A question posted to Reddit asks, “hey [correctional officers], what are some common misconceptions people have about prisons, but get absolutely wrong?” Check out the responses below, and add your own in the comments.
I worked as a prison guard in Ohio for four years. The biggest misconception people have is that crazy shit happens all the time. Ninety-nine percent of the time absolutely nothing happens. You sit at a desk, inmates go to and from their jobs, and you do rounds and write some paperwork. Seriously it’s one of the most boring jobs on the planet. Well, until some idiot thinks they have to prove something. Then you get your 10 minutes of excitement for the week. – minywheats
I worked in a prison for three years, then at a halfway house for three years, then as a probation/parole officer for three years. These questions have arisen on Reddit many times. Most of the answers I see are lacking.
Rape is far less common than thought. It does happen, but great efforts are taken to prevent it. The other people I worked with were fairly representative of the general public. People tend to dislike rape.
Inmates are not any more intelligent/stupid than the population from which they come. I had one inmate that regularly helped me with trigonometry homework.
There is violence, but not constantly. Suicide is prevalent. I never heard someone claim to be suicidal then follow through with suicide.
Many inmates would claim to be suicidal, legitimate or not. I don’t remember a single inmate who had claimed to be suicidal actually following through with it. The successful suicides were always a surprise.
Every successful suicide I saw or knew about was by hanging. Most “cries for help” were those who timed their hanging with a count (guard looking in the cells at almost exactly the same time daily). It would be very easy to time a suicide so it would not be discovered until it was too late.
All of this is barring the very mentally ill. I still get a little uneasy thinking of the sound a head makes when it is rammed into a steel door by its owner.
Some staff are complete inhumane assholes; others try to make a difference. Outright abuse was not tolerated. Stories about the “good old days” were different, but often involved allowing inmates to police themselves.
I don’t know what else to say. The biggest misconception is the abuse perpetuated or allowed by staff. I didn’t like working in the prison. Seeing people locked in cages every day is not easy. – jailbird4444
It’s interesting that I stumbled across this by chance; I was a guard for five years for a private corporate corrections system in America (wink wink). I had all manner of misconceptions of the job in general but it is my belief that things for the prison system have changed dramatically, due mostly to the privatization of prisons.
Things I heard from more seasoned guards were more in line with what most people think. It is little like an Orwellian community inside and segregated from ours. They have TV, cable, movie channels, and some jurisdictions even had PS2, Xbox, and even 360s. All these privileges can be easily taken away for any number of infractions.
That is the only motivation to behave. Now a bored inmate is an unhappy inmate and thus more likely to grief you the guard. That being said I almost never had any physical confrontations with inmates. Verbally, however, that is another matter.
Oh I forgot to explain how privatizing prisons mean there is now a previously unheard of corporate interest in keeping citizens in prison. Lobbyists for said corporations strive for harsher sentencing of more common crimes not as a deterrent but rather a cash cow. And of course pushing for contracts to these corporations to ship prisoners out of state to Middle America where it is generally cheaper to house them. -- rottyrantsail
