My California CDC experiences thus far.

And remember ... I said the tax can get up to 9 percent ... because I was also including my husband's income.

But at $88K a year the tax wouldn't be 9 percent ... it would be more like 6.5 percent for a single person or $5,500 a year.

Last time I checked there were 3,100 RN's waiting for corrections jobs in California and Monterey is a very popular spot so ... who knows how difficult it would be. A friend of mine just interviewed for a corrections job and didn't get it so, it can be tough. But she didn't apply to as many facilities as I did ... which she's now regretting.

It really depends on how the pay compares with hospital pay and how many RN's are in the area. If the hospital pay sucks then, there's typically waiting lists of 200-300 RN's at each facility. And, obviously the chances are better with facilities where there are fewer RN's in the area ...

So while Monterey hospital pay may be good and there might not be as much competition because of that ... a lot of people want to live there so there may be more competition just because it's a gorgeous area.

:typing

Hi, Sheri257 -

I have a year left in nursing school.

I have been interested in correctional nursing for years now, ever since I worked for a little bit (maybe six months, years ago) in a county jail and talked with some of the RNs there.

So now, I'm finally in a BSN program and a year out from finishing.

I wanted to ask you about your path to correctional nursing, if you don't mind.

You mentioned taking a low-paying job at a private prison (I think that's what you said?) to have corrections experience, is that right? Was this a health care job, or specifically an RN job even...or non-health care?

I would do any job in a private prison if I thought it would seriously aid me in my goal of working in a state prison.

Of course, being a new grad, there's that as well. I don't know how much that would go against me...or if I should just plan on taking the test (that online test...you have to have a license to even take it, right?) as soon as I'm licensed, but plan on doing med-surg or something until I get an interview?

Thanks for your time and your help on all this. It's been great reading your posts (all of you). So grateful to have the information.

Adam

From what I've read on other posts, you will probably need some experience before coming to CDCR as the online exam you are speaking of is not really an "exam" per se, but an accounting of your experience...Points are assigned somehow based on your responses and then you are placed on a list based on the total number of points based on your experience...When I applied roughly 2 years ago, there wasn't much competition...now, with the salary increase, there is a lot of competition...Since you have your heart set on working in corrections, you might see if you can get in to county jail first to get your experience...The Department of Mental Health is also another way to get your foot in the door with the state so that you could possibly transfer to CDCR in the future....A lot of DMH patients come from state prison anyways (CDCR even provides custody for the perimeter of state hospitals) so you'd get a taste of what you will be dealing with as far as mentally ill inmates...I'd search online and contact county jails to find out what type of support staff is hired for the medical staff to see if you can't get your foot in the door...Some state prisons are hiring CNA's as well, which might be another way you could get your foot in the door before you get your RN...I applied for and tested for my CNA after my first semester of RN school, which allowed me to work a part time job seeing what nurses did...Let me tell you though, I thought I knew what it was like to be an RN after my observations, but it's a whole other world when you actually have that license...it's not just about the tasks you observe the RN doing...it's also the critical thinking skills that you can't see that the RN is doing that people don't realize goes in to nursing...I was overwhelmed when I first started out on my own...It's an amazing and humbling experience to be an RN...Good luck to you with your education and don't worry about whether you have med/surg or not...There are many different jobs for nurses within CDCR from public health to med passes to triage and sick call...If there was any one class that I wish the state would offer to the nursing staff of CDCR, it would be an EMT class because it would better prepare us on how to handle riots and trauma...If you have time, I would recommend seeking out an EMT class or at least reading up on the skills of an EMT and may be even doing some work in an ER as a student nurse...My skills as an EMT and ER nurse have helped me tremendously with CDCR...I even took an EMT recert class a couple of weeks ago to brush up on my skills...Hope this helps...

Well, I'm a little south of Los Angeles and our pay just went up to $29. and change/hr. (base)

OT is pretty good.

The PD is great, jailers are great, Chief of Police is awesome!!(and I send him a bill every time I say that)

Benefits are superb.

Medical/dental for family of 4 is about $80.00/mo--that's a PPO medical and dental, life ins, vision, RX, etc--(I was paying close to $500.00 in the private sector for less)

Our retirement, is well, you judge--we have Calpers (for sworn fire and police, they get 2.9% x number of years in service x ending salary with a cap of 90% and can retire at 52 ) we get 2.7% x number of years in service x yearly salary at the time of retirement, retire at 55, and have NO CAP which means that if I was smart enough to get hired here when I got my nursing license at 20, I could retire in December (at 55 yrs old) and collect 94.5% of my salary. If I hold out until I'm 65, I'd collect 121.5% of my salary!!!!!!!!!! We have jailers who are about 135%-plus, you can buy back military service time to count towards retirement.)
I've only been here since 2-99, so I can only collect 21.6% if I retire (which I'm not)

I'm PUSHING my sons to get a job with the city--I don't care what they do!

We have a good thing going here. I'm glad you found it!!

Adam, we had a rotation with Cal State nurses (BSN program) where they spent 8 weeks with me. It was wonderful for all-they learned there's more to nursing than med surg/hospital and we had new thoughts from them. Does your school have this? It was part of their public health rotation.

aint read all the replies, but the CA CDC hourly rates are probably needed to offset the cost of living in the State of California.
now, when i go back to corrections in Texas, i will be taking a pay cut, but right now, as an ER nurse, base pay is in the low 30's/per hour..and my cost of living is probably half what it would be in California. i can buy a house on acreage for under 50K. average rent i have paid for a 2br house has been anywhere from 350 to 650 a month. so that, lets say, 32/hour goes a LONG LONG way when your rent/mortgage is that low, overall cost of living is low, and no state income tax............
plus Texas is the friendliest state in the union!

Generally the cost of living is cheaper in Texas but, it doesn't always mean more money in your pocket.

I've worked for CDC for two months and I've already gotten a 3.4 percent pay raise ... so base pay for all but three facilties is $7285 a month (higher in the Bay Area). In three years the base pay gets to $100K or $8,400 a month with the excellent pension that was previously mentioned (not to mention great OT).

If I lived in San Francisco then, the $100K wouldn't matter much but, since I live in a much cheaper part of California ... I'd have make $75 to $85K base pay in Houston or Dallas Texas to bring home the same amount of money (even with lower taxes, lower cost of living in Texas) ... which isn't likely since nursing wages in Texas generally are much lower.

So it really depends on how much you can make .... as well as which town you're living in, and which town you're moving to ... not so much the state itself.

I worked as an RN at the private prison but it was only for a month. Basically, I'm still a new grad but, I guess they hired me because I had at least some experience with inmates. Because I am a new grad and I only worked a couple of hospital jobs during nursing school before that, I didn't score very high on the CDC exam. But, I got lucky because this particular facility was expanding and was on a brief hiring spree at the time.

However, the other posters are right ... besides corrections and mental health experience, ER experience is probably best for corrections and my facility has also hired a lot of ER nurses. I was going to take an ER job right before I got hired because I certainly could have used the experience but, with the CDC waiting lists and all of this competition for these jobs ... I just couldn't take the chance of trying to get hired later on.

Triaging these inmates is very tough as a new grad ... the biggest problem is so many of them are fakers and with this federal court order they're definitely taking advantage of the system. So you get tons of guys who are just looking for female attention and take a lot of the time and resources away from the really sick inmates because, under the federal court order ... you've got to see everyone with every complaint, no matter how minor it is ... within 24 hours.

It really makes it difficult to identify and treat the really sick inmates. Nevertheless, despite my lack of experience ... I think I've made some pretty good triage calls. With the exception of one inmate, all of the guys I sent to the TTA (our mini- prison ER) for further evaluation and treatment ended up going to the hospital ... in other words, they were really sick.

The fact that they had to go to the hospital may sound like a bad thing but, the experienced veteran ER nurses who work in the TTA hate it when you send them inmates who are faking because that wastes their time also ... they're very busy and don't want to waste their time on some manipulator.

But, the scary part is if you decide someone is faking and they're not ... it can happen very easily because so many inmates claim they're critically ill and you have to check them all out. So far that hasn't happened to me yet but, I worry about it all the time.

On the other hand, you can't waste all of your time on the fakers either... so you've got to make a lot of quick judgement calls and hope you're right. In the end, hopefully what I learned in nursing school carries me through ... and it's been working for the most part.

fascinating discussion thus far. I'm a nursing student and interested in all critical areas, such as ER/ICU, but haven't really considered prisons until recently. The pay does sound tempting but the work sounds downright intriguing at this point. I'll be interested to see the continuation of this thread.

Richard

JailRN - Hm. Interesting. Haven't had public health rotation yet. Maybe we'll have such an opportunity at my Cal State school.

Sheri257 - Thanks for the extra information. Very interesting. I guess I'll just be patient, cross my fingers and hope for the best...get some ER experience, etc., and hope I can get hired some day in corrections.