Commissioner: Staff shortage within Department of Corrections improving

By Dave Fidlin | The Center Square

After reaching what had been described as “a crisis,” efforts to shore up staff shortages within each of Vermont’s six corrections facilities have been fruitful, according to a state official.

Nicholas Deml, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections, discussed ongoing efforts to stem the tide of staff shortages on Thursday as the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions held an ongoing series of policy and budget deliberations.

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Nicholas Deml, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections

The House panel has been discussing a plethora of issues related to the Department of Corrections — including facilities needs and the status of various treatment programs — amid a review of Gov. Phil Scott’s budget proposal.

“If we cannot fix, adjust and build a sustainable workforce in the Department of Corrections, we cannot do any of the policy objectives in the state,” Deml said. “We can’t ensure that people are successfully reentering into our community. We have to get this piece right, if we’re going to be able to do anything else.”

Deml shared data throughout his recent discussion with the committee, including statistics that pointed to an overburdened field staff in the corrections system as fallout from the pandemic.

For example, staff vacancies systemwide stood at 6.8% in the first quarter of 2019. They reached a peak of 21.5% in a four-year analysis in the third quarter of 2022 before inching down to 19.6% in the fourth quarter of 2022.

“We were at the precipice of a very dangerous slope here,” Deml said of the staffing trends.

Deml said he and others in the department have been doing a review since the pandemic. Mirroring trends seen across the U.S., Deml said the labor pool of people willing to work in the corrections field has been narrowing.

“We need to start reinventing the way we’re doing corrections,” he said.

Deml said there are a number of ways the department is striving to close the staffing shortage gap beyond offering salary increases.

“We need to be as competitive as we can be,” Deml said. “At its most basic level, we have to be able to make people want to work for the Department of Corrections, because we’re competing against every employer, with an increasingly small group of folks.”

Employee satisfaction surveys have been administered, he said, which has helped with policy decisions within the department. Calls for a greater work-life balance have reportedly been one of the takeaways from the surveys, thus far.

In response, Deml said the department tweaked scheduling. Most of the facilities, he said, have adopted a structure that gives corrections workers a guaranteed three-day weekend within a two-week pay period.

Throughout his discussion with the committee, Deml said efforts to retain and recruit employees are ongoing.

Images courtesy of Public domain and Linkedin

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