NC correctional officers push for pay raise as budget vote nears

ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. — As North Carolina lawmakers work to finalize a state budget next week, one group of state employees said they’re desperate for change: correctional officers.

While teacher pay has dominated much of the public conversation, officers inside the state’s prisons say they’re struggling to keep up and struggling to keep people safe.

Kim Martin has spent more than two decades working in corrections, starting as an officer in 2000 before becoming a sergeant at Piedmont Correctional Institution in Rowan County.

Martin said she was drawn to law enforcement because her mother worked for the sheriff’s office, but the job has become harder to sustain.

Martin and thousands of other corrections employees are pushing for a pay raise. Ardis Watkins, director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, said the pay gap is driving officers away.

“You can leave a prison in Mecklenburg County and go work for the county detention center, same job, just in a jail instead of a prison for $20,000 more right off the bat,” she said.

According to the Department of Corrections, North Carolina’s starting pay for correctional officers is the second lowest in the nation and the lowest in the Southeast.

Martin said the low pay has created a revolving door. “If we get one hired, two or three leave,” she said. “We’ve had people less than a year, lots of them, go, or they just don’t show up.”

The staffing shortage has forced remaining officers into mandatory overtime, leaving little time for rest or family.

“They don’t get time off anymore,” Martin said. “They don’t know who their families are anymore because they are always there.”

Watkins said the situation is now affecting public safety. Over the past two decades, the state has closed 15 of its 70 prisons, and more than 5,000 beds sit empty in the remaining facilities, not because they aren’t needed, but because there aren’t enough officers to staff them.

“This is not one of those jobs where if nobody shows up, you can close the door,” Martin said. “You have got to have people there.”

Correctional officers hope the upcoming state budget will finally bring relief.

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