Representatives from the Michigan corrections officers union will be holding three informational pickets across the Upper Peninsula next week.

A Michigan Corrections Organization picket will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday at Highway 41 and Superior Avenue in the vicinity of Baraga Correctional Facility. Another will be held Monday at Chippewa and Kinross correctional facilities, and a third is scheduled at Marquette Branch Prison from 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday.

The pickets are aiming to raise awareness to the public and Michigan lawmakers about current working conditions within the facilities with emphasis being placed on the staffing crisis within the Michigan Department of Corrections. MCO President Byron Osborn sent a letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on July 3 requesting assistance from Michigan National Guard to provide temporary relief to overworked corrections officers.

Whitmer’s office deferred to the MDOC’s response to the MCO letter, stating that National Guardsmen are not trained to handle custody and that the department, led by Heidi Washington, will be focusing on long-term solutions.

Osborn expressed the growing unrest and frustration among officers.

“We don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” Osborn said. “We’ve been in this year-after-year mode of the state hiring X number of officers but losing the same or greater number of officers. We feel like we needed to draw attention directly to (Whitmer’s) office and the entire legislature … We need you to take some kind of action. You are the only body of people in our opinion that can make some of the effective changes that we believe would have an impact on the recruitment and retention.”

While the long-term solutions may be under discussion in Lansing, the current situation has raised safety concerns for hundreds of officers. Understaffing leads to mandated overtime with officers often facing 16-hour shifts, flanked by back-and-forth commute times. Pulling double shifts is sometimes occurring every day of a workweek.

Baraga faces some of the most extreme statistics in regard to the staffing shortage and other dangers. On July 3, the MCO released a June report for the facility which revealed 969 overtime shifts which comprised of 560 mandates and 405 staffing positions shut down due to lack of officers. Two fights between prisoners and three assaults which included officers occurred in June. On July 23, the MCO released a crisis report which highlighted the vacancy rate for officers at Baraga at 34%.

Shutdowns forced by short staffing disrupt inmates’ schedules. These disruptions, such as lack of outdoor recess times, lead to disturbances and assaults on officers. Assaults that have transpired in July have included an incident in the beginning of the month where two officers were sent to the hospital with one of them receiving a concussion. At the end of July and beginning of August, the MDOC asked for the support of officers who worked at facilities other than Baraga to volunteer to travel to the facility and fill in roles to provide relief to that staff.

On Aug. 15, three Republican legislators from the U.P. announced that they will be joining the pickets to support the MCO. Rep. Dave Prestin will participate in the demonstration outside of Chippewa Correctional Facility, Rep. Greg Markkanen will join the demonstration outside of Baraga Correctional Facility and Sen. Ed McBroom will join the demonstration outside of Marquette Branch Prison.

Markkanen is in regular contact with officers and has shown a drive to tackle the problem within the legislature.

“We’ve had a high rate of suicides, high rate of divorces, family issues– that’s not the type of thing we want to have happen,” Markkanen said. “We want to support our families, our CO families … It’s not a good situation and everything points to it getting worse and worse before it gets better, and we need to put the brakes on.”

Democratic Rep. Jenn Hill announced she will be participating in the demonstrations outside of the Baraga and Marquette facilities. This announcement was made after Hill recently toured the Baraga prison and talked with administration and staff about the conditions of the facility and its staffing shortage.

Hill has also recently proposed removing the college credit educational requirements for the CO position in Michigan House Bill 5912 in hopes of making the occupation more accessible to those interested in officer careers within the MDOC. Prestin has also expressed support for this bill. Markkanen, McBroom, Prestin and Hill support a pension for corrections officers as another way in which Michigan can make a corrections career more appealing and address long-term staffing issues.