Trumps Budget Cuts Are Forcing Teachers and Nurses to Work as Federal Prison Guards

“It’s a Molotov cocktail about to explode.”

Samantha Michaels

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2018/02/trumps-budget-cuts-are-forcing-teachers-and-nurses-to-work-as-federal-prison-guards/

Twice in one week, Ray Coleman, a teacher at the Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution, reluctantly had to drop his lesson plans and go to work as a guard. “You show up in the morning and they say, ‘Hey, by the way, here’s your keys and radio—you’re going to work the compound today,” he says.

Because the low-security prison is short on staff, Coleman and his fellow teachers are regularly assigned to work as correctional officers in the units where inmates live. On those days, they either cancel their courses or leave the classroom open for inmates to fill out worksheets, unsupervised. “For the most part they’re just sitting there,” Coleman says.

Teachers aren’t the only ones assigned to guard duty—so are the prison’s nurses, case workers, and even accountants. And it’s not just happening in Florida. Federal prison employees across the country say staffing cuts made by the Trump administration have crippled their ability to provide services to inmates and keep prisons safe. “It’s very dire,” says Valerie Limon, a drug treatment specialist at the Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex in California. (Limon and other prison employees spoke to Mother Jones on behalf of their union, the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals.) “Morale at our institution is probably at an all-time low.”