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| Low pay for juvenile correctional officers creates burden |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 02/07/2005 |
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The private employees who guard and mentor difficult juveniles in Florida's residential programs earn some of the lowest wages in the nation, causing crippling staff turnover and endangering teens, some child advocates say. The average Florida worker makes $17,398 or $8.36 an hour - about what they could make to supervise fast-food workers, stock shelves or collect tolls on the turnpike. That's less than a juvenile correctional officer makes doing the same job in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana, The Palm Beach Post found in a survey of 20 other states. "Children are not a high priority in Florida," Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez said. "Very few people in the positions of power are willing to say, 'What will it really take to safeguard our children?'" A Palm Beach County grand jury report last year said wages as low as $8 an hour and poor training contributed to violence and chaos at the Florida Institute for Girls. Workers sometimes locked the girls in their room, forcing them to miss school and activities, because they did not have enough people to guard them. Increasing numbers of lawmakers say they are convinced that the salaries need to be raised. Sen. Victor Crist, a Tampa Republican who chairs the Justice Appropriations Committee, announced that he will fight for enough money to increase the salaries of juvenile workers to $20,000 a year. In most parts of the country, state governments run lockups for the most serious teen offenders. But Florida has privatized most of its wilderness programs, vocational schools and teen lockups to cut costs. Wages in privately managed programs, already lower than the state's, then remained nearly frozen as the cost of living has risen. The legislature has not provided a substantial budget increase for the programs in 12 years. If taxpayers don't invest in programs to reform teen offenders, Alvarez said, they'll be spending even more to house prisoners for decades. "You get what you pay for down here," Alvarez said. |
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