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As far back as 2013, the Office of Inspector General of the Nebraska Correctional System has issued an annual report. Specific subjects in each of these reports change year after year, but some correctional concerns never leave the list, including over-crowding and staffing shortages. Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson sat down with Inspector General, Doug Koebernick to talk about the 2024 Annual Report.
Dale Johnson: The executive summary in this year's report lists 10 areas of concern that merit special attention. Overcrowding tops the list. What about the new prison? I thought it was supposed to relieve some of this overcrowding concern?
Doug Koebernick: Yeah, the new prison will house 1,500 individuals, which will definitely benefit the system. However, it's going to replace the State Penitentiary, which currently holds between 1,200-1,300 individuals. So while there'll be a gain of maybe 200-300 beds total, the population trends continue to go up. And so we know by the time that prison is built in 2028 the population will be hundreds more individuals in the system.
Johnson: Another observation of yours in the report, is an aging prison population. What challenges does an older population present?
Koebernick: You have a large population or of men who have very significant ongoing medical issues, including dementia or cancer or, I mean, all sorts of things that go on, and so then you have to treat them, and you almost need like a nursing home within your system. And one of the things the legislature did a few years ago was fund an extra unit for geriatric individuals, and that will be done next year, and that should be of great aid to the system as well.
Johnson: These annual reports, I've discovered, go back as far as 11 years, and I found some similarities. One is the prison overcrowding, the other is a staffing shortage, and that's mentioned in your 2024 annual report. To what extent did that hiring Blitz – We saw the signs, we heard the advertising, along with higher salaries – How did that make a difference?
Koebernick: It made a big difference. For a period of time, we really saw a decrease in the number of vacancies. The turnover rate went down. It seemed to really help. But now we're starting to see that vacancy and turnover trend creep back up. It's not where it was in 2020, 2021, but it is back to where we were, kind of in about 2014-15.
Johnson: What is the dynamic right now in terms of overcrowding of inmates and understaffing of personnel? Is the dynamic manageable? Is there tension?
Koebernick: The facility that has the most challenges is the reception and Treatment Center here in Lincoln, and that is now our largest prison. It has about 1,400 men in it, that one is the one that has the greatest security staffing challenges. And so what we see is that they have had to lock down their facility at different times of the day, like maybe at three o'clock on Friday. They just close it down for the most part. And men aren't able to get out of their cells or their units. Food is served directly on their unit, and then that might extend into the weekend. So there is a lot of stress at that facility because of that overcrowding, that high number of people in that facility, versus the staffing numbers that are low.
Johnson: Another stat I found, Doug, seven of every 10 Nebraska prisoners are released back into society. So give me your opinion about the reentry success.
Koebernick: You have people coming into the system. You have people leaving the system. A lot of people reenter the system. They come back after they've been out. And if you can decrease that number, then that will help with your overall population. So that's been an emphasis of the previous director Scott Frakes and the current director Jeffries, where they've been talking about the need to do more for reentry, and when they talk about that, they mean more things to do on the inside to prepare people for release and then having programs on the outside for when they do get released to help with housing and other transitional needs such as job skills, finding jobs, having other supports around them, some treatment, things like that. So reentry is really important. The legislature even created a reentry continuity advisory board this past legislative session, and that that board, which I'm a part of, will be probably meeting sometime later this year for the first time to look at that whole reentry process.
Johnson: Doug, of the 10 that we've pointed out in your report, and the few that we've talked about here this morning, if you and I got together in a year, which one would you hope will have been addressed?
Koebernick: My hope is always that the staffing will be addressed fully. But I know that that is a challenge for systems across the country. And then I think that, you know, when you look at programming, we haven't touched on that yet, but I think that's one that was really important, as far as providing good, thoughtful, quality clinical programming for people who have anger management problems or violence tendencies, or substance abuse, sex offender treatment, things like that, to really beef up that treatment and provide treatment that gets to the correct population, because eventually most of the men and women behind bars will be back into our general population. I'd rather have somebody who had good, thoughtful programming and a reentry experience come out and be my neighbor than those who did not.
Johnson: The 2024 annual report is out from Doug Koebernick, Inspector General for the Nebraska Department of Corrections. I'm Dale Johnson on Nebraska Public Media.