Pay raises for corrections workers part of crime fight, Lee Harris says
Shelby County mayor Lee Harris (in file photo) said raising the pay of Shelby County corrections officers will help in the fight against crime. (Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian)
Pay raises for Shelby County Corrections guards are being funded mostly with the money the county will be paid for housing federal prisoners currently housed at privately run prisons.
“Our ability to make this payment is tied specifically to the contract with the Justice Department to house those federal detainees,” Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris told The Daily Memphian.
“We believe we are the first corrections organization in the country to work with our federal partners to close down a privately managed penitentiary, managed by Core Civic, and move those inmates to a government facility,” he said.
The county will be paid $90 per day, per federal prisoner under the arrangement negotiated with the Biden administration.
Other “enterprise” funds used for the $850,220 line item to raise the pay of 200 corrections guards by as much as 20% come from the per diem payments the state has long made for housing some prisoners convicted and sentenced to state prisons.
The Shelby County Commission approved the pay raises at its Monday, Jan. 10, session as a move to bring the pay of the guards to the same level as deputy jailers make at the Shelby County Jail as employees of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.
The county jail holds prisoners or detainees who are awaiting trial on charges. The corrections facilities the county operates as a part of the county administration are for those convicted and sentenced.
The pay gap between jailers and corrections guards has been a long-standing issue.
Harris’ predecessor as mayor, Mark Luttrell, took the position that jailers should be paid more because they work with a population of prisoners who are more volatile and unpredictable and therefore potentially more dangerous.
Luttrell ran federal prison facilities before being elected Shelby County Sheriff and then county mayor.
“The previous administration had a very different view,” Harris acknowledged. “But it’s a new day and this Martin Luther King holiday I think we need to do something to bring more justice to more corners of our community.”
Harris is seeking a second term as mayor and is being challenged by Ken Moody, an assistant to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, in the May Democratic primary.
Memphis City Council member Worth Morgan is running unopposed so far in the May Republican primary.
Moody and Morgan, in the early phase of their campaigns, have each criticized Harris for not being involved enough in fighting crime as violent crime has increased locally.
Harris has said the sheriff, who is an elected official outside the county administration, is responsible for law enforcement.
Asked about the criticism by his political rivals during the interview, Harris didn’t respond directly.
But he talked about the pay raise and bonuses, which the county plans to extend to all county first responders in one form or another, as part of a different strategy toward crime.
“I think part of fighting crime is making sure we have folks in place we can call on to help with rehabilitation,” Harris said. “And the corrections officers and the staff in corrections are the tip of the spear in a lot of those efforts.
“If we pay them well, we can call on them to do more of the work and we can lift morale,” he said. “This is all part of the plan. I think all of this plays a part in investing in public safety.”
Shelby County Human Resources Division Director Gerald Thornton modeled the pay raise for corrections on what Sheriff Floyd Bonner did in his budget, approved by the County Commission last spring as part of the county’s consolidated budget, based on the county’s overall compensation study.
“We have enough officers out there,” Thornton said of staffing levels at the corrections center and related facilities. “But we need additional officers. We are maintaining the state level when it comes to securing our corrections center.”
Thornton also said he thinks the private sector will react to the pay raises as the county competes for those employees.
“We are hoping to hire some of those individuals from the private sector,” he said in the interview with Harris.
County corrections has also moved from a five-tier system for promotions and pay levels in the department to a three-tier system, for which the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union that represents corrections guards, has been pushing.
Harris said under the five-tier system, it would take a corrections guard 20 years to make it to the top pay level. The three-tier model makes that possible after four years.
“We expect there will be pay increases in other places that we would compete,” he said. “I think the public would agree there is something good about starting with our public safety officials and first responders.”
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Lee Harris county pay raises Shelby County Corrections Department Gerald Thornton crime rate 2022 county mayor's raceBill Dries on demand
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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