Kansas Department of Corrections


The Kansas Department of Corrections is a cabinet-level agency of Kansas that operates the state's correctional facilities, both juvenile and adult; the state's parole system; and the state's Prisoner Review Board. It is headquartered in Topeka.

Correctional facilities

The Kansas Department of Corrections operates eight adult correctional facility sites, three satellite correctional facility sites and one juvenile correctional facility.
The community and field services division has two units - parole and community corrections.

Victim Services

The Office of Victim Services provides confidential support and information to victims, survivors, and witnesses if the offender in the crime was sentenced to incarceration in the Kansas Department of Corrections. Services provided include victim notification, safety planning, victim restitution, parole comment session advocacy, Victim/Offender Dialogue program, facility tours, and apology letters.

Kansas Correctional Industries

The department uses inmate labor to produce products such as office furniture, park equipment, and clothing for state government. Workers are paid very small sums allowing KCI to undercut conventional businesses.

Staffing

The department has suffered staff shortages for many years. In 2017, press reports indicated a turnover among the guards of 46% per year. A 10% pay raise increased the hourly wage for uniformed employees to $14.66 but did not include non-uniformed staff. The El Dorado facility was authorized a staff of 682, but about a quarter of the positions were vacant.
By 2019, the department was forced to contract with CoreCivic to move six hundred prisoners to Arizona due to staff shortages. At that time, the department reported an overall inmate population of 10,002 indicating about ten percent of the population was to be moved out of state.