Pros
-Great pay for entry level detention officer
-Somewhat good experience for future correctional or law enforcement endeavors
-Clearance from Homeland Security
Kontras
The major cons for me working here were the career opportunities and random scheduling. There is no future with Spectrum, it is a contracting security company and just like with all contract companies there is no guarantee of your employment. Also, that means no retirement obviously. Your employment depends entirely on whether the contract can be maintained. As far as I know, Spectrum is on a 6 month extension contract with ICE. You can be promoted to a supervisory position....But again, even in with the promotion you're still stuck. Also the base pay is the same regardless of how many years you have been with the company.
My other gripe is that, some of the people they hire seem like they should have no business being a detention officer. I won't get into the specifics, but too many people without the proper experience are given responsibility to look after detainees. There are detention officers that have been here for over 10 years, and just remained stuck on this contract job. It is very good pay, but with the time wasted...You have nowhere else to go.
The most important information and the reason I save this one for last is, when you first get hired with this company they put you on on-call. That means, you are literally called the day of for an assignment. Some weeks you might get 40 hours, other week you might just get 8. You are an on-call detention officer until a full-time post position opens up, or you'll just remain on-call for the rest of your employment. It just really depends and there is no way to no. And the best catch, it's almost impossible to maintain a supplemental job, as you don't know when you will be called to work.