Sign at FCI Ray Brook. (Enterprise file photo — Andy Flynn)

RAY BROOK — FCI Ray Brook is on lockdown again this week in the wake of a string of fights and contraband deliveries, just 10 days after the end of another week-long lockdown.

“It’s just one incident after another,” said Jennifer Rockhill, president of AFGE Local 3882, the union representing FCI Ray Brook’s corrections officers. “It’s been back-to-back-to-back.”

These have all been individual issues which compounded to lead to a lockdown, she said.

Union representatives are saying that low staffing at the medium security prison contributes to high stress for corrections officers, frustration for inmates and results in a lot of required overtime, particularly during these lockdowns.

FCI Ray Brook currently has 801 inmates, around 60 corrections officers and 67 non-correctional staff, Rockhill said — a 6:1 ratio.

At the end of July, total employment at FCI Ray Brook was at nearly 80%, and correctional officer employment specifically, was at 77%, according to federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Donald Murphy.

Murphy said the BOP has been transparent about its staffing challenge. He said it is the same worker shortage employers throughout the country are experiencing and there is ongoing work to address these challenges, including a “robust national recruitment strategy.”

James Davis, union treasurer and a facilities employee at the prison, said in the 11 years he’s worked at FCI Ray Brook, lockdowns have been a normal thing, but they were never this frequent.

“It’s been crazy,” he said. “In my time, this is the worst I have seen it.”

He said the same of the staffing levels.

Rockhill thinks this lockdown will last through this week. She feels the lockdown was a good step for the warden to take — the prison needs to show that there can’t be any more fights.

“We can’t take it anymore,” Rockhill said. “We can’t keep putting staff in danger. We can’t keep putting inmates in danger.

“Inmates knew the potential for lockdown was there and they continued to do what they did,” she added.

Rockhill said that it shows a lack of respect for the staff, for the broader inmate population and for the inmates’ families.

While on lockdown, visitations at the medium security prison are suspended, inmates are kept in their cells for most of the day and their access to phone calls and email is revoked. Inmates can still send paper mail.

It also means staff have to work overtime because they’re doing jobs inmates would usually do in the cafeteria or laundry area.

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Recent incidents

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The 800-inmate federal prison just came out of a lockdown that lasted from July 17 to July 22. Union officials described this as an emotion-driven attack with no weapons.

Then, an inmate was assaulted by several inmates in the recreation area. He suffered “significant injuries,” Rockhill said, “not life-threatening, but pretty significant.”

She said this attack did not involve weapons, but was targeted and allegedly gang-related.

This past Thursday, there was another fight between two inmates. There were no injuries and no weapons in this fight, Rockhill said.

“Ray Brook, we’re usually a generally pretty calm place,” Rockhill said.

Part of what caused the recent rise in activity is a new population of inmates coming in from high-security penitentiary, where Rockhill said there’s a different mindset. When the penitentiaries run out of bed space or have violence or contraband issues, they send inmates to other facilities.

Rockhill added that not all the conflicts are the fault of the new inmates.

Recently, corrections officers also discovered a package with what Rockhill called a “large quantity” of drugs, cellphones and knives, which was dropped over the fence. It was discovered before it reached its intended recipient and she said there’s an investigation into who it was intended for.

The package had drugs Davis had not seen at FCI Ray Brook before, as well as knives made of different materials that he had never seen in the prison before. Davis said these materials would make them easier to use.

Davis feels that management does not hold inmates accountable. If an inmate is found doing drugs, they spend couple days in a Special Housing Unit, but he said this is not deterring them from using again.

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Staffing struggles

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With more staff, things run smoother, which means less stress on inmates, Rockhill said. When there’s less staff, that means privileges get taken away. If they don’t have enough staff to run visitations, meetings with family get taken away.

With low staffing, during lockdowns, staff members who are not corrections officers are pulled away from their jobs to do custodial supervision — a process called augmentation. Davis said that multiple times a week he is mandated overtime to do this.

“You have people like myself who aren’t custody working weeks of being officers,” Davis said.

He’s supposed to doing remodeling work. When a lockdown comes along and he has to work as an officer, he still has deadlines for that remodeling work, even while supervising showers, cooking meals, conducting interviews or searching for contraband.

“It’s making it next to impossible to try to get anything accomplished,” Davis said. “During a lockdown, it limits the amount of time we get to spend doing our actual jobs.”

Davis said this is hard on the staff’s families, too. When both parents work, and don’t have daycare, staff who are needed to put their kids on the bus or pick them up from school cannot multiple times a week because they’ve been called into work.

“It puts stress on your home life, your work life, everything,” he said.

When they return home, there’s still snow to be moved and work to be done. Meanwhile, mandated overtime makes them miss out on their kids’ activities.

“How do you explain to a child that you can’t be there when you’re supposed to be there?” Davis asked.

Davis said the funding for corrections officers is not high enough. Their pay is off 25% to 30% from what it should be, he said, and many of the significant pay raises or changes the union has advocated for in the past few years have been shot down.

Director Colette Peters said in a BOP video released this week that the BOP recently increased corrections officers’ base salary by $2,000. But with an average starting salary $55,000, it cannot compete with other jobs in the corrections industry, or, as she said, even the grocery story industry.

“The long-term solution has to be an increased base salary,” Peters said. “We simply do not pay our people enough.”

“The lack of pay is making the institution not as safe as what it could be,” Davis said.

He said these staffing and pay problems are a issue throughout the BOP.

The BOP budgeted for 20,446 correctional officers this year. Nationwide, the BOP says it needs 4,300 more to be fully staffed.

“If the pay increases, the staff will increase,” Davis said. “There’s not a doubt in my mind about that.”

He said some COs say talking to the media about these struggles deters people from applying, but he feels he has to make people aware of it. If the prison can hire a bunch of people, it will make the job easier for everyone.

Rockhill said the job has good benefits and a good retirement plan.

She said the BOP recently opened up a direct hire process, which gets people hired months faster. It’s not a solution, but it’s a start, she said.

“Department of Justice and FBOP leadership is working to get the resources necessary to bring employees on board,” Murphy said in an email.

Murphy said FCI Ray Brook has been approved for and is currently offering hiring incentives, including a 10% group retention and recruitment incentive for all employees.

“These have helped improve the staffing situation but there is more to be done,” Murphy said.