LINCOLN- Inspector General Doug Koebernick on Friday sent a letter to Corrections Director Scott Frakes with more than a dozen ideas to start addressing the worsening staffing crisis at state prisons, an issue that reached a fever pitch last week with a new report and powerful testimony from staff members.

Members of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee were at times visibly stunned by what they learned Wednesday during more than six hours of testimony from current and former state prison staff.

During the session, Koebernick told The World-Herald that it was “the best and most informative hearing on Corrections” in his 20-plus years working in the Legislature. He had known for a long time that staff needed to be heard and had good ideas on how to improve the system, he said, but had not understood the depth of how unheard they felt.

The letter he sent to Frakes includes a list of 18 “potential action items” compiled as a result of staff feedback from that forum and the report published by his office last week. The Judiciary Committee, too, was copied on the letter.

Taylor Gage, Ricketts’ spokesperson, said in an email Friday, “The Governor’s Office and the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services monitored the hearing closely.”

Before the hearing, Gage said that, while the state has made “significant increases to corrections officer compensation in recent years, we recognize more needs to be done,” and they were preparing to sit down with the union that represents corrections officers and other security staff to “negotiate on additional steps” to recruit and retain the workforce needed.

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