Fifty officers voice their opinions
ALGER COUNTY -- Thursday afternoon, close to 50 corrections officers and retirees from the Alger Correctional Facility voiced their opinion about state budget cuts.
Their message is clear: they want enough funding from the state to safely guard the inmates at the Alger Correctional Facility.
One year ago the state reduced the security level of Alger Max Correctional Facility from a level five to a level four in an effort to cut spending.
In the past year, the number of inmates has almost doubled. Now some inmates share a cell which has resulted in multiple inmate assaults as well as assaults on officers.
"A lot more incidents are happening," said Larry Henley of Alger Correctional Facility. "We've had two big incidents where a lot of staff got hurt. The 4th of July, we had two inmates attack two officers, and we ended up having six officers hurt during the fray."
In the past five years, $450 million has been cut from the Department of Corrections.
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