Corrections Officers

I saw a WSJ headline that appeared to vilify Corrections Officers for having cushy jobs and great pensions. This comes on the heels of everyone having singled out teachers as having cushy jobs and unreasonable benefits, so I was so incensed that I couldn’t bring myself to read the article. Fairly recently I watched a documentary on prisons, and can say with confidence that you couldn’t ever pay me enough to be a corrections officer for what they have to put up with. I did a little research:

  • The median salary for a Corrections Officer in the Boston area is $43,827. A Senior Corrections Officer — what I assume a career corrections officer would be when retiring at 55 for their “cushy” pension — is $50,938. This isn’t a bad salary per se, but if you’re in it for the money, this is probably not the job to have.
  • The average life expectancy for a Correctional Officer is 59 years, sixteen years less than the average.
  • I cannot easily find any credible sources, but a number of sources claim that there are more than 30,000 attacks on Corrections Officers each year, and that the average officer is “seriously” assaulted twice in their career.

According to these statistics, then, in return for incurring two “serious” assaults and probably many more minor assaults, along with constant harassment, taunts, and stress, the average corrections officer will collect a $40,750/year pension for four years before their death. I’m not so sure that Correctional Officers have it so easy.

4 thoughts on “Corrections Officers

  1. Some years ago I taught a course inside a county jail. Now these are among the least risky places because everyone is in for short time (less than a year and the penelty for escaping is several years in lock up) and they are taking these classes to get “good behavior time” to get out early. But dang it was scary in there. Hearin those doors clang shut and knowing that help had to get through them to get to you if you needed help!
    Yeah I don’t see that as a soft cushy job at all.

  2. Well i have been correctional officer for 12 yeears in North Carolina, and it has its moments of being a really easy no stress job… but there are other times that you have alot of stress. However the job it’s self has a way of changing you … the person you are.

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