Dangerously low staffing in state prisons, especially in Tucson, has been stanched, thanks to a pay boost and administrative improvements.

Legislators have approved pay raises amounting to $6,810 a year for correctional officers, making state Department of Corrections salaries competitive with those at privately run prisons and county and city jails around the state.

The change has been dramatic, with the vacancy rate for correctional officers dropping to about 3 percent, a nose dive from more than 22 percent last summer.

The state prison in Tucson had a 30 percent shortfall in staffing two years ago, but that's down to 0.57 percent this month, despite a new federal prison next door.

DOC Director Dora Schriro lobbied persistently over the past several years for better pay to battle high turnover, low morale and mandatory overtime for prison officers.

As legislators appeared poised to improve a substantial pay raise, the department stepped up its recruitment efforts and arranged for military benefits to continue while recruits from the armed services undergo nine weeks of training.

A good number of prison staff members also serve in the National Guard, so the extension of those benefits is a help.

Also virtually eliminated is the monthslong wait between a would-be officer's application and training.

Now recruits are snapped up and sent to training within days, before competing agencies can hire them.

The agency also has increased its van pools to provide transportation, especially to isolated prisons, an important benefit as gasoline prices continue to climb.

We commend the Legislature for appropriating the money to provide competitive pay for state correctional officers. That's good business on several fronts:

● State prisons spend $11,000 to train each corrections officer they hire. When the officers left for better pay elsewhere, the DOC had to train more and more.

● The high vacancy rate also created a critical need for mandatory overtime, which costs far more than simply providing higher salaries.

● Short staffing at state prisons creates far more stress and risk on the staff - and it easily could have put the public at risk as well.

No one wants a repeat of the prison siege of January 2004, when two inmates took two corrections officers hostage, raping a female officer and fending off intervention for 15 days - the longest prison hostage case in U.S. history. Inadequate staffing was cited as a contributing factor.

Arizona is far safer without such shortages at our state prisons, and corrections director Schriro gets credit for leading the positive change.