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Workforce

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The Correctional Nursing Specialty is poorly understood by the public and other health providers, including the general discipline of nursing. It was estimated in 2022 by the National Survey of Registered Nurses that 63,746 correctional nurses provided care potentially to the:

  • 1.9 million incarcerated people

  •  1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 142 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Nation jails, as well as those in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories

  • at a system-wide cost of at least $182 billion each year.

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This estimate of the nursing workforce under-represents the correctional nursing workforce by exclusion of LPN/LVNs.

​Currently, carceral facilities are highly dependent upon these nurses.​

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  • Skilled communication

  • True collaboration

  • Effective decision-making

  • Appropriate staffing

  • Authentic leadership

A word about nurse retention…  Based upon evidence-based standards outlined by AACN (2016, 2005), nurses are more likely to be retained when the healthcare team and their organization support a healthy work environment through these five initiatives:​

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AACN STANDARDS FOR
ESTABLISHING AND SUSTAINING
HEALTHY WORK ENVIRONMENTS

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