Governor Kelly tells El Dorado prison employees, “please don’t quit.”

Governor Laura Kelly has three words for workers at the state’s most crowded maximum-security prison: “Please don’t quit.”

The Wichita Eagle reports that Kelly spoke to more than 100 employees at El Dorado Correctional Facility on Thursday, two days after the Kansas Department of Corrections declared an emergency there.  She says to “Trust that we will work this out as fast as we can.”

The prison has 95 vacant staff positions while also housing 74 inmates over its limit.  It’s had multiple inmate disturbances over the past two years.  Several staff members raised issues of working long hours of overtime, sometimes with few breaks, and years of no pay raises.

Interim Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz told prison employees that “What’s happening here right now is not sustainable.”