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.