UPDATE: Kansas has now declared a staffing emergency at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.
Years of tax cuts have decimated funding for Kansas prisons. Employee pay is low, benefits are expensive and training is short. The state’s prisons have so few workers that they rely heavily on employee overtime to manage a growing number of inmates. Nomin Ujiyediin of the Kansas News Service reports on what this means for prison staff.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of public media news outlets, dedicated to covering health, education, policy and politics across the state of Kansas.