{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/correctional-officers-and-jailers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Correctional Officers and Jailers",
    "soc_code": "33-3012",
    "category": "Protective Service",
    "us_employment": 380500,
    "median_annual_wage": 58940
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 68,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 17,
    "embodiment": 19,
    "liability_shield": 11,
    "trust_premium": 8,
    "judgment_accountability": 13
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Pat-downs and strip searches, cell extractions, restraint application, suicide cut-downs, and pill-line supervision cannot be delegated to software, and the 17 rather than 20 reflects that formal counts, log entries, visitor screening and incident-report drafting are already being absorbed by RFID/biometric counting and video analytics.",
    "embodiment": "You physically move through housing units, control tight corridors, take punches during fights, and go hands-on with combative people who are actively resisting — the environment includes weapons improvised from anything, bodily fluids, and no ability to pause the situation, which is about as uncontrolled as work gets.",
    "liability_shield": "Most states require academy certification and POST-style licensure with revocation power, and 8th Amendment deliberate-indifference and excessive-force suits name officers personally, but the 11 rather than 16 reflects qualified immunity, union representation, and the fact that the agency and warden absorb most of the exposure for policy-driven outcomes.",
    "trust_premium": "Rapport with inmates on your unit — knowing who is decompensating, who is about to be assaulted, which informant will talk — is real operational currency, but you are interchangeable to the institution, rotate posts and shifts by bid, and nobody chooses their officer.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide alone at 3 a.m. whether a threat justifies force, whether a suicide watch report is credible, when to call a code, and whether to write up or de-escalate, all under policy manuals and use-of-force continuums that constrain but do not resolve the call — discretion inside a rulebook rather than the open-ended authority of a warden or a shift commander."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of this job — conducting cell and body searches, breaking up fights, escorting inmates, counting heads, responding to medical emergencies and self-harm attempts — happens with hands and bodies in one of the least predictable physical environments that exists, and no robot is doing it. AI is already eating the paperwork tier: incident report drafting, log entries, visitor screening, and camera monitoring with behavior-flagging analytics, which will thin out control-room and booking posts. Employment risk here comes far more from incarceration policy, budget cuts, and chronic understaffing than from automation.",
  "outlook": "Headcount stays roughly flat to slightly down over ten years, driven by prison population and budget decisions rather than AI, with control-room and clerical posts consolidated and floor, transport, and mental-health posts still chronically short-staffed.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State corrections statutes or consent-decree terms (e.g. DOJ CRIPA settlements, California's AB 2632-style restrictions on solitary) that require a named, certified officer to personally authorize and sign each use-of-force, restraint, strip-search, or suicide-watch placement decision — explicitly barring reliance on AI risk scores as the authorizing record. Several state POST-equivalent boards already mandate officer certification; extending personal-signature liability to AI-flagged incidents is the concrete step.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) audit standards being amended to require that camera-analytics alerts be reviewed and dispositioned by a certified officer of record, with that officer's name in the audit trail — turning camera monitoring from an automatable post into a signature post.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: as report drafting, log entry, and head-count verification are automated, the residual post is almost entirely the ambiguous calls — when a fight becomes a force incident, whether self-harm talk is imminent, which cell moves prevent a gang assault. This tier already exists and is separately reviewed; thinning the clerical tier concentrates it.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Union contracts (e.g. AFSCME, CCPOA, NYSCOPBA) adding language that AI behavioral flags are advisory only and cannot substitute for officer discretion or be used as the sole basis for discipline — codifying that the officer owns the call.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Minimum staffing-ratio legislation or court-ordered floors (as in ongoing Alabama and Mississippi DOJ actions) that set officers-per-inmate independent of surveillance technology, blocking substitution of remote monitoring for physical posts.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 1
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "trust_premium has no realistic route: the buyer is a government agency under budget pressure, and incarcerated people and their families are not paying customers who can express a preference for human staffing. embodiment is near ceiling at 19. The real employment risk remains decarceration policy and facility closures, which no dimension here captures."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 428870,
        "wage": 43540
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 415000,
        "wage": 44330
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 423050,
        "wage": 45180
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 405870,
        "wage": 47410
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 392600,
        "wage": 47920
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 363250,
        "wage": 49610
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 351420,
        "wage": 53300
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 365380,
        "wage": 57970
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 380500,
        "wage": 58940
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -11.3,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}