There was a time when the employee turnover rate at the Sequoyah County Jail was an astounding 84%. Finding and keeping employees was so difficult, that recent high school graduates with little or no training often got the nod.

“There’s some good young people out there, I don’t want that to sound bad,” Sequoyah County Undersheriff Charles House told county commissioners at their weekly meeting on March 23, “but when you turn a 19-year-old — I’m going to say child — into our jail facility and you’re surrounded by 60 men who are in there for whatever reason, career criminals, it’s an uneasy feeling. It’s a little bit nerve wracking at first — it was for me, even as an older person.”

It was an untenable situation for House and Sheriff Larry Lane.

“It was just a revolving door, and not just at the jail,” District 3 Commissioner Jim Rogers recalled. “You’d hire somebody, and then, boom, next thing you know they’d quit. We were hiring kids right out of high school, and then they come in here and get used and abused — probably not the proper terminology, but you’re dealing with inmates — and then they could go to McDonald’s or Braum’s and make the same money — or more — flipping burgers.”

In addition to working in a stressful and difficult environment, county jails across the state have been hit with debilitating lawsuits that added even more stress from the jailhouse to the commissioners’ board room.

According to Rogers and the Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma (ACCO), up to 95% of lawsuits that land on county commissioners’ desks were because of jails.

“Who wants to have that knowing you’ve got a chance of getting hurt or where many of our lawsuits come from?” House asked rhetorically. “It’s not like our jail is the only one getting hit with lawsuits — but luckily, we’re not getting any big ones — but it’s jails across the state.”

But Sequoyah County Commissioners — Rogers along with Ray Watts of District 1 and Beau Burlison of District 2 — were committed to changing the culture, not only for county employees, but at the jail, in particular.

House cites efforts by commissioners to understand the challenges at the jail, and then “providing more money toward the jail to help get those salaries up.”

“I did a study, and the turnover rate was 84% over a two-year period,” House told the commissioners. “Our turnover rate for the jail is less than 30% right now.”

The turnaround hit home for House when preparing the annual safety awards for jail employees.

“This is the first time when I was doing our safety awards — I go by years and service time — I’m like, wow, I’ve got two people that have been here less than a year. So that shows it’s starting to pay off. We’ve actually got applications sitting in a folder of people who want to come work here now, versus running with two people at night,” House said.

Rogers expounded on the turnaround.

“What we did as a board, we agreed to give them more money, but we want them to earmark it for jailers’ pay. And when we did that, that took our 84% turnover ratio down to 20% to 30% turnover,” Rogers observed.

“And you got older applicants, too, didn’t you?” he verified with House.

“I know you guys have heard me say this time and time again, but our sheriff ’s department runs a premier operation. One of the things that I do in our state board meetings is that we’ve always offered the other counties to come and visit. You guys should feel good about that,” Rogers said.

Lane, House and the commissioners feel good about the employment stability the jail now enjoys.