Staffing Shortages At Clements Unit Forcing Big Changes At Prison

2022 has been full of challenges we aren't used to seeing. One of the biggest, if not THE biggest, has been staffing shortages in just about every employment sector you can think of.

I remember driving past The Bagle Place on Bell about a month ago. That restaurant is usually packed with cars leaking out into the road waiting to get through the drive-thru, no matter the time of day. However, on this particular day, it was empty.

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It wasn't because people weren't feeling a bagel or sandwich, it was because they were closed. On the sign read a message that they were closing early due to not having enough employees to work the day shift there. It boggled my mind. How can a place that's so successful have an issue staffing the place?

Work from home and remote jobs are now what everyone seems to be looking for, another fallout from the pandemic we endured. Aside from some businesses realizing that renting office space was pointless since the jobs could be done at home, we got spoiled being able to work from our couch rather than an uncomfortable office chair.

The employee shortage has even spilled over to the jail and prison systems, and even they are struggling to find enough people to watch over the incarcerated. Well, the state prison system is working to address those employee shortages, and the Clements Unit near Amarillo is one of the beneficiaries of that.

On December 9th, a meeting of the state prison board approved nearly six miles of electric fencing to be installed at five different prisons across the state. It's a $28 million dollar project and it will alleviate having to find employees to man the fences at these five prisons.

The better news in this is that the 500 positions that will be replaced by the electric fencing won't affect the employment status of the people in those roles. They will be transferred out of the towers they reside into other places within the prison system.