What the First Six Months Are Like as a Correctional Officer (Part 2)

It was amazing how many Officers were fired the first six months that I was at the California Institution for Women. In fact, I tried to count it up at one time but lost track after 15 or 20. It was very rare that a C/O (correctional Officer) would quit the job rather than to be fired. In all the time I worked for the department, I don't think that I can remember a total of 15 or 20 that actually quit their jobs while I was there the 20 years. Most people loved the pay and the benefits and wanted to stay there long enough to be able to retire and get some kind of pension. The only problem was is that too many of the officers got caught up into other things; sex with inmates, sexual harassment, drugs, coming in drunk to work and other things that would lead to a dismissal.

Now most of you are probably thinking that most of the employees walked off (fired) were male officers being it was a women's prison. That could be farther from the truth. I would be willing to wager, if I were a betting man, that it was 50/50 on the number of women walked off compared to the men. And it could have been more, I don't know, but this I do know there were a lot of women officers that fell in love with the female inmates, just as many as the men C/O's did with the female inmates. I will relay an experience, in a later article, about how one of the female C/O's fell in love with an inmate and helped her escape.

One of the experiences in particular is when an officer was dismissed as a peace officer is when a male C/O was caught by a female C/O in the midst of a sexual act with another inmate. I won't go into too much of the details of the act but it was similar to a case that was in the news in the 90's that happened with our top government leader. I won't say who the names were, in either case, just to protect the innocent.

The female C/O was later beat up at her home by whom she thinks were people hired by the male C/O who was fired. She had no other enemies and said it was just too much of a coincidence that this happened right after her turning him in. I don't remember what happened with the female C/O but she may have been one of those that had to quit or went to work in another prison. I'm not sure where she is today and it is sad because she did something that you would think would be the right thing to do. However, at the time, there was supposed to be a "Code of Silence" amongst C/O's. The "Code of Silence" was that the officers tried to stick together in all things and if someone did something wrong the other C/O's would try to cover it up for the other or others. Not that this was the appropriate thing for them to do but this is just something that most of them did, so when she turned him almost everyone else thought she did something wrong.

About the only time I remember I witnessed an incident that I should have turned the C/O's in and did not was this: When I first started at the prison I mostly worked third watch (swing shift) usually 2:30-10:30 pm or 2pm-10pm. One evening as I was patrolling the yard area as a search and escort officer I noticed that there were 3 or 4 officers standing around with their flashlights outside one of the dorms by one of the shower windows. Now I really did not know what their intent was, either to scare the women as they came into the shower area by shining their lights on them or if they were trying to catch them as they were undressing. That I don't know because I just kept on walking past them. However, no sooner had I gone 5 or 10 feet past them one of the officers tried to pound on one of the security bars with his flashlight to frighten them when his flashlight, when he accidently hit the glass window. As soon as the glass shattered all of the officers scattered. I kept on walking as if I had not heard or seen a thing.

I heard later than one of the officers assigned to that area told the housing sergeant that when he was doing a security check with his mallet, his mallet accidently slipped and hit the glass. The officers were required on a daily basis to check the bars on the windows, with a rubber mallet to make sure they had not been tampered with in any way. That is the way they covered that one up.

Years later I would have another experience with one of the officers who was doing wrong and I did stand up for what was right and did turn him in. That experience will be told in one of my future articles.

Another game, done in fun, I saw done by one of the officers was this: Officer Joker, as I will call him, always had some kind of game he would play on the inmates. One of them is that he would tell one of newer inmates that he needed an Inmate Fix to come up to the office to see him. He told Inmate Newbie that the first name of the inmate he needed was Anita. "Go down the halls calling her name and you should get a response." With that she went down the halls yelling, "Anita Fix! Anita Fix! Anita Fix!" The faster and louder she said it the more it came out, "I need a fix! I need a fix! I need a fix! Indeed she got a response and all of the old time inmates started rolling over laughing because they knew Officer Joker had gotten the new girl.

Officer Joker was also good at getting staff as well. At Thanksgiving or Christmas time he was good at telling new staff that he just got a call from the watch office that there was free turkey dinner up front. Of course when they would go up to up to the watch office there was no turkey to be found and the watch sergeant would be giving this funny look and say, "What are you talking about?" And the officer would go away being embarrassed, that they had just been had by Officer Joker.

Some of the officers would take it all in fun but others didn't like it at all. I think I was one of them that didn't like it because I forgot my lunch that day and I was kind of hungry. At the time I was mad but I got over it and did laugh about it later!

All and all there were a lot of good experiences in my first 6 months as Correctional Officer and patience being my main theme; I did learn a lot of that working there and especially in the first few months. If I were to do it all over again I would definitely sign up again because there is so much I learned working there that I couldn't have learned working somewhere else.

In my next article I will share my decision of going to work inside a men's prison for a short period of time.