The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Jessica Symmes became the latest in this trend when she was named warden of the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Oak Park Heights in August. She and newly appointed Warden Lynn Dingle of the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater are part of a generation of female leaders who have changed the face of Minnesota corrections.

Their careers started at a time when prisons hired women only for office positions. But after 30 years of working their way through the profession, these women have reached career high points — and exemplify a transformation of the system.

Female prison leaders "have changed the dynamic of Minnesota corrections," said Joan Fabian, state commissioner of corrections. They have an "innate ability to build relationships and consensus in the workplace, which benefits both the staff and offenders."

In a nutshell, Fabian andother corrections officials suggested, men may try to dominate where women emphasize openness and respect.

Understanding their effectiveness means understanding the dynamics of a prison. Many inmates come from dysfunctional families, raised in a climate of yelling and force. Prison machismo often pits a male guard against an inmate bent on standing up to him. In such a charged atmosphere, small problems can explode into showdowns.

"But there's nothing in it for an inmate to punch a woman," said former Corrections Commissioner Frank Wood. An inmate has nothing to prove in that situation, so the female guard can often talk him down and avoid a confrontation.

For example, one weekend morning, a male corrections officer at Oak Park Heights had trouble getting an inmate to return to his cell and change out of the clothes he had slept in. Demands didn't work, and the prisoner dug his heels in.

Symmes, an officer at the time, stepped in. "I said, 'Look — You can't go outside in your jammies,' " she recalled.

Jammies?

"It had probably been a long time since someone had used that word with him," Symmes said.

The inmate laughed, returned to his cell and changed.

"If you treat offenders with some degree of respect," Symmes said, "you'll usually get cooperation."

To grasp how things have changed, consider prisons at the time of former commissioner Wood, a man who became a key figure in the advancement of women in Minnesota corrections.

When Wood entered the system as a guard in 1959, cellblocks were for men only. Women stayed in clerical positions.

But the profession opened up in the late 1970s. Wood, who'd taken over the Stillwater prison, said he was the first warden to put female officers into Minnesota cellblocks.

One reason was to instill "normalcy" in the prison by creating a mixed-gender atmosphere more like what inmates would find on the outside, he said. The other was to give women equal treatment and opportunities for advancement.

"There was a lot of resistance," recalled Wood. "People thought (female guards) were going to be hurt or raped."

But the change worked, and by the time Symmes and Dingle were ready to advance, they said, the going was relatively smooth.

The two wardens — Symmes is 50 and Dingle is 52 — both began as clerical workers in the mid-1970s at the Stillwater prison, where they got to know one another.

Their paths soon went in different directions. Dingle rose through administration while Symmes walked the cellblocks as an Oak Park Heights correctional officer, rising to become a watch lieutenant and then through the administration.

Dingle got her first warden slot in 1995, when she was named to run the Willow River/Moose Lake prison. She took over at Shakopee in 1999 and then at Oak Park Heights in 2001. Symmes replaced her there in August, when Dingle moved to Stillwater.

The two are among five women overseeing prisons within Minnesota's 10-facility system.

They were not the first chiefs at all-male institutions. Wood had appointed several women to warden posts during his term in the mid-1990s, following Connie Roehrich's promotion to warden of the Willow River/Moose Lake facility in 1989. Patt Adair became the first female warden of a high-security male prison in St. Cloud in 1995.

In the end, several female corrections leaders said, inmates have seemed more used to female wardens than those on the outside.

As a warden, Dingle once met Gov. Jesse Ventura, who she recalls joked, "You don't look like a warden."

He was just making small talk in his T-shirt and jeans, she said, "but I wanted to say, 'You don't look like a governor.' "

Female wardens in the Minnesota Correctional Facility system:

Patt Adair, MCF-St. Cloud

Terry Carlson, MCF-Willow River/Moose Lake

Lynn Dingle, MCF-Stillwater

Connie Roehrich, MCF-Faribault

Jessica Symmes, MCF-Oak Park Heights

Alex Friedrich can be reached at afriedrich@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2109.

© 2005 St. Paul Pioneer Press and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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