Governor Evers Asking State Lawmakers to Raise Pay for Corrections Workers

Thursday, March 30th, 2023 -- 12:00 PM

(By Sarah Lehr, Wisconsin Public Radio) Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is asking state lawmakers to raise pay for corrections workers in Wisconsin's next budget.

According to Sarah Lehr with Wisconsin Public Radio, the plea comes as the state's prison system struggles with high staff vacancy rates. The governor's budget recommendation would raise starting base pay for corrections officers from $20.29 to $33 an hour.

Currently, prison security workers get a temporary $4-per-hour bonus on top of their base wages. Part of the proposed salary bump would come from making that increase permanent.

Department of Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr on Tuesday told lawmakers on Wisconsin's Joint Finance Committee that he believes those temporary pay bumps have helped with employee retention.

"We started to see more people come in the door," he said. "But you know, what was more significant were (fewer) people going out the back door. More people that were thinking about retirement said, 'No, I'm gonna stick around' and that was a real shot in the arm."

Evers is also asking for funding to continue a $5-per-hour bonus program for workers in prisons with security staff vacancy rates above 40 percent. And he wants to raise an additional hourly bonus for maximum security employees from $2 to $4 while adding a $1 hourly bonus for workers in medium-security facilities.

That's because higher security prisons have been more difficult to staff than minimum security ones, Carr said. There are more than 1,500 empty corrections officer and sergeant positions across all of Wisconsin's adult prisons, amounting to a 33 percent vacancy rate, according to a Department of Corrections report covering the last pay period.

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