The latest embarrassment for the Department of Corrections is the escape last Sunday of two murderers from the isolated Daggett County jail and the lack of communication between the Daggett County sheriff and the Corrections Department.
The sheriff is being criticized for not alerting residents that two killers were loose in their neighborhood, and Corrections brass are being vilified for not notifying relatives of the killers' victims, who feel particularly vulnerable.
This apparent example of raw incompetence comes three months after correctional officer Stephen Anderson was slain while accompanying an inmate to the University of Utah Hospital for a medical procedure. Corrections officials were second-guessed by many of their own employees for sending a 60-year-old officer alone on a trip with a buff 27-year-old felon with a violent past who had boasted of escaping.
Both instances can be partially blamed on poor funding for Corrections by the Legislature. Gov. Jon Huntsman shares blame for his knee-jerk removal of Corrections Director Scott Carver after a particularly damning audit of the department and his replacement with someone who had no experience in Corrections administration.
When Anderson was slain, there wasn't enough money in the budget, apparently, to spare two transportation officers to take inmate Curtis Allgier to the medical center.
A report submitted to lawmakers in May by the Legislative Fiscal Analyst's Office noted the serious problem in turnover rates for prison correctional officers - as much as 13 percent a year. The officers get their training through the state, then bolt to county jurisdictions for more pay.
"At any given time," the report said, vacancies (in correctional jobs) may be as high as 90 positions."
The fiscal analyst said the Legislature has been generous to the department the past two years, appropriating $3.6 million - in addition to cost-of-living adjustments - for raises in 2006 and $2.5 million in 2007.
Yet, after years of neglect, it seems to be too little, too late.
The report noted that, after the raises, starting pay for prison correctional officers is $13.26 an hour and the average hourly wage is $15.90 per hour. The starting wage at the Davis County jail is $15.08, Salt Lake County's is $15.57, Utah County's is $16.05 and Weber County's is $14.84.
Besides the shortage of correctional officers, the department has a critical dearth of experience at the administrative level, with a rapid turnover of executives over the past few years.
Huntsman didn't help that situation when he abruptly dispatched Carver after he made some insensitive remarks in response to the critical audit. He replaced him with Tom Patterson, director of the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, whose first experience with Corrections administration would be as the head guy, or "The Decider," as President George W. Bush might say.
The sudden removal of Carver might not have been bad had there been a deputy director or someone else with reasonable experience to step right in. That wasn't the case.
The policies and procedures manual has not been adequately updated in several years, Corrections employees say, even though the prison population has become more violent and gang-oriented.
Former Corrections chief Mike Chabries might have summed up the frustrations among Corrections personnel a few years ago when, at the time he was resigning, he used every penny he could find in the existing budget without having to get legislative approval to give a one-time $1,000 bonus to Corrections employees.
That, the employees said, was his way of "mooning" the Legislature.
