By Robert Nott
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SANTA FE — The turnover rate for rookie corrections officers in New Mexico is about 50 percent. Their starting pay is about $13.65 an hour, and the average pay for a seasoned corrections officer is only about $5 more per hour.
For rookies working at the Penitentiary of New Mexico, overtime is mandatory because of a 19 percent vacancy rate. That, in turn, can lead to exhaustion and burnout.
And those circumstances don’t even include the dangers of working in a prison. So why would anyone want a job in corrections?
A new A&E television series, Behind Bars: Rookie Year, attempts to answer that question as it follows first-year corrections officers in what some consider one of the most perilous prisons in the country — the Penitentiary of New Mexico south of Santa Fe.
The show follows nine rookies — eight men and one woman — as they try to navigate the various levels of the prison. “This isn’t the petting zoo,” one inmate interviewed for the show says. Another inmate, referring to the corrections officers, says, “They just work here. This is our home.”
Greg Henry, one of the producers of the program, said by phone Monday that few television programs have looked at the inner workings of prison life through the eyes of new corrections officers. He said he was surprised to learn how many of these officers are 18 to 21 years old.
“At a time when they are learning who they are as adults, they are put in charge of the care and supervision of a difficult group of adults,” he said. “They are learning what it means to respect themselves while they have to gain respect [from others].”
Gregg Marcantel, secretary of the New Mexico Corrections Department, said Monday that the show’s producers approached him about the production last fall.
The show, he said, allows viewers to “watch these young officers grow. You see the difference between one officer who is more humble from another when they walk through the front doors of that prison and how their experiences shape and mature them. At the end of the day, that’s all I can ask for. That’s reality.”
Marcantel said society tends to marginalize those behind bars and that corrections officers “get forgotten along with everyone else in the prison system.”
About 25 percent of 1,200 corrections officer jobs in New Mexico are vacant, according to the Corrections Department. Staffing rates are lower still at the Penitentiary of New Mexico, where just 238 of the 357 officer positions are filled.
Marcantel wants the show to highlight the role these officers play while also revealing how challenging it is to keep them on the job. “It’s like chasing cats — you lose them out the back door because of how difficult the environment and the overtime is. The only way to bring awareness on why it is so important to care about these people … is to open those prisons up to the rest of the world.”
Among the newbies showcased in the premiere episode is 21-year-old Zach Chavez, who finds himself responsible for the oversight of 48 prisoners on his first day. He said he took the job to help protect society: “I think more stuff happens in here than on the street. You don’t go running after these guys. They come to you.”
They come to him right away, sniffing out the rookie and challenging him and his partner within a few minutes of the first show. Henry said he and his crews are not seeking such conflict or looking to inflame it, but “when things evolve or escalate on camera, it’s really part of the world and surroundings that we are in.
“The presence of the camera always impacts behavior.”
Another rookie officer in the show, Tyler Yaryan, 19, believes he will connect to the prisoners because like many of them, he experienced a bad childhood. But he is not happy to discover that prisoners working in the kitchen have access to knives and flame.
Ariel Montoya, 20, is one of just four women in the cadet training program for the Corrections Department. Her trainer, Aaron Bell, wonders if she will make it because she acts reserved and unsure of herself. Among other training rituals, she submits to being blinded with pepper spray before being forced to fight off an invisible attacker.
Though A&E has only planned eight episodes of the series, Henry said he hopes it continues to follow the rookie officers as they grow into more seasoned professionals.
“It is a closed world,” Henry said. “Anytime you are offered access to a piece of society that is outside of our view, there is drama.”
The first episode airs on A&E at 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6. Check local listings to confirm play time.