Cody Hale didn’t wait for the new year to change his life.

As a 30-year-old father of two, he’d spent 13 years in the family business when he filled a Humboldt County need and took advantage of a College of the Redwoods opportunity.

Hale became a Humboldt County correctional officer.

“Our former captain said it best: ‘Anyone who is a good parent makes a good correctional officer,’” Hale said. “That’s the way I feel.”

Lt. Dean Flint said the county is short 21 funded Correctional Officer I and II positions. He said 11 recent hires will be sent to the Jan. 22 through Feb. 26 corrections officer core course offered annually at CR.

The class runs Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is open to the public.

“Right now, we have about 25 people signed up, but we can go to 45,” CR Corrections Academy coordinator Ken Cleveland said. “Those who have gone out, applied and been hired need to be sent here within 12 months. Half of our class is made up of those folks.

“The other half are the folks that read your article and think a career change with that kind of money, retirement and benefits is worth five weeks of intensive training and $270. They’ll walk out of this academy with a certificate that allows them to obtain employment with any county correctional facility in California.”

Hale attended on the county’s dime the core course and the two-week firearms course that followed. Local correctional officers have the power to arrest and use a firearm as a peace officer, he said.

The starting salary for the county’s Correctional Officer I position is $2,430 monthly or $29,160 per year.

“But you don’t stay there long,” Flint said.

After completing the core course and a year of probation, Flint said officers move to a COII position and a salary range of $32,226 to $39,342 annually.

“It hasn’t been what I expected. It’s been better,” Hale said of his two-year career. “People think about the jail as a stinky, dirty, horrible, filthy place, but it’s not. Our jail is closer to a high school or college dorm than it is most people’s perceptions.”

Hale called it “a clean and reasonably safe work environment” and a trade of one family business for another.

“Not to be too mushy or emotional, but it’s very family oriented,” he said. “We care about each other.”

Hale’s standard work week is three days on and four off, followed by four days on and three off. Weekends and night and day shifts rotate, and Hale said, “You can always make a trade. You won’t ever be stuck where you don’t want to be for very long.”

A two-week work period includes six 12-hour shifts and one eight-hour turn.

But Flint said the crew has been on mandatory overtime of 18 hours per pay period for the past six months. The jail lost two people last week, one a 17-year veteran who left for Pelican Bay prison.

“We’re losing a lot of experience with him,” Sgt. Lee Figas said. “But retirement’s 3 percent at 50. It’s a big incentive at the end of a career to leave for Pelican Bay or to go to a county paying $50,000 more because the retirement percentage is determined on the salary at the top year or top three years.”

The Public Employees Retirement System calculates the correctional officer benefit by multiplying the years of service by 3 percent. A 30-year employee could go out at age 50 and make 90 percent of their pre-retirement income.

“I thought about law enforcement when I was younger, but it wouldn’t have been a good fit for me,” Hale said. “I needed to grow up. I did not have the developed work ethic and I wasn’t mature enough to do this job at that time. Looking back, I wish I could have.”

He said the county has recently hired a number of 18- to 19-year-olds who “are much more mature than I was.”

They’ll be in the core course class at the academy, which Cleveland said is one of 17 regional centers in California.

“We’ve had a couple of hundred go through,” Cleveland said. “Every time, we lose maybe one or two. They withdraw from the class. They realize it isn’t what they thought it was, can’t deal with it or find it’s over their head.”

The minimum requirements for a Humboldt County position are a valid driver’s license, U.S. citizenship, 18 years of age and a high school degree or passage of the GED test.

“If they have some shady stuff in their background, they can call me,” Cleveland said. “There was a time 30 years ago where if they said ‘yes’ to any kind of drug use, that stopped the hiring. They can’t find folks that can say that anymore, so agencies have moved to specified periods of abstinence.”

Cleveland is a former police officer from Humboldt State University. He said the core class requires physical training “nowhere near what the police academy would require. Most of it is classroom PowerPoint presentation, book learning and lecture.”

Topics include constitutional rights, case law, confidentiality and record access, ethics, gangs and subculture, evidence handling of contraband, handcuffing, searching, report writing, movement within the facility, control holds, counting and defensive tactics.

“The last academy, I had guys going through that were 45 to 50,” Cleveland said. “Each county has different requirements, so call the county you are interested in. But there’s no other retirement program out there to match this.”

“We grabbed five or six guys out of Scotia when they did a big layoff five or six years ago, and they’ve turned out to be some of the best employees,” Flint said.

“They’d worked their entire life in a mill and came over in their early 40s. There’s a huge cultural change from manual labor to a technical job with computers and report writing. They didn’t use computers in their old job, didn’t have one at home. But if they’re highly motivated and willing to learn, we will put someone with them on the computer and work and work and work.”

Completing the course doesn’t guarantee a job, but Cleveland said recruitment goes on during the class.

“The reality of it is we are shorthanded,” Flint said. “We’re down the most I’ve ever seen and I started in 1987.”

Flint said it’s too late to complete the hiring process in time to start the next core class as a county employee.

Interested applicants can phone the Humboldt County Personnel Department at 707-476-2349 or go to the county Courthouse in Eureka.

For more information about the CR class, phone Cleveland at 707-476-4551 or the general law enforcement training line at 707-476-4334.

The right stuff for corrections

The benefits and need are great, but what correctional officer prospects get out of a job is not as important as what they bring to it. Not everyone is cut out to be a corrections officer.

“You’ve got to be a person who has patience and good self-control,” Corrections Academy coordinator Ken Cleveland said. “If you have anger issues, I don’t know. These guys are going to push your buttons. You need good, basic common sense. You need to be able to deal and multitask under stress.”

Cleveland allowed that for most of a correctional officer’s career, things go smoothly as inmates do what they’re asked.

“But those times when things go wrong — a riot — those are the times you need those faculties,” he said.

“You will learn communication skills that will assist you throughout life,” officer Cody Hale said. “You learn how to speak to people to obtain their respect, command their respect and give it. That’s a hard skill to learn in five minutes driving people to jail in the back of a cop car.

“We live with them 60 hours a week. You’ll learn to leave your prejudices and judgments at home. Everyone has their demons and problems. Theirs are very glaringly obvious because they are down on paper. They’re taking care of them and you respect that.”

“Correctional officers don’t issue punishment,” Lt. Dean Flint said. “Jail is the punishment. Give me a highly motivated person willing to learn and I’ll take that over anything.”