Why Are Staff Leaving the Cascade County Jail? Sheriff Slaughter Explains

One of the things I love about creating content for our social media pages is the feedback we get from people. Truly. I don't care if it's negative, positive, funny, sad, etc. To me, it's conversation. It's discovery. It's people being people.

And did I mention your feedback sparks more conversation?

As a matter of fact, it was your feedback that sparked a question I asked Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter regarding the critical staffing situation at the Cascade County Detention Center.

Reasons Why People Quit the Cascade County Detention Center

Most of us probably understand that working at the Cascade County Detention Center (or any jail) isn't for everybody. It takes a combination of health, fortitude, resiliency, and a level of trust that can be rare to find in a potential new hire.

But let's say you find that candidate to work at the Cascade County Detention Center... how do you keep them there? Is there a retention or management problem as some people in our comment sections have suggested?

I asked Sheriff Slaughter just that.

Chris: So my question about the detention center, for those that missed it, we had a chance to catch up on Thursday with the critical staffing shortage and things like that. And if it's okay with you, I wanted to share a question that I saw in a few of the comments.

I've seen some folks contest that it's a management issue or a work environment, but at the same time, I also know that it gets hard when there is a shortage and it becomes kind of like a vicious cycle, right? So, a lot of the folks were asking the questions of, well, how do you keep people there if there's a turnover problem? I just wanted to, one more time, bring that up so you have a chance to respond to that.

Sheriff Slaughter: So, yeah, so, you know, a lot of people were, you know, and I gotta be careful how I say this, but there's people that are terminated with cause, okay? So they didn't do their job properly and because of those reasons, and I can't obviously due to personal issues get into it.

Chris: It was a standard issue.

Sheriff Slaughter: Yeah, but there's, yeah, it's with cause, okay? Then you have some people that it's too stressful of an environment for them. It's difficult.

And then we've had other people that have had personal life issues, injuries, different things that have occurred in their life that it's just not a good fit anymore. And it's a combination. And so we are working on building a really good culture in the detention center.

Culture at the Cascade County Detention Center

Sheriff Slaughter: One of the things we did different than any other law enforcement agency I've ever seen do, and it was, I always promised myself I'd do this, but to do it is really hard.

So, for years, there wasn't any standards to get hired as a detention officer. Basically you had to pass your criminal background and then make it through the training and you were good. Okay.

Well, a couple of years ago, we had a couple of detention officers and it's out there in the public. Everybody knows about it. They were arrested for their off-duty contact for committing violent crimes off-duty.

Okay. And I did a full press conference on this. We were very transparent about what happened.

And we decided as a team moving forward, we were going to raise the standard. And when you're in a manning, you're struggling with manning, it's really hard to say, 'okay, now we're going to raise the standard?' Because what do most law enforcement agencies do? They can't get people. And we've seen this.

I mean, there's some agencies that if you've had a felony and it's been long enough period of time that they'll consider hiring you for a law enforcement job. Well, we did the opposite. We raised all the standards and we raised them exponentially.

Now you have to pass a written test. Now you have to take a physical fitness exam and you have to pass a psychological exam and your background just to make it in the door.

We're not just hiring, we're trying to build something.

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Do you have a question for Cascade County Sherif Slaughter that you want me to ask him next time? Submit your questions HERE.

Check out the FULL INTERVIEW HERE!