NEW YORK — A growing number of New York City correction officers are walking off the job and out of the jailhouse for good.

A recently-resigned officer spoke to NY1 under condition of anonymity. He said he feared revealing his identity could cause problems with his new job.

"I was making clear over $100,000. I was at top pay already," he said. "The environment is just so dangerous."

As of Monday, 573 correction officers had resigned from the city's Department of Correction, up from 365 all of last year. This year's tally also already stands above the 542 that resigned in 2019, pre-pandemic.

The former officer said he and several other officers had waited months for the Department of Correction to accept resignations and take their badges back.

He officially resigned this month, but has not worked since April. For several weeks, he said, the department told him to call back when he said he wanted to resign. He eventually stopped calling.

During that time, he was considered AWOL for not showing up to work. But, he said, he wasn’t AWOL; he had, in essence, quit. The former officer said he was told there was a backlog of people waiting to resign. The department denies that there is such a backlog.

Another correction officer told NY1 it also took her months to get her resignation papers after quitting. The former officer said she was still put on the work schedule at Rikers Island, despite the fact that she told superiors she wasn't coming back.

There is still a staffing crisis on Rikers Island. During a virtual Board of Correction meeting this week, however, Department of Correction Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi reported that it was getting better.

"From our peak of 1,789 uniformed staff out sick on Sept. 13 to 1,474... a decline of people out sick of over 300 people," Schiraldi said. "If you look at our AWOL numbers, we’ve had a 61% reduction in the number of people AWOL-ing —that’s people not coming to work and not calling in — since Sept. 1."

Veteran correction officer Albert Craig said the job has been good to him, but now, he is ready to retire on a sour note after 25 years. He is outraged by the way he said Mayor Bill de Blasio and correction officials have blamed correction officers for problems and violence on Rikers Island. The current situation is described as a humanitarian crisis.

"I’m offended as a Black man," Craig said. "That we don’t want to come to work sends out a message to the people that a predominately Black work force is shiftless and lazy."

He blames the current problems on Rikers Island on the city and its efforts to prove the jail complex needs to be shut down.

"They will take 10 or 15 of the same gang and put them in a housing area with one officer," said the veteran officer. "How can you maintain control?"

Craig said outnumbered correction officers often don’t intervene to stop violence because they fear being seriously hurt.

Currently, there are about 90 new officers in training scheduled to start working in two months. A total of 1,600 people recently passed the correction officers exam, and a new training class starts next month.