‘I Don’t Think Anyone Grows Up Wanting To Be A Prison Guard’

I dont think anyone grows up wanting to be a prison guard. I was going to school for my two-year degree in criminal justice and waiting for the local police department to call me. I had gotten a letter from New York state asking if I was interested in being a prison guard and I said no. Then about a month later, my wife goes, Well, Im pregnant. So I called back and said, Hey, are you still looking for prison guards?
I remember the first day I was working alone. I was scared shitless. I pulled up to my first shift and Ive got an inmate staring at me. Im brand new, you can tell I am. Ive got my shiny boots and my uniform is pressed and all that. Im 22-years-old, and he looks at me and he goes, What the fuck are you looking at? My reply was, You. I didnt realize that was a challenge. And he goes, Im going to kill you. So I start thinking, Huh, maybe hes really here for killing someone and hes got no problem doing it. My first day. My first half-hour into my shift. And Im like, What the fuck did I really do with my life?
But you get through it. A lot of times its just a facade. They want to see how youre going to react. Now I would go straight to humor. If someone says, What are you looking at? Id just be like, Not much, but if thats your tough guy face, go work on it in the mirror.
Theres been a few guys that I could see myself being friends with outside of the place. Just because you do something stupid doesnt necessarily make you a bad person. There was a guy who got into a bar fight. He ended up punching a guy and the guy fell and hit his head and ultimately ended up dying. And this guy was charged with murder in the second and hes going to do a lot of time for a bar fight. So is he a bad guy or did he just make a stupid decision?
The racial inequities in prison are discouraging, Im not going to lie. I dont understand how 10% to 13% of our population makes up, give or take, a third of the prison population. [14% of the U.S. population is Black and 38% of incarcerated people are Black according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.] Its discouraging because youre like, Huh, Ive got 45 guys in a block, 30 of them are Black. Why? How did this happen?
My personal opinion is that its more socioeconomic. Can you afford to go to a trade school? Can you afford to go to college without taking on massive debt? Does someone care about you enough to push your ass through school? You know what I mean? But when you come to prison, youre already there. The prison system itself? We didnt do anything to put you there.
Theres racism within the system, sure. I remember seeing this one corrections officer, he took his shirt off at the end of the night and he had a swastika tattoo on his arm. How the hell did you get through the background process? Because you have to explain your tattoos. Lo and behold, he eventually got fired for his tattoo.
Have I heard racial epithets in prison? Absolutely. But its just one of those things where were already in prison. Should I correct the inmates behavior for dropping the N-word?
Ive had people ask me, Is prison intrinsically racist? I go, Its just the system. We only deal with whats given to us. So if the police and the courts put nothing but minorities in there, Ive got to try to exercise care, custody, and control. We are a necessary evil. On top of the stupid, minor drug possessions that we get, we do have killers in there.
Its not bad work, but theres no gratification. You can try to help people, and absolutely you should. If youre going into it because you were the bullied kid in high school and you just want a little bit of power, youre going into it wrong. If you just genuinely want to help people, good for you, but you dont know the end of the story.
I spoke to hundreds, if not thousands of inmates in 15 years, and you dont know if theyre using that little bit of advice you gave them. I remember there was one guy who killed two people in a robbery he did 20-something years and as far as inmates go, he was a great inmate. We bounced ideas off of each other. Hes genuinely smart. Hes earned degrees behind prison walls, but he left, and I dont know what happened to him.
A lot of people base their perception of incarcerated people on movies. There arent too many jail shows, but in all of them, guards are the bad guys. You look at the Shawshank Redemption. We were bad guys. If you can tell me a prison show where were actually the good guy, Ill go watch it. Were not all the bad guys. I mean, yeah, I have your loved ones locked up and whether you think its justified or not, theyre there, but its not my fault that theyre there.
I dont want any of my kids doing what I do. Im the only one in my family that has worked in the prison system and it should stay that way. Other than the benefits, theres no tangible thing at the end of the day that I can look back and say, Look at that. I did that. If youre a carpenter or a plumber, you can look back and say, Hey, I built that house. At the end of the day, after punching out, I can just say, Hey, I didnt die today.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.read more