I’ve written a fair amount about corrections officers in this newsletter, almost all from the incarcerated men’s point of view.
Most of those descriptions have been negative. That’s understandable, on the face of it. It’s an asymmetrical power relationship, and people who are in prison are literally at the mercy of the people whose job it is to police and guard them.
Looking through my notes from the last few weeks, I came across something that K had written about adjusting to life in prison, and how his attitude had changed over time. I don’t have a full transcript, but I do have a few lines. When he read it out loud, the piece had a rhythm to it, and kept building. Here are a few excerpts:
“The guards are furniture, not people, and you have to move around them. You’re going to be here for awhile.
The guards see you as furniture and not as a person. Be careful when you are moving around them.
You’re not who you have been and you’re not who you can be. This won’t be your life forever. The guards are not furniture. They are people too.”
The men wrote often about abusive corrections officers: COs who encourages inmate-on-inmate violence, COs that disabled their body cameras, knowing that they would be too expensive for the State to replace.
But I also have my own experiences, which - obviously - are completely different, given my standing as a “civilian.” (That’s what the officers call people working inside who are not prison employees - “civilians.”)
At the first prison in which I taught, a maximum security facility, the COs were neutral at best, and often hostile to those of us who came in to teach. Basically they signaled that we were a bunch of dupes, fooled by incarcerated men that one guard described as “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” We were dismissed as liberal do-gooders who had no understanding of the true character of the people we taught. The officers also seemed to resent the time they had to take to escort us to and from buildings.
My experience at the medium security prison where I recently taught journalism was very different. The guards have been courteous and for the most part pleasant to me. But that’s just my one-on-one experience.
And look, I don’t romanticize the prison population. Many of these guys have done terrible things. I’m also aware that I deal with a self-selected group of men who have chosen to take advantage of available programming. My class is voluntary, and that lays the groundwork for an entirely different classroom experience than that of a mandated program.
I’m also not interested in vilifying correction officers in one broad stroke. Being a prison guard is a tough job. It’s dangerous and not particularly well-paid.
Recently, I was escorted to the school building by a CO who had just worked six days straight. As soon as he was off duty, this guy planned to take a nap at the prison, set his alarm for 4 am, and then drive the three and half hours to his home. He’d learned from hard experience that if he left at 10 pm when his shift was over, he’d start drifting off to sleep about an hour and a half into his commute.
Many correction officers can’t afford to live near the prisons where they work. Some stay in trailers just outside the gates.
There are good and bad in both the prison population and the people who work there. And at least the prison administrators allow these programs in. They don’t have to. As the supervisor of the nonprofit I work with said the other day, “We are a guest in their house.”
I’m grateful for the invitation.
Last week, during jury selection for Donald Trump’s hush money trial, I was intrigued to read that potential jurors could not be asked who they’d voted for, nor what their party registration was. But they could be asked where they got their news. So wish I could have discussed this with my class!
Always absorb your writings and musings. Now that class is over I wonder what is next and look forward to it.
Thanks for your insights Kate. I was incarcerated here in the UK between 1983-2005 and so met many prison officers (as they're called here) over the years. My experience reflects your observations...some were simply psychopaths in uniform, others were decent men and women, others were neutral in that they were simply doing a job to pay their mortgage and feed their kids, that is, they had no axe to grind. One prison officer, Mr B, will always stick in my mind. He came to the medium security prison that I was in at the time straight from training college. Initially, he exuded goodwill toward the inmates, going out of his way to 'connect' and he helpful. However, tere is a certain type of inmate that see this type of decent humanity as weakness and so over time Mr B was exploited and I observed on numerous occasions his colleagues quietly 'advising' him on how things really are from their perspective ie prisoners are (as you say) "wolves in sheep's clothing". Within 6 months, Mr B went from being a humane man who obviously wanted to make a positive difference to being the one of the most nasty of officers in that prison. Based on my observation and experience prison corrupted this man, just as it further corrupts prisoners. Such a sad truth...if only there were a more beneficial way to persuade people that there are better ways to live one's life than by resorting to crime.