violent and out of control that the counties demand that we take them off their hands.

Nevertheless, it appears the media and other commentators have forgotten the kind of youth that are committed to DYS. Unfortunately, we staff are reminded every day of how violent and unpredictable these individuals can be.

In fact, the violence they are willing to resort to is on an upswing. Attached to my testimony is recent data provided to our union by DYS officials. It indicates that assaults in January, February and March of this year are up over 75 percent from the same period in 2006.  More and more of these assaults are resulting in both temporary and permanent injuries, a situation that aggravates our staffing problem.

In addition, youth on youth assaults are on the rise as is destruction of state property. 

Each time an incident is reported, I ask myself, “What could we have done differently to have prevented this incident?”  The solution is to become proactive with training, with staffing levels and with youth accountability.

Yet, our training is another obstacle.  It is too sporadic and Mr. Chairman, it is important for you and your subcommittee to understand that we are responsible for maintaining control over youth who range in size from small kids who have barely started their teenage growth spurt to tall and enormously strong older teenagers who are easily twice my size. Department protocols and necessity dictate what kinds of measure we can use to gain control and protect ourselves. We also face special challenges depending upon whether the youth are males or females.

In order for us to be at our best, we need more frequent drilling and practice time so that we can react reflexively using the proper techniques instead of hoping we can recall each of the “proper” steps we were taught months ago.

The last obstacle I want to discuss is staffing levels.

First, there is a connection between staffing levels and training. Currently, most of our DYS facilities are so short staffed that when, say, a Juvenile Corrections Officer is sent to a class their position is not filled with a temporary employee. This leaves staff in a Catch-22 like situation where we want more training, but hate the risks that are involved with losing a co-worker while he or she is in the training event.

An even greater staffing concern has to do with working alone. Corrections employees – whether working with adult or juvenile populations – should never work along. While this seldom happens in adult prisons, DYS staff face working alone on a daily basis.

Sometimes working alone happens on the late night shift. Can you imagine the fear one of members felt when she recently called the union in the middle of the night to report that while she was on duty at 3 AM in a housing unit, a large number of the youth had broken their room door locks and were on the lose. She said she had sought reinforcements from other JCOs but all of them were also working alone and not allowed to leave their units unguarded.

Or can you imagine the worry of another one of our members who was recently asked to escort alone a group of several dozen youth single-file across a facility’s campus to an evening meal. The problem was that it was dark and required the formation to snake around buildings such that the JCO was blocked from seeing the entire line. It should have been no surprise that one of the youth also notice that the JCO’s vision was being blocked and used the situation to stage an escape attempt.

The final comment I want to make about staffing has to do with mandatory overtime. Absences due to resignations, training, illness, injury and transportation assignments  force DYS managers to reach minimum staffing levels by means of mandatory overtime every single day and in every institution.  Of course, overtime opportunities are sometimes welcome by the workforce and, of course, it would not be unexpected for any workplace to occasionally need overtime. However, when mandatory overtime is necessary every day, every shift and at every institution, then something is very wrong. Persistent mandatory overtime adds a large amount of extra stress to an already stressful job, and leads to health and family problems and high usage of sick leave. It can also mean that JCOs – after working several days at 16 hours per day – are not operating at peak alertness and ability. When my union looks at the big picture, we are not convinced that operating with mandatory overtime and minimum staffing levels are safe and efficient ways to deal with predictable, daily staff shortages.

The last two years have been rough on DYS staff. Although we had the media, Juvenile Justice, prosecutors, the Corrections Institutional Inspection Committee and our own management doubting our dedication, we have stood by the Agency’s mission to maintain public safety.

I am here to tell you that my goal is still to achieve a culture that shows collaboration among staff.

Therefore, I come to you in support of the recommended changes to the DYS budget in 2008 and 2009.   Speaking on behalf of my union, I believe that the improvements will give DYS managers the opportunity to:

1. Ensure safe and secure juvenile correctional facilities
2. Promote the secure delivery of youth services and programming
3. Provide continuous monitoring of security, quality of life and conditions of confinement
4. Provide basic supervisions, care and control of youth, including holding youthful offenders accountable for their behavior
5. Ensure that the daily operations of every facility are as efficient and effective as possible
6. Fund training services for staff members to provide current training to new and existing employees
7. And I add -Provide adequate and sufficient staffing levels that will meet the needs of all eight institutions

Thank you.  I will be happy to answer any questions you or your committee may have at this time.

See Related

DYS Budget: Leader says JCOs face obstacles, job loss

Ohio Department of Youth Services