Dodge County Sheriff Confident Protective Status Change For Jailers Would Help Recruitment Efforts

(Juneau) The Wisconsin Senate this week unanimously approved a bill granting county jailers the same protective status as police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and correctional officers in a prison setting. Among other things, protective status eligibility affords such workers duty disability insurance, which is difficult to obtain individually.
“What this bill does is it gives them [the county jailers] the duty disability, it gives them the early retirement,” says Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt, “but the employee, unlike all the other [state workers], the employee has to pay the employee share of it.”
County jailers would be able to retire as early as age 50 with a maximum retirement age of 53. Schmidt says the need has to do more with capability than age.
Schmidt says the big deal for him is that this has to do more with capabilities rather than age.
“Typically when you get to that upper 50s, lower 60s age bracket, where these employees might have to work still, it isn’t easy for them to keep up with the capabilities of the inmates that we’re housing,” says Schmidt.
Schmidt says that it is not a good situation when a 25-year-old individual is fighting with staff and a 62-year-old staff member must break up the fight. The legislation, authored by Representative Mark Born of Beaver Dam and Senator Howard Marklein of Spring Green), is now awaiting the governor’s signature. The sheriff says that would help him greatly with recruitment.