by David Smith

Created on: April 14, 2011

Corrections, as a career, is not for everyone. In the Department of Corrections, officers and other line staff need to realize that inmates are not in prison for skipping Sunday school. The people that are in our care are truly the dregs of Society. They are the people that are not able to get along in polite society because they have a basic inability to conform or follow rules. As a result of placing a large group of people that have an inability to follow rules in with a much smaller group of law abiding, in fact enforcing, people, there is always going to be tension.

Often throughout my career, I worked the administrative confinement unit, a housing unit designed to remove non-compliant, security risk inmates from the general population and keep them locked down for various reasons. As we serve meals in the cells in this unit, we had our own supply of flat ware for them, often referred to as "sporks" due to the design being a cross between a spoon and a fork, and we wrapped them in napkins with salt and pepper packets. We often pulled an inmate out of his cell to perform this task, generally on the grave yard shift.

One night, while the inmate was “rolling sporks”, the sergeant in the unit watched the inmate stop moving and fall to the ground. He immediately rushed into the room where the inmate was working and found him not breathing with no pulse. I notified the medical department while the sergeant rushed into the room and started performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation trying to revive the inmate. Once medical staff arrived, less than one minute later, the sergeant rode the gurney all the way to the ambulance, still performing CPR to try to save this inmate.

I related that story to tell you that putting these two types of people together fosters a truly different type of relationship. It is a relationship that any parent will understand. Over time, the officers at the prison will start to view the inmates almost as their children, who must be molded, taught and protected. Also, in time, the inmates will start to believe that the officers are like parents, and they will act accordingly, often acting out, pitting one parent against another, trying to create dissension amongst the ranks and so on.

As I said, I have worked at the prison for seventeen years. In that time, I have had to serve discipline on numerous occasions, had to break up more fights than I can count, and had to watch my back and the backs of my fellow officers. Conversely, I have had to console inmates who have lost loved ones since being locked up, help several inmates who are having trouble with problems in their educational studies, and even stabilize inmates while the medical staff are en route. Yes, prison life can be hard, from the inmates' point of view, but it can be equally hard from the officers' point of view.

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