Jailers are responsible for monitoring and caring for prisoners at the local government level, including filing documents, transporting prisoners, and monitoring visitors. In the US, they processed 13 million people in 2010, with no law enforcement responsibilities outside of prison. Demand for jailers depends on society’s predilection for incarcerating individuals, with the US having much higher per capita numbers than most other industrialized countries. Duties also depend on overcrowding, with jailers potentially responsible for detained foreigners.
A jailer, often also called a correctional officer or jailer, is responsible for monitoring and caring for prisoners at the local government level. These prisoners are usually held for short periods of time while awaiting trial, are convicted of minor offenses, or will soon be transported to a prison for long-term confinement. Other duties common to jailers include filing documents about prisoners, transporting them to/from the courthouse, and monitoring visitors who come to see the prisoner.
In the United States, as of 2010, jailers were responsible for processing 13,000,000 people a year, with nearly 800,000 held in prisons at any one time, according to the National Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a prison is typically designed to hold a prisoner for a year or less, many more detainees are processed through prison systems than through prisons. OOH’s estimate for the number of Americans arrested in 2010 is 1,600,000.
Although a jailer has authority over him and must maintain order within the confines of the prison, in the US and other countries he has no law enforcement responsibilities outside of prison. They are not sworn individuals like state troopers who are required to uphold civil laws. In that sense, they often share many of the duties of a local government official, where they need to print, photograph and process suspects in the criminal justice system. They also serve prisoners meals, search weapons or other contraband, and ensure their medical needs are met.
The demand for jailers or jailers often depends on society’s predilection for incarcerating individuals. US per capita numbers are much higher than most other industrialized countries, making the occupation of jail wardens soaring in the US, with estimates of a 9% increase in the field of jail wardens between 2008 and 2018. A 2008 study listed 751 people in prison in the US for every 100,000 people in the population; while in Russia, with the next highest incarceration rate on the list, 627 people per 100,000 were incarcerated. Other comparable nations had much lower incarceration rates and therefore much less demand for jailers, with England incarcerating 151 per 100,000 people, Germany 88 per 100,000 and Japan 63 per 100,000.
Duties of local jailers also depend on the overcrowding of the system, as the jailer may also be responsible for detained foreigners. In early 2011, Romania began to notify other members of the European Union that there was no place for Romanian citizens in prison in other EU countries who were to be transported back to Romania. European Union law allows prisoners held by a jailer in a foreign country to serve their sentence in their home country, close to family. Romanian nationals in jails in Italy, Spain and France, as well as Germany, UK and Austria requested transfers back to local Romanian jails.
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