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A few reasons: 1. The benefit of a larger talent pool to recruit from is easy to measure, and the drawbacks (having to fire a large number of them and increase
by omegaham 11y ago
A few reasons:
1. The benefit of a larger talent pool to recruit from is easy to measure, and the drawbacks (having to fire a large number of them and increased contraband in the prison from said compromised COs) are harder to measure.
2. It's politically unpalatable to segregate by gender.
The vast majority of female COs wash out within their first year; either they can't take the pressure, or they start showing favoritism toward the more charismatic inmates. The reason is pretty simple - women are fucked with more than men. For whatever reason, when a male CO gigs an inmate, the inmate knows that it's The Man keeping him down and not the man. In contrast, when a female CO gigs an inmate, the inmate tries harder to get out of it because he perceives weakness. As a result, more female COs crack.
This actually happens with all staff, not just guards. Nurses, instructors, whatever - all of them get routinely compromised. It's a very, very difficult problem to hire people for relatively low wages, stick them with people who have nothing better to do, and expect everyone to remain professional.
The optimal male CO is an unthinking robot. "Sorry, you violated Rule 131. I have to write you up. No exceptions." In contrast, the optimal female CO is a "crazy dyke psycho bitch" who takes pleasure (or appears to take pleasure) in making prisoners' lives hell. They won't respect a woman who acts otherwise. Again, this is because inmates respect The Man but take it personally when a woman tells them No. So, the woman has to show that she will not ever let them off because she enjoys making them suffer.
Source: Girlfriend worked corrections for a while. Her "prison attitude" is hilarious.
"I prefer corrections to bartending. When customers at the bar sexually harass / assault you, you have to smile and take it. When inmates sexually harass you, you put them in solitary and forget to refill their pain med prescription. Whoops."
- soup10 11y agoReal answer: prisons are horrific and nobody in their right mind wants to work there so they take whoever they can get Also your girlfriend sounds crazy, nothing funny about abusing people
- leesalminen 11y agoAgreed x100. Your girlfriend sounds crazy.
- rayiner 11y agoNothing funny about sexual harassment and assault either.
- corndoge 11y agoFrom my ivory tower 200 miles high in the sky: Your girlfriend's attitude is exactly what is wrong with our prison system.
- omegaham 11y agoGotta give respect to get it. If you sexually assault people, expect consequences.
- leesalminen 11y agoNobody agrees with you.
- werid 11y agoConsequences would be the solitary part. but "forget to refill their pain med prescription." is something I would consider to be worse than whatever sexual harassment she received. people in authority executing personal punishments should be thrown in jail themselves.
- code_duck 11y agoRight, a law enforcement officer intentionally causing pain is circumventing and perverting the way the legal system is supposed to work. A prison employee unilaterally pain medication is not different than a police officer punching you.
- angersock 11y agoexpect everyone to remain professional. Locking people into cages is an odd sort of profession. When inmates sexually harass you, you put them in solitary and forget to refill their pain med prescription. Sounds like a real thug^Wkeeper.
- omegaham 11y ago> Locking people into cages is an odd sort of profession. And yet it's necessary, unless we've decided that we should go back to the Good Old Days of just killing them. > Sounds like a real thug^Wkeeper. Hard people get hard treatment. As a drill instructor of mine used to say, "Play pussy, get fucked."
- angersock 11y agoIs it actually necessary, though? At steady state, I mean--we currently have a lot of people who are now damaged thanks to the behavior of people like your girlfriend, and short of a purge we probably can't use more reasonable methods. As for your DI, well, there's a bit of a difference between behavior that works in a military context and civilian reformation. One would hope, at least.
- omegaham 11y ago> Is it actually necessary, though? At steady state, I mean--we currently have a lot of people who are now damaged thanks to the behavior of people like your girlfriend, and short of a purge we probably can't use more reasonable methods. Good question. We've always had a problem with the age-old question of "What do you do with criminals?" In antiquity, the answer was simple - nothing, unless it impacts the rich. The poor can squabble amongst themselves, and as long as they don't kill anyone important or terrorize too many merchants or rob a rich person's house, they're left alone. This changed during Victorian times - the thinkers of the time saw the awful living conditions of the poor and decided that it wasn't Christian to leave the poor to suffer like this. So, they instituted penitentiaries - places where the wayward could be corrected and nudged back in the right direction. Here's the problem - it doesn't work. Prison has two genuine uses - it isolates shitty people so that they can't mess with the rest of society, and it deters other people from following their example. With initiatives like the War on Drugs, we've completely borked the shit out of this because we're now sentencing enormous numbers of relatively normal people to long prison terms. This has the following effects: 1. Prison staff are now focused on survival rather than staying on top of their jobs. This leads to inmates running the show. It also leads to said relatively normal inmates having to fight for survival as well, exacerbating the problem. 2. Large numbers of people are damaged by these conditions, emerging from prison completely fucked psychologically. 3. People notice that said people are unstable and likely to return to crime, and they act accordingly by turning them into outcasts (who go right back to committing crime). If we want this to change, we need to turn prisons from enormous Walmarts (One-size fits all incarceration for the whole family!) to focused facilities for the worst of the worst. The animals go in their cages, and everyone else gets off with mandatory counseling and community service. This will drastically lessen the load on prison staff, who can now actually do their jobs instead of fighting to stay alive however they can.