"It's like you're walking into hell."
That was how Travis Case, a Northeast Correction Center storekeeper, described going to his job each day.
The Associated Press reported on the testimony of Case and others last week during a Missouri House subcommittee studying problems at the Missouri Department of Corrections.
Those problems came to light when The Pitch, a Kansas City newspaper, published a story by investigative reporter Karen Dillon on Nov. 22 that examined more than 60 lawsuits against the Corrections department. Between the suits and interviews with current and former employees, they found that it is a "demeaning, even dangerous place to work." Much of that revolves around sexual harassment, racial discrimination and harassment by co-workers and retaliation by supervisors for speaking out, the AP reported.
The Pitch reported the state spent more than $7.5 million on settlements and judgments between 2012 and 2016 related to the allegations.
Also last week, the House Budget Committee approved a proposal to require the attorney general every year to report to lawmakers how money is being doled out from the state's legal expense fund, which is used to pay settlements.
Ultimately it's going to take commitment from two people who have been on the outside, new Gov. Eric Greitens and his pick to run the prison system, Anne Precythe, to change the culture on the inside of the prisons.
Precythe, the former community supervision director of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, has said addressing the claims of harassment is a top priority.
Employees who testified said that other problems stem from low pay, poor treatment of employees, nepotism in hiring and high turnover rates.
"We feel like rusty tools nobody cares about," Lt. Jason Horn told the committee. Horn is a corrections officer at Farmington Correctional Center.
Corrections officers are among the lowest-paid state employees, despite the importance of their public service and the fact that it have the potential to put them in harms way daily.
Greitens himself has suggested running the state like a business by paying and promoting the best employees so they know they are valued.
Let's start with Corrections. We should root out the bad employees, hire quality people, pay them respectable wages, and have high expectations for their work, including their treatment of inmates and coworkers.