By Kevin Lavery, KWMU
St. Louis, MO. – Corrections personnel from Missouri and elsewhere testified in St. Louis Tuesday before a national commission on safety and abuse in U.S. prisons.
Employees say their working conditions are stressful, they receive limited training and undergo a high turnover rate.
They add violence on the job is an almost daily experience. Ron Kaschak is a former Ohio deputy sheriff who was ordered to beat an inmate, then testified against his supervisors:
You have to follow the orders or they fire you; especially at a place like the Sheriff's Department where it switches every four years, Kaschak said. You never know who's in charge. I don't know really what you could actually do in a situation like that to prevent that from happening.
The commission starts a second day of testimony Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. It will issue a final report in May.