Missouri Prison Reform has received so much information that DOC facilities are extremely understaffed and unsafe. From overdoses to suicides, they’re becoming more unsafe every day. Despite receiving millions of dollars for recruitment, the DOC cannot hire and retain enough staff to keep staff and the incarcerated safe. We have received multiple messages from DOC staff who are frustrated with this situation. Here’s one we received from staff at Maryville Treatment Center. We received their permission to post. 

“Maryville Treatment Center has become an absolute joke. They’ve just made us aware of the amount of overtime hours the shifts have had to work just in December thus far and they are up in the 600s for each shift. Our officers are being worked to death. They don’t care. They say “it’s getting better” every chance they get but in reality it’s getting worse. They keep lowering our staffing needs so it “looks better” but we work below critical on every shift which is becoming dangerous. Last week when we had a lot of overdoses the only responding officers on most shifts were a sergeant and a CO because in housing unit 4 only two officers run 3 floors so one floor is left unattended and we’ve been told housing unit two on night shift only had one CO majority of two nights in a row taking care of almost 200 incarcerated individuals by themselves and this is the housing unit that had most of the ODs. We are unable to write CDVs or put the offenders in ADSEG unless they OD. One offender that was in ADSEG for overdosing ended up overdosing two more times while in ADSEG. This is getting out of hand. We are losing staff faster than we are “recruiting” staff due to the mandated overtime and being written up or criticized by administrators for refusing or calling in. Someone is going to get severely hurt or even killed and most of us are fearful that we could have another disturbance like we did last year. We need to be shut down for the safety and security of both staff and offender populations-Concerned Staff Members”

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