The US presidential election
Peter Kadhammar
Published 20.37
Once again, Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States.
How will the already divided country be affected by the election?
Together with photographer Peter Wixtröm, Peter Kadhammar visits the states where the cracks are the deepest.
NOVEMBER 15: Chicago, Illinois
Last week, a young woman worked 18.5 hours straight, ordered overtime, says her union president Jeff Wright.The overtime was heavy but not incredible. There is a constant lack of staff in the prisons and over 60 hours of overtime in a 14 day period is normal.
Jeff is president of Section 3652 of the Federal Government Employees Union, which organizes, among other things, correctional officers. He is a corpulent man with a sparse beard and laughs easily.
The unusual thing about the woman last week was that she would have quit the night before, was ordered to work all night, called Jeff at 8:30 and was desperate because she is a single mother. Who would take care of the child? Also, she was scheduled at 2pm on the same day, five and a half hours later.
In and of itself, she had the right to wait to report until 4pm, as correctional officers are entitled to 7.5 hours off between shifts.
Jeff talked to management so she could get the day off and sleep in.
The number of prisoners has decreased in recent years following an agreement across party lines regarding, among other things, sentence reductions. Donald Trump signed the reform in 2018, the last time he was president.
Yet prisons are still a giant low-wage industry.
Jeff is happy to see me, he even thanks - that someone is interested in the conditions of correctional officers.
In the prison where he works, only 73 percent of the posts are filled. In others, only half are added.
- It becomes a vicious circle. Someone has to move in to do the job where there is a lack of staff, someone else has to move in to do the job after the one who moved in elsewhere. It becomes a vicious circle. The caregivers are so tired that they wander around like zombies.
80 hours of ordered overtime in a 14-day period is not unusual. Jeff has colleagues who have worked 24 hours straight, but that has in and of itself been in special situations, he says.
There are 78,000 correctional officer vacancies in the federal justice system.
The pay is lousy. $55,000 a year base salary in Chicago, it's barely livable. $83,000 is the paltry final salary. A police officer starts at 65,000 and is up to 100,000 already after a couple of years.
Real wages for correctional officers are falling, and falling.
So why are you staying?
- We don't just lock them up anymore. We try to understand why a person became a criminal. We test them for dyslexia, learning ability. We have a range of programs to teach them trades. Car mechanic. Plumber. Hairdresser. So that they have something to come out to.
Jeff talks about the importance of seeing the prisoners as individuals who need help.
- Imagine the feeling of teaching an adult to read!
We are sitting in a cafe, Jeff with his back to the door.
- I don't like that people can walk behind me. In the toilet, I never use the urinal. I lock myself in. I check my surroundings carefully when I get out of the car.
A colleague was stabbed. Another was taken hostage. A third was beaten to death with a sledgehammer. Jeff has been attacked and smeared with feces and shot at while trying to escape.
- The employer now offers treatment for post-traumatic stress. I have declined. You only get medicine.
Still, he loves his work, at the bottom of the status ladder.
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