The State’s Workers’ Compensation Commission (WCC) had adjudicated 16,258 claims made by current and former employees of the Department of Correction (DOC) over the past four years, according to information obtained by Inside Investigator through a Freedom of Information request.
WCC provided Inside Investigator with all workers’ compensation claims they have adjudicated for past and present employees alike from the period of Jan. 1, 2021, to July 11, 2025. While none of the records provide any monetary totals associated with the claims, they do give an idea of the sheer number and nature of claims that were adjudicated by DOC personnel during the period.
Per the WCC’s records, the DOC adjudicated 16,258 claims for 9,438 employees (this number includes likely duplicates who were not filtered out due to minor naming discrepancies between claims) throughout the period. According to the DOC’s Human Resources Unit, the department has approximately 6,000 current employees.
Some of the most notable takeaways from the data are the frequency through which claims are filed with ‘unknown’ causes of injury; with 3,045 claims marked as unknown, it is the leading “cause” of injury included in the data set. Furthermore, another 1,247 claims had their cause of injury fields left entirely blank.
There were also 27 employees who had ten or more claims adjudicated during the four year period. Of those 27 employees, one filed 18 claims, two filed 16 claims, three filed 14 claims, two filed 13 claims, four filed 12 claims, five filed 11 claims, and another seven filed 10 claims.
Of the 16,258 claims recorded throughout the period, 9,370 claims were non-litigated, meaning the two parties met an agreement without court intervention, 5,996 claims were litigated, 847 claims were closed and 45 were appealed.
The most common injuries claimed by DOC personnel were for strains, with 5,789 claims of this type. Another 2,530 claims fell under the category of “All Other Specific Injury”, 2,248 were recorded as being “Unknown” and another 1,509 were for sprains. Rounding out the top 10 are contusions (1,093 claims), “Multiple Physical Injuries” (501 claims), fractures (365 claims), inflammation (337 claims), laceration (247 claims), ruptures (172 claims).
The earliest claim on file was from June 26, 1969, and was marked as being for an Animal or Insect Injury. The three most commonly injured body parts of DOC officials were knees (2,665 claims), lower back (2,579 claims) and shoulders (1,183). Officials who sustained injuries to multiple body parts recorded the fourth most claims (924 claims). Rounding out the top ten most common injuries were injuries to the hand (616 claims), ankle (597 claims), back discs (571 claims), and the tenth most common category were non-specified (“not stated”) injuries.
The DOC has faced heightened criticism in recent weeks from prison rights advocates, who claim the department has lax standards regarding employee time off and paid leave, spurring frequent prison lockdowns that deny inmates their daily out-of-cell time.
While the department has repeatedly stated that these lockdowns are the result of chronic understaffing, a recent DOC audit revealed the agency “unnecessarily paid” $834,955 in wages to employees on administrative leave pending investigation.
Was this article helpful?
Topics on this page
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
