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| College Grads Take Prison Officer Jobs |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/01/2002 |
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When Tatum Lodish graduated last year with a degree in criminal justice, she wanted to help keep troubled teen-agers out of prison. Now, that's where she finds herself. For the past eight months, the 23-year-old has been a correctional officer at the Berks County Prison, about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Tatum, who started at $27,000 and will go up to $36,000 after a year. As the economy struggles and layoffs are more plentiful than jobs, the number of officer applicants at jails and prisons has increased, corrections officials said. More surprising, however, is the number of college graduates turning to the corrections industry for work, said Walter Smith, president of the American Jail Association. 'During the good economic times, it was harder to recruit good officers because they could get better paying jobs somewhere else. With the downturn, we did see an increase in the quality as well as the number of applicants,' said Smith, who is a division chief of the Denver Sheriff's Department. Smith said he has been looking for correctional officers with some college, but it's not mandatory. Job security was high on the list among men and women interested in becoming corrections officers at Philadelphia's Curran-Fromhold Correction Facility in northeast Philadelphia. The annual salary is about $28,000. Ray Pielacha, 52, was at an open house at the jail looking for good pay and benefits after losing his job at a food industry warehouse. The Berks County Prison has been able to fill its full complement of officers for the first time in years, primarily because of layoffs at a few area companies. This year, the Berks County facility processed about 600 applications, twice as many as last year, deputy warden Janine Quigley said. She plans to start a waiting list so that future openings can be filled fast. That's in contrast to a year and a half ago, when the prison was about 20 officers short. |
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