After all, they are charged with watching over some of the area's most dangerous criminals, as well as more than 300 mentally ill inmates, in what amounts to one of the state's largest psychiatric units.

But for much of each work day, many guards admit, they are concerned less about murderers, rapists, thieves, and the mentally challenged in their keeping than they are about where their cars are parked.

They worry about parking tickets. About their cars being towed. About break-ins and theft. And late in the day, they worry about when to duck out for a half-hour to catch an unauthorized but department-run shuttle bus that ferries them to their remotely parked cars. Then the second-shift guards, who get off work at 11:00 p.m., can repark closer to the jail, saving themselves a long, possibly dangerous walk.

So worrisome is the lack of free or affordable parking near the Pre-Trial Detention Center at 1321 NW Thirteenth St. -- the main jail where all accused Miami-Dade criminals are booked -- that many of the most experienced Corrections and Rehabilitation Department officers refuse to work there. "We ought to have our best people here, but many transfer out of this job because they can't fight the parking," says Sgt. John Klein. "It's a big problem."

A fourteen-year veteran of corrections, Klein is a diminutive former army chaplain and ordained Episcopal priest who has made finding a solution to the parking crisis at the jail and the adjacent county courthouse his personal crusade. His little blue 1995 Geo Metro is a wheeled repository of parking shortage documentation, crammed with cartons of neat color-coded files, the evidence of what Klein calls the failure over the years of county officials and corrections department supervisors to deal with the problem.

In fact John Klein has compiled an annotated, 40-year history of parking in the vicinity of the jail. "In 1961 Dade County had a spacious, centralized criminal justice area," he writes. "There were 104 parking spaces on the jail premises. In the lot west of the Justice Building there were 339 spaces, more than ample for all employees."

Now: "Corrections has 360 employees in the area on the day shift, and the parking spaces have been reduced to 47."

"It's mismanagement," insists Klein, slight, bald, and 69 years old. "Budget constraints over the years have led to compromises, and now corrections is not held accountable."

Parking in the bustling Civic Center area -- which includes the main criminal courts building, the county State Attorney's Office, and Jackson Memorial Hospital as well as the jail -- has long been a nightmare. According to Klein, more than 2300 people work for the criminal justice system in the area and daily fight for 191 designated spaces.

Visitors to the courts or the jail usually pay up to $9.50 a day to park in a public lot run by the City of Miami. Some public lots offer jurors a special low rate. And some county employees do pay for parking. Corrections Ofcr. Osvaldo Luaces, for example, says he shells out $37 a month for a pass permitting him to park at a metered space on the street, if he can find one.

But many corrections guards argue that they should not have to pay or hunt for parking, especially since parking at the other six corrections facilities is free.

The notion that the quotidian act of parking has ballooned into a danger to public safety seems absurd. But that's exactly what's happened, insist Klein and many other officers. "People are distracted and preoccupied," says Klein. "Our minds are often on other stuff when it should be on the job at hand."

Indeed at least one recent prisoner escape and the gunshot wounding of a corrections officer outside the jail three years ago can be linked to the parking crisis. Francisco Perez, a 44-year-old charged with drug possession, disappeared from the courthouse in July; the guard assigned to him left the building after shuttle-bus driver Yvonne Guerra notified him his car had a flat tire.

Corrections director Lois Spears laughed out loud last week when asked if the parking problem -- which she admitted is an intractable dilemma and a distraction -- was responsible for Perez's disappearance. She says it was not. But she said she had no details of the incident, which is under investigation by Internal Affairs. And Perez, charged with two counts of buying heroin and resisting arrest, is still missing.

But it is clear that a lack of adequate, secure parking led to the wounding of Ofcr. Kimberly Richardson. She was working the midnight shift and had left the jail to retrieve some papers from her car, parked on the street, when a crazed suicidal man on a murder spree opened fire, hitting her with a bullet to the abdomen and two in the hand.