SC Juvenile Justice officers, staff walk off job protesting pay, working conditions
Dozens of correctional officers and teachers who oversee South Carolina’s juvenile offenders walked off the job Friday morning to protest low pay, poor management and safety concerns.
The employees left their shifts at the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice facility on Broad River Road in Columbia about 7 a.m. in protest of issues that have wracked the department for years, including staffing shortages, long shifts, lack of protection for officers and meager wages.
Many said they had no plans to return to work until the department greatly enhanced staffing levels and called for the ouster of the agency’s director.
“If there aren’t changes quick, we aren’t going to work,” said Jeremy Lee, who teaches welding at DJJ’s Birchwood High School. “They need to either bring the federal government in or bring SLED (State Law Enforcement Division) in and take control of this place. They need to take care of administration, and get rid of the ones they need to get rid of. They need to do a full investigation. They need to rebuild this place from the ground up.”
DJJ Director Freddie Pough, who spoke with disgruntled staff members and reporters Friday afternoon, said he understands employees’ concerns and acknowledged that much work needed to be done at the agency.
“They needed to hear from me, and I needed to be able to hear from them and respond to their concerns,” Pough said after speaking with employees outside the secure juvenile detention facility. “Today is the first of many conversations that I’ll have with them on how we can improve conditions here at the Broad River Road Complex.”
He called it “unfortunate” that employees chose to walk off the job rather than arrange a meeting with him about their complaints, but said he was glad the dialogue had begun.
“Clearly, I wish we would have been able to do it in a different fashion, but we’re at a place now where we’re going to continue the dialogue,” he said. “I want all staff, regardless of what area they work in, to feel that their voice is being heard.”
Multiple workers said they had tried to contact Pough prior to the walkout, but that he rarely comes to the Broad River Road facility and was unresponsive to their communications.
Gov. Henry McMaster, who appointed Pough and has stood behind him amid calls for his resignation, remained supportive of the embattled director Friday and criticized the correctional workers for walking out on the job.
As of Friday afternoon, DJJ had not requested assistance from any outside law enforcement agencies to help deal with the staff walkout, but both SLED and the state Department of Corrections were on standby and ready to respond if necessary.
The agency reassigned a number of public safety officers and investigators who already were working at the Broad River Road Complex when correctional officers walked off the job Friday morning, spokesman Jarid Munsch said.
He said all staff at the agency who were covering for the officers were certified to work with juveniles.
“The goal is to make sure our kids get what they still need on a day-to-day basis — their educational, clinical and rehabilitative services,” Munsch said.
Friday’s staff walkout comes as the Department of Juvenile Justice and, more specifically, Pough, are under fire from state lawmakers.
While the department has had a questionable reputation for years, a recent audit reignited the ire of state lawmakers. The audit found the department’s secure facilities are critically understaffed, its correctional officers fear for their own safety and the youth in their care aren’t adequately supervised or afforded timely medical treatment.
A similar audit completed four years ago contributed to the resignation of Pough’s predecessor.
Concerns over staffing shortages
Correctional officers and teachers at the Broad River Road Complex, some of whom walked off the job and others who were not working but came in to show their support, gathered outside the facility, some with posters.
Brittany Larkin, who has been a correctional officer with the department for about a year, said she and others walked out over safety issues that stem from severe staffing shortages.
“I’m out here in solidarity with my other teammates because the job has become hazardous,” she said. “Long hours, we’re barely getting paid, at least two to three assaults on staff a week. We have staff members that are working 48-hour shifts with no food, nothing to drink.”
Larkin said she fears retaliation from management for walking out, but believes it was necessary to bring attention to working conditions at the facility.
“As (juvenile correctional officers), we make this place revolve. Without us, none of this stuff moves,” she said. “We protect the teachers, we protect the kids, we protect everybody that comes back here. But at some point somebody has to protect us.”
Larkin and Acting Capt. Ricky Dyckes said conditions had deteriorated markedly in recent months, with many employees going on leave due to injuries suffered on the job and some simply quitting because they couldn’t take it anymore.
“It really got critical, critical, critical, really within the last couple months,” Dyckes said. “I mean it’s to the point now that when you go to work you don’t even know what time you’re getting off, and you really can’t plan for that.”
He said it had become standard for juvenile correctional officers to work 24-hour and sometimes 36-hour shifts. Agency police even had to drive one correctional officer home last week after she worked a 27-hour shift because she was too exhausted to operate her car, Dyckes said.
“Everybody’s at a breaking point,” he said.
SC lawmakers, governor weigh in on protest
South Carolina Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington joined employees Friday morning and assured them she was working on their behalf.
Shealy chairs a Senate subcommittee currently reviewing a recent audit of the agency.
“I’m glad they’re doing it,” Shealy said of the employees who walked out. “This is the only way we’re going to get anything done.”
She said the frontline workers inside DJJ facilities, who put their lives on the line every day, are underpaid, especially compared to management.
“I’m sorry that it had to come to this, but these people deserve better,” said Shealy, who questioned why Pough wasn’t initially on scene at the protest.
“He should come out here and meet these people face to face and try to have a conversation with them,” she said.
Pough, whose office is off site, made what employees said was a rare visit to the Broad River Road Complex Friday, but remained behind the fence for most of the morning and didn’t speak to workers or the media until later in the afternoon.
State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, who sits on the DJJ audit subcommittee with Shealy, called Friday’s protest “the worst example of mismanagement of a state agency I’ve ever seen.”
“What’s more disturbing than Freddie Pough’s mismanagement is Gov. McMaster’s total abdication of any responsibility or authority to deal with what is obviously a renegade agency,” Harpootlian said.
Pough, director since 2017, said the scathing April audit painted an inaccurate or incomplete picture of what was actually going on under his watch.
Lawmakers have asked South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson to review the report.
At a legislative hearing in late May, Pough was accused of being incompetent and asked to resign. He declined.
Lawmakers also hammered Pough about his agency’s failure to report incidents of child abuse and neglect to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division or the state’s Department of Social Services.
“This is a leadership problem. Not a resources problem,” state Rep. Micah Caskey, R-Lexington, tweeted Friday. He added that the state audit showed the department had millions of dollars unspent in its budget.
House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, on the other hand, said a lack of resources was the primary issue plaguing the agency and blamed Republican leadership he said had perennially neglected its needs.
“This department, like so many others in our state, had been underfunded for years,” Rutherford, D-Richland, said in a statement that expressed support for the protesting DJJ workers. “It is past time that major changes take place within the DJJ. At the top of that list should be better pay and improved conditions for staff and teachers and increased funding across the board.”
McMaster said Friday that the state Department of Administration’s Human Resources Office was reviewing the agency’s policies and that the executive budget office was reviewing the agency’s pay and compensation.
The governor previously asked SLED to review DJJ’s handling of criminal allegations and criminal investigations in response to comments Pough made about the agency’s reporting protocols at a recent legislative hearing.
“We are working with Director Pough,” McMaster said Friday. “This is a very tough job. We are doing all we can to bring the resources we have to bear to see that the situation is improved.”
Pough said Friday he welcomed an external review of the agency's policies because "there's always room for improvement" and he and his administration "want to get better."
Despite acknowledging challenges at the agency, McMaster criticized DJJ workers who walked off the job Friday and said they “ought to walk back in.”
“There’s no excuse for anyone to walk off from a job, particularly this kind of job, where leaving the post not only puts young people in danger but also puts enormous stress on those officers who are still in facilities trying to do their job to keep everyone safe,” the governor said.
This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 9:03 AM.
