Workforce
The Correctional Nursing Specialty is poorly understood by the public and other health providers, including the general discipline of nursing. It was estimated in 2022 by the National Survey of Registered Nurses that 63,746 correctional nurses provided care potentially to the:
- 1.9 million incarcerated people
- 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 142 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Nation jails, as well as those in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories
- at a system-wide cost of at least $182 billion each year.
This estimate of the nursing workforce under-represents the correctional nursing workforce by exclusion of LPN/LVNs. Currently, carceral facilities are highly dependent upon these nurses.
Nursing Workforce Resources:
- 2025 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report
- State of the World's Nursing Report (2025)
- Unlocking the Value of Nursing in Health Care (2024)
- International Council of Nurses- Recover to Build (2023)
- National League for Nursing Healthful Work Environment Toolkit© (2018)
- 2024 Public Health Learning Forum: Workforce Development in Action
- Nurse Staffing Task Force Imperatives, Recommendations, and Actions (2024)
- Healthy Work Survey
- Healthy Workplace Audit Tool
- National Training, Education and Workforce Survey (NTEWS)
A word about nurse retention… Based upon evidence-based standards outlined by AACN (2016, 2005), nurses are more likely to be retained when the healthcare team and their organization support a healthy work environment through these five initiatives:
- Skilled communication
- True collaboration
- Effective decision-making
- Appropriate staffing
- Authentic leadership