DESPERATE FOR PRISON GUARDS, SOME STATES ROB CRADLES

LANSING, Kan. Donald Culbertson's face betrays the untamed skin of a
teenager, and his uniform practically swims on his gangly frame. His buzz
haircut does nothing to disguise the fact that he is not long out of high
school, and his way of blowing off steam after work is to play video games.

There can be lot of steam to blow off because Mr. Culbertson is a
corrections officer at the state prison here in Lansing, hired three months
ago at the age of 19 to oversee murderers, rapists and other medium- and
maximum-security prisoners.

Kansas hired Mr. Culbertson and others his age this year as part of a
desperate effort to fill vacancies at the prison by lowering the minimum age
of corrections officers to 19 from 21.

The situation in Kansas is hardly unique. Low salaries in a competitive
economy, an explosion of prison building and a tougher, more violent class
of inmate have all contributed to a severe shortage of guards in prisons
around the country. Unable to find enough people willing to work as
corrections officers and having even more trouble convincing those who do to
stay, prison officials across the United States are unleashing a barrage of
recruiting techniques.

"Every state is really being affected in one way or another," said George
Camp, co-president of the Criminal Justice Institute, an independent group
that studies prisons. "In some jurisdictions it is a matter of wages; in
other jurisdictions it's simply the matter of the lack of potential workers
in close proximity to the institutions."

Another deterrent is that inmates are likelier to be serving long mandatory
sentences that offer no incentive for good behavior and are more likely to
be mentally ill and have drug problems, corrections officials say.

"If prisons were to honestly advertise the job," Mr. Camp said, "they might
say: `Come to work with us. Have feces thrown at you. Be verbally abused
every day.' People don't advertise the job that way, but that often is what
they have to deal with."

Staff turnover rates have risen steadily in recent years, with several
states losing more people a year than they are able to hire. An average of
16 percent of officers left in 1999, up from 9.6 percent in 1991, according
to the Corrections Yearbook, published by the Criminal Justice Institute. In
some states the number is much higher: Arkansas lost 42 percent.

Turnover is especially high among new staff. In Oklahoma, which is
considering lowering its minimum age to 18 from 21, 57 percent of last
year's recruits have already quit, officials say. And in Alabama, which is
short 412 corrections officers, even after lowering its minimum age to 20
from 21, John Hamm, a corrections department spokesman, estimated that last
year 180 officers were hired, but 240 quit.

In some states, the problem is so serious that it has contributed to prison
breaks or attacks on staff. Mr. Hamm said the escape in January of six
inmates from a prison near Birmingham was the result of having 41 officers
instead of 58, and leaving three of four towers unmanned.

In Arizona, corrections officials claimed that short staffing contributed to
a November assault of a nurse by six inmates in a Phoenix prison.

In Texas, which is down nearly 2,600 officers from the 26,000 it needs,
twice as many down as it was three years ago, Glen Castlebury, a corrections
department spokesman, said a shortage of guards has meant that "shakedown
searches" of cellblocks are not done as often or as thoroughly as necessary.

And it was staffing problems at Lansing that contributed to the 1998 rape by
an inmate of an officer who was alone in a three-person post, said the
warden, David McKune. A state audit followed the rape, underscoring staffing
problems and getting officers a salary increase.

In some states, new prisons are being mothballed for lack of guards. Arizona
has delayed opening 1,150 beds at its complex in Lewis, and Wyoming may not
be able to open a high-security prison in Rawlins.

To attract guards, states are turning to a multitude of strategies, some
never tried before. Some are trying to lower the minimum age to as low as
18. While some states already have policies permitting teenage prison
guards, they say they hire few. Some corrections officers and experts
question whether teenagers have the maturity to be guards.

"You'd be hard pressed to find much support in the community for hiring
19-year-olds," said Kenny Wilk, a Kansas state representative from Lansing.
"It's just a maturity question."

Mr. McKune, Lansing's warden, counters that 18-year-olds can serve in the
military and that "some of the 19- and 20-year-olds I know are more mature
than 40- and 45-year-olds I know."

So far, he said, one 19-year-old has been fired, before he even got out of
training, because he was "mouthing off and not wearing the uniform right."

Mr. Culbertson, the first 19-year-old hired, has had mixed reviews for his
performance but has been improving, senior officers said. He got a talking
to for being free with his language over a prison radio.

Lt. Leslie Wagers, assigned to be Mr. Culbertson's mentor, said: "He has a
lot of eyes on him and every little mistake he makes, I'm going to learn
about it. They say, `Well, if he would do this, it would be easier.' Or, `He
doesn't seem to be listening,' or, `He just stares at me.' But if he doesn't
make mistakes, how's he going to learn?" There are also less controversial
recruiting techniques. Some prisons are offering signing bonuses to recruits
or giving bonuses or savings bonds to staff members who manage to recruit
guards. Some are advertising on television, taking to the Internet or using
direct- mail blitzes. And many are swooping down on factory or mine closings
and peppering military bases with help-wanted posters.

"My God," said Mr. Castlebury of Texas's advertising campaign. "I don't
think you can move anywhere in Texas without seeing our signs."

Still others offer free room and board, or free transportation, to officers
who live far away.

About two years ago, Kentucky feared it might have to call in the National
Guard to fill vacancies in the Kentucky State Reformatory near Louisville.
Instead, the state instituted a three-day workweek, complete with room and
board, to attract people from distant rural communities. Now, said the
warden, Bill Seabold, two-thirds of the employees work three 13-hour shifts,
with many traveling back to faraway hometowns on their four days off.

States like Texas are cobbling together a work force of retired corrections
officers, college students or police officers to work part time. The state
also started paying overtime two years ago, giving officers the opportunity
to augment salaries that top out at $28,380 after four years.

As they have for years, corrections departments and officers unions are
pushing for pay raises for a job whose starting salary averages $23,000 a
year nationally. But at a time when many state budgets are being cut, salary
increases, never particularly popular for a profession that many voters
rarely come in contact with, are a tougher sell.

In Oklahoma, where nearly one-fifth of the positions are empty and overtime
pay is skyrocketing, the starting salary is $16,742 a year, below poverty
level for a family of four and, said Jerry Massie, a corrections department
spokesman, less than "you can make as a convenience store clerk in Oklahoma
City."

The problem is not as acute in Northeastern states because unions are strong
and salaries tend to be more competitive. But experts say they have related
problems.

New Jersey, wrestling with vacancies and high overtime in recent years,
replaced some guards in prison towers with a system of truck patrols and
electronic fencing. In New York, the number of nonviolent inmates is
decreasing so the state is actually cutting jobs in some medium-security
prisons upstate.

Often, staff shortages are not spread evenly in a state. Some states have
shortages only in new prisons built in rural areas where the labor pool is
thin, while others have shortages in metropolitan areas, where other jobs
pay better and are safer.

Aside from the cost in dollars, there is the cost to overburdened officers,
exhausted from long hours and the stress of having to deal with a revolving
door of inexperienced cadets. Officers say they become less attentive and
more forgetful in these situations, and more afraid that inmates will take
advantage of the fact that they are stretched too thin.

"Put together the shortage of officers, the size of the system, the
attrition rate and new officers coming on line almost all of the time, and
you have a dynamite keg," said Gerald McEntee, president of the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "You have a real threat
in terms of the security of state prisons."

Shortages also plague some federal and county prisons, Mr. McEntee said, but
they tend to pay better. That is the case in the Lansing area, where, in
nearby Leavenworth, the federal penitentiary, a private detention center and
even the county jail pay starting salaries as much as $8,000 higher than the
$21,944 that Lansing corrections officers get.

Staffing shortages at the Lansing prison, a turreted limestone edifice,
became so serious that 61 out of 530 positions were vacant as of Dec. 31,
and officers were working 80-hour weeks. The state began offering $500
recruiting and signing bonuses, and legislators are considering an increase
in starting pay of about $750.

These measures, along with a television commercial and the softening
economy, have all helped, Mr. McKune said. And, since January, Lansing has
hired nine 19- and 20- year-olds. Mr. Culbertson, whose parents work at the
federal prison in Leavenworth and whose uncle works at Lansing, is one of
them. He is quite happy with his new job.

"Good benefits," Mr. Culbertson said. "Free boots. And it's a job not
anybody could do. You need the mentality to put up with all the stuff you go
through every day."

Stuff like the inmate who hooted at him the other day as he walked by. And
inmates who harp on the low pay officers get and try to bribe them to
smuggle in drugs and other forbidden items.

"I tell them it's about the best job I've ever had," said Mr. Culbertson,
who worked as a welder when he finished high school. "This is the best pay
I've gotten. Being 19, you don't really get cut a whole lot of breaks. A lot
of places won't hire you until you're 21."