Corrections doubles down on austerity measures

Anthony Torres

The new acting Department of Corrections commissioner is doubling down on austerity measures at the department in hopes of saving the government over $40,000 each month.

With the department reportedly overspending its budget by over $1.6 million last fiscal year, acting Department of Corrections commissioner Anthony Torres aims to implement strict cost-cutting measures to save money for the government while ensuring his staff don’t lose their jobs.

“There’s challenges and concerns, but I’m well aware and I’m doing my best to address them. I’ve done some things that were probably unpopular, but I needed to do them to address our budget issues. I don’t want to have to let people go. I want people to keep their jobs. I’m thinking of my staff as well as ensuring their safety as well as the safety of our inmates,” he said.

DOC currently has over 200 personnel and most of these officers were accumulating over 100 hours in overtime by working 12- to 16-hour shifts under the previous leadership. Torres said he hopes to address this by launching another corrections academy as well as buckling down on overtime hours.

“As you can see, we are in dire need of an academy to get started. I know with the budget and cost-cutting measures, [it’ll be hard]. In my first few weeks at DOC, I took it into my own hands and I’ve restricted overtime to shift operations only. This means sergeants and above are required to get approval from me on overtime. Even then, I will only grant it if it’s absolutely necessary,” he said.

“With the overtime situation, I’ve tasked a scheduling committee to devise a plan to decrease the overtime for our line officers. That’s coming soon. We’re looking at over 38 hours in overtime for each officer dropping down to six to eight hours with the limited staff we have now,” Torres added.

On top of cutting back on overtime, the acting commissioner has also grounded most of DOC’s vehicles and is lifting non-contact visitation.

“I’ve grounded 80% of our vehicles. With programming as well, this week I’m going to start lifting visitation for non-contact. It took me time to get there because there were security concerns I wanted to address. The first two days of walking the facility there were a lot of concerns so I did everything in my power to get a team together to address those issues,” he said.

Overall, with the cost-cutting measures he will implement, Torres hopes to save the government over $40,000 each month.

“I’m getting really creative and thinking outside the box to save our government some money. With the cost-cutting measures we are putting in place, we’re looking at saving our government over $40,000 a month in expenditures,” he said.