The request is simple — and, we believe, worth fulfilling.

Andrew Hill, Feliciano Dosman and Keith O’Neal recently visited the Sun-Gazette to discuss their concerns about staffing levels within federal prisons, the toll those deficiencies take on the hard-working corrections officers and their fears about the impact erosion of incentives to attract and retain staff may have on the problem going forward.

The request is that the constituents of our federal lawmakers — U.S. Reps. Dan Meuser and Glenn Thompson and U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick — reach out to their offices to let them know how vitally important adequate staffing and appropriate wages and benefits for our federal prison staff are.

Prisons can be dangerous places, and the people who work in them are willing to take on the risks of being surrounded by dangerous people to help all of us and our families be safer on our streets and in our neighborhoods.

We are, of course, not denying that there is waste of both federal and state tax dollars — we believe we’ve identified the necessity of restraint in government spending often enough for no one to be mistaken about that. And we will continue to advocate leaner budgets and relief for taxpayers when appropriate.

But identifying, prosecuting and incarcerating criminals is clearly a responsibility of the government. It is essential that our government provide the men and women willing to do this demanding work the resources so that they can do it well.

While too often we ask our government to do too much, one of the arguments against that tendency is that what the government actually must do, it needs to do well.

We are confident in the abilities of the corrections officers who visited us to explain the circumstances they and their coworkers face. We hope our communities will help explain to our lawmakers how important it is to help them get their workforces to the appropriate numbers so that they can perform that work as safely as possible.