A recent 50-state analysis by Safe Inside, produced in partnership with the Correctional Leaders Association, found that between 2019 and 2024, across states with comparable data, assaults on prison staff rose 77 percent, assaults between incarcerated people rose 54 percent and deaths in custody were 47 percent higher (see key findings here). These are not internal management issues. They are clear signals of system instability, and they predict higher rates of recidivism, more victims and weaker community safety.
Governors, lawmakers and other policymakers often talk about reducing recidivism and improving rehabilitation. But reform fails not because the ideas are wrong but because unstable correctional systems cannot carry them out. We need to address incentives that merely reward containment rather than the kinds of outcomes that truly enhance community safety. The place to start is with prisons’ ongoing — and worsening — staffing crisis.
Corrections systems represent one of the largest public safety workforces in state government. When a system of this size destabilizes, the effects ripple outward into budgets, litigation, recruitment, public trust and ultimately crime.
The fiscal warning signs are particularly stark. Safe Inside reports that state corrections departments spent more than $2 billion on overtime in 2024, nearly double what they spent in 2019. Even more telling, while corrections employees make up about 15 percent of the state workforce, they account for roughly 40 percent of state overtime spending. Instability is not cheaper. It is the most expensive way to run a prison system.
That instability produces a predictable chain reaction. Staffing shortages drive overtime. Overtime leads to fatigue and short-staffed posts. Short-staffed posts lead to lockdowns, canceled programming and rising tension. Mandatory overtime and staffing crises have been widely documented as drivers of turnover and operational strain across prison systems (see reporting from The Marshall Project and analysis from the Vera Institute of Justice). Research from the National Institute of Justice also highlights how workforce instability affects mission performance and safety inside correctional facilities. Those conditions fuel violence inside facilities and weaken preparation for release. When people return to the community less stable, less treated and less employable, communities pay twice: once in rising costs and again in new victims.
These are not new warning signs. Similar patterns of chronic understaffing, excessive overtime and weakened supervision preceded major system failures in the past, including the conditions documented ahead of the deadly 1980 riot at the New Mexico state penitentiary in Santa Fe.
The Safe Inside analysis shows how persistent this instability has become. Across states with available data, roughly 1 in 6 corrections employees leaves each year. States have increased salaries substantially over the past decade, yet vacancy gains remain fragile and easily reversed. The lesson is not that compensation does not matter. It is that corrections is being asked to perform high-stakes public safety work without the operating conditions needed to produce consistent results.
This is why focusing only on upstream policy such as sentencing reform, supervision or re-entry services without stabilizing the operational system is incomplete. We fund activity in corrections, but we rarely reward outcomes. Systems improve when the incentives change.
So what could state policymakers do differently? First, treat corrections for what it is: a core public safety system with measurable performance, not a political dead zone that only draws attention during crises. Stability should be defined, measured and managed with the same seriousness applied to transportation safety, emergency management or public health.
Second, change what the system is rewarded for. When leaders are incentivized primarily to avoid short-term problems, they default to containment. When agencies are instead incentivized to produce measurable outcomes, such as lower violence, fewer deaths, fewer victims, lower overtime, higher program completion and lower returns to custody, behavior changes. If we want innovation in corrections, we have to reward people for solving problems, not just surviving them.
That requires an outcomes-based approach to oversight and accountability. Governors and lawmakers can set clear expectations around safety, rehabilitation access and community outcomes. They can reward measurable improvement and require transparent reporting so performance is real, not performative. And they can ensure that resources flow toward practices that reduce harm and cost rather than simply sustaining activity.
Public safety is not secured by announcements. It is secured by systems that work on ordinary days, not just during crises. It is built through daily decisions inside secure facilities, decisions that determine whether people return to the community more stable or more dangerous than when they entered.
Policymakers and administrators will ultimately be judged not only by the reforms they announce but by whether the institutions they oversee are stable enough to deliver results. Stable systems produce accountable leadership, accountable leadership produces innovation, and innovation is how public safety actually improves.
Brian Koehn is the founder of Social Purpose Corrections, a nonprofit focused on improving outcomes of incarceration. He has served in multiple correctional warden roles and led operations across multiple incarceration models.
Governing's opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing's editors or management.
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