Bristol County Recruiting Correctional Officers at This Salary

I've known several guys who've worked as correctional officers in Bristol County and elsewhere. They tell me it's a tough job, and I have no reason to doubt them. At least a couple retired early due to job-related injuries.

Being in any law enforcement position is not easy these days. Ask a cop. Across the country, police departments are struggling to recruit new officers and hang on to the ones they have.

Keeping a full complement of corrections officers is challenging.

Get our free mobile app

Bristol County is looking for a few good men and women to work as correctional officers. The Sheriff's Office is advertising for help on Facebook.

The Sheriff's Office is offering a salary of $57,000 to start and a $5,000 signing bonus to new recruits. The ad promises "state pension eligibility after 20 years," as well as "state health, life and dental insurance, union benefits and other incentives."

The minimum age to be hired was also lowered from 19 to 18.

The Bristol County Sheriff's Office encourages applicants the BCSO website or email recrutiment@BCSO-MA.org to begin the application process.

Details about what a corrections officer job entails can also be found on the Bristol County Sheriff's Office website.

In April, Sheriff Paul Heroux announced plans to extend the training academy for new corrections officers from eight weeks to nine weeks.

New classes would be added to the academy training to include "de-escalation, dealing with mental illness, duty to intervene, and implicit bias."

"How can we expect a CO to do a tough job if the CO doesn't get the training they need to do their job?" Heroux said at the time.

Two weeks after making those statements, inmates staged an uprising at the Bristol County House of Correction that required more than 200 correctional officers to bring under control and caused up to $200,000 in damage.