Public safety agencies face serious risks and consequences due to the well-known and predictable impacts of excessive mandatory overtime on staff health and functioning. Below are key points to consider:

Public Safety, Performance, and Legal Liability

“We know long work hours and shift work and sleep deprivation degrades … performance, productivity, safety, health and well-being. It can increase misconduct, accident risks, it can impair judgment and the ability to respond quickly. It can affect relationships with the community. This has been pretty well-established for several decades.”
— Dr. Samantha Riedy (2020)

The consequences of sleep deprivation among public safety workers, particularly correctional and law enforcement officers, are profound.

Risks Increased by Staff Sleep Deficits

  • Motor vehicle accidents after leaving work
  • On-site errors due to attention lapses, microsleeps, or memory malfunction
  • On-site accidents linked to slower reaction times
  • Misuses of force due to impaired self-regulation and executive function
  • Elevated risks of mental illness and suicide

Performance Issues and Agency Liability
A study of U.S. police rosters found that public complaints were significantly more likely among officers who:

  • Slept less in the 24 hours before a shift
  • Worked back-to-back night shifts
  • Reported greater physical fatigue and sleepiness
    (Riedy, Dawson, & Vila, 2019)

Real-world tragedies have demonstrated the dangers:

  • Wrongful death lawsuit: Excessive overtime blamed in the suicide of a Los Angeles County jail deputy (ABC7, 2024).
  • Car accidents after shifts: Multiple correctional officers have died in post-shift car crashes attributed to fatigue (Corrections1, 2022; KRDO, 2022; Yahoo News, 2019) or caused accidents that injured or killed others (Maine, 2019).

“Corrections officers perform a vital public safety function… If you wouldn’t want to take your chances on an airline pilot or a surgeon who’d been working for 32 hours straight, you should be very concerned about corrections officers working for 32 hours straight.”
— David Fathi, American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prisons Project

Mandatory Overtime and Safety Laws
Mandatory overtime may violate workplace safety laws if it creates a health hazard (OSHA guidance; Bracken, 2022).

“For obvious safety reasons, there are laws limiting the hours that truck drivers can work. Similarly, OSHA may provide some protection from long work hours and fatigue that could lead to injury.”
— Douglas Bracken, Employment Law Attorney

Solutions: Addressing the Sleep Crisis

“Only radical and creative measures can address this very real and devastating iceberg of a threat to staff’s health and functioning, and to the quality of effectiveness of correctional agencies’ operations.”
— Caterina Spinaris, PhD

Agency Solutions

  • Hire additional staff to reduce reliance on mandatory overtime
    (We recognize that many agencies are currently struggling with critically low staffing levels.)
  • Implement consistent shift scheduling to preserve circadian rhythm stability
  • Pursue statutory work hour limits, similar to other high-risk professions

Legal Limits on Work Hours in Other Professions

  • Airline Pilots: Max 9 hours of flight time per 24 hours (FAA)
  • Truck Drivers: Max 11 hours driving within a 14-hour window, after 10 hours off duty (FMCSA)
  • Air Traffic Controllers:
    • Max shift: 10 consecutive hours
    • Break required every 2 hours
    • Minimum 9 hours off between shifts
    • At least 24 consecutive hours off every 7 days

Japan’s Mandatory Overtime Limits on Firms and Workers

Sudden death from overwork—usually from a heart attack or stroke—has a name in Japan—karoshi. To address this poor work-personal life balance, in 2019 Japan instituted a Work Style Reform that introduced a maximum overtime cap of 360 hours per year (equivalent to 30 overtime hours in a typical month).

Acknowledging the Challenge, Advancing the Mission

We deeply empathize with administrators and other decision-makers, recognizing that there are no easy solutions to the serious challenge of understaffing. Tackling this issue will require a multifaceted strategy—including strengthening professionalism, improving workplace culture, and reshaping the public image of these career fields.

Corrections work must urgently evolve to be recognized as a vital and honorable profession—one rooted in purpose, resilience, and the well-being of those who serve. Returning to the earlier analogy of the iceberg threatening the correctional Titanic, the warning is stark: without swift and meaningful reform, the system risks a catastrophic capsizing. Elevating the profession is no longer optional—it is a matter of survival.

Norway once faced similar challenges and dysfunction in its prison system. But starting in the 1950s, the country committed to meaningful reform and innovation. Slowly but steadily, it turned the ship around. Today, Norway is recognized for having one of the most effective and humane criminal justice systems in the world. Its journey shows that even amid deep dysfunction, progress is possible. With vision, commitment, and sustained effort, we too can change course, prevent disaster, and reduce the needless suffering of all those impacted by the justice system.