Kevin Johnson

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Nurses, physical therapists and other senior medical staffers in the Federal Bureau of Prisons have been routinely assigned guard duties and other security-related shifts to fill chronic personnel gaps, despite critical health care shortages throughout the vast prison system.

The reassigned medical staffers are being drawn from the ranks of the uniformed U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), whose members have little or no experience providing security inside the overcrowded federal system, PHS members told USA TODAY.

One former health service nurse reported weekly assignments away from medical duties to monitor recordings of inmate telephone calls and other communications to flag potential threats. Another PHS officer said the physical therapy program at one institution was temporarily shuttered because of the reassignments and other staffing shortages.

The four PHS officers, including the former nurse, spoke to USA TODAY on the condition that they not be publicly identified out of concern for possible retaliation. But James Currie, executive director of the public health services' Commissioned Officers Association, and Eric Young, president of the union representing civilian prison workers, said they were familiar with the internal federal staffing practices in Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, Texas and Washington state.

Bureau of Prisons spokesman Justin Long, in a written response to USA TODAY's inquiries, acknowledged the use of PHS officers to staff security posts when there is sufficient need.

"The mission of the Bureau of Prisons is to protect public safety by running safe and secure prisons and helping inmates prepare for reentry. Adequately staffing custody posts is critical to carrying out this mission,'' Long said. "When an insufficient number of correctional officers are available to cover an institution’s critical custody posts on any given shift, institutions rely on overtime and the reassignment of other institution staff, including PHS officers, who are all considered correctional workers to cover such posts.''

Both Currie and Young said the practices create potential security risks because PHS officers lack proper security experience and training. At the same time, Currie and Young said, the regular re-deployments are exacerbating serious, existing problems in delivering needed health care to inmates.

Late last month, the Justice Department's inspector general found persistent staffing shortages that left some prison medical facilities with vacancy rates of 40% or higher. Throughout the prison system, which serves more than 170,000 inmates, there were 656 medical staff vacancies.

The aging inmate population has worsened staffing gaps in recent years, as the government has been unable to compete with the private sector for medical professionals who are often paid much more outside of government.

Feds struggle to provide prison medical care

The PHS, one of the nation's seven uniform services, provides health care assistance to more than two dozen agencies across the federal government, including the prison system. Nearly 900 health service officers are assigned throughout the federal prison system.

Young said the security reassignments have been "a big problem'' for years, adding that he addressed the matter with prison bureau officials as recently as this month because the practice is now occurring at "unprecedented'' levels.

“I truly believe this could result in a loss of life,'' Young said.

In Yazoo City, Miss., for example, Young said PHS officers, along with civilian kitchen workers and secretaries, have been pressed into security-related duties. In many cases, Young said PHS officers, who are not eligible for overtime pay, are being drafted to avoid paying overtime to unionized corrections officers. In other places, including in Yazoo City, he said staffing is so thin that others are routinely drafted to fill daily voids.

“They are using everyone to cover down there,’’ he said of the Mississippi complex. “It’s a powder keg.’’

The prison bureau said the reassignments were "not a new practice.''

"As our population continues to decrease, it is our expectation that the need for this practice will continue to decline.''

But Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., who has raised concerns about reassignments, said the potential risks far outweigh any benefit.

"The whole practice should be eliminated,'' Jolly said. "It's hard to justify why a person should be acting as a security officer when they are not qualified to do that. At the very least, the men and women working those posts should have confidence that they are working shoulder to shoulder with people who are properly trained.''

Currie, too, said the security reassignments were "inviting risk.''

"I don't believe these people (PHS) have any real security training at all,'' he said.

Currie said a senior PHS nurse recently complained to him that she was notified of an assignment to a 12-hour patrol shift at an inmate recreation yard when a supervisor handed her a pair of handcuffs.

"This is a person who has over 20 years working as a nurse,'' Currie said. "She never worked that (security) duty before. This whole arrangement is wrong and it needs to end.''

Labor fight threatens inmate health care

The security issue represents a rare point of agreement between Currie, the health service representative and Young, the union president, in an already fraught workplace where union workers and PHS officers have been locked in a bitter labor dispute over seniority rights within the prison bureau.

The fight centers on whether PHS members are entitled to the same status as their union colleagues for such things as shift assignments and time off. The dispute has prompted discussion among PHS officers of a mass exodus from the prison system where staffing shortages are at "crisis'' levels in some institutions, according to the Justice Department's inspector general.