Texas counties are struggling with a growing shortage of detention officers and are using creative recruiting efforts to help solve the problem.
The sheriff’s office has nearly 130 detention officers opening in Dallas County alone, said Raul Renya, public information officer.
“To have 129 positions available for detention officers that work in the jail, that’s a big number,” Reyna told Fox 4. “It’s not just us; we’re seeing it all throughout Dallas County and the state of Texas, and the nation right now. Everybody’s hurting to try and get applicants in and get them started.”
He said Dallas County is implementing skill-based bonuses and higher salaries to attract more officers.
“Right now, we’re starting off detention service officers and our dispatchers at over $46,000 a year, and you can start at 18 years old,” Reyna said.
The county is also holding a job fair on May 28 to fill law enforcement and civilian jobs in multiple departments. Reyna said that Dallas detention officers work overtime and extra shifts to cover the shortage.
“They’ve been doing excellent trying to maintain until we can get more people in,” Reyna said. “Every week, I see new hires coming in. We’re looking for some more good talent to come in and join us.”
Denton County is also struggling to fill detention center positions. Denton officers are also working overtime, and the county has offered some part-time jobs to allow for more flexibility.
Assistant Chief Deputy Barry Caver said the county operates with less than half of its staff.
“It’s a real struggle from day-to-day,” Caver told Fox 4. “We’re probably operating at around 47%, which is less than half my staff…We’ve never seen numbers like this before. And we’re doing everything imaginable, working with county commissioners court and other means to try to solicit and recruit as many applicants as we can.”
Texas has regulations about the ratio of inmates to detention officers, but the Texas Tribune estimates the state is 4,000 detention officers short of complying with the law.
“It’s a constant thing that we have to keep on top of to make sure that if we have to shuffle things around to make sure it fits our needs and make it work,” said Carver.
In Travis County, there are 145 openings for corrections officers, KXAN reported.
A spokesperson for the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, Kristen Dark, told KXAN that the officer shortage has strained the entire county.
“Unfortunately for us, we’re not like a restaurant; we can’t close early,” Dark said. “We are not like a corporation that can back off operations and move things to accommodate. We don’t get to stop any operations. We don’t get to scale back at all; we have to continue to do business as usual, which means we have to have our employees do mandatory overtime.”
Travis County will decide on May 24 whether to hire a marketing firm to work with the sheriff’s office.
Tarrant County also has more than 100 open positions for detention officers.
