The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Elaine C. Robinson said people assume that’s because she is the warden — but she has another theory.

“The people who are applying and the people who are qualified are women,” she said.

Eight of 12 applicants for a recently advertised sergeant’s position were women, Robinson said, and she had to tell recruiters not to send any more female candidates because she needs a certain number of male officers.

Prison rules require that strip searches and shakedowns of prisoners’ cells are conducted by officers of the same gender as the prisoners involved.

CAREER TRACK

Female applicants are attracted to the benefits, pay incentives, shifts that allow them to spend time with their families and schedules that are planned out a year in advance, said Connie Riley, branch chief for recruiting and employment for the Corrections Department.

“Then, once they get their foot in the door, there is so much room for promotional growth,” she said.

Many of the prison system’s female wardens started as correctional officers, Riley said.

The women don’t fall into any one demographic — recent high school graduates, college educated, retired, single with children or married. They hear about jobs from ads, family or friends who already work in the system.

Interest in prison jobs depends on the area, Riley said. There are more female applicants in rural areas, where there are fewer job options — and fewer men.

Capt. Sharon Stukes began her career with Corrections in 1990. Her aunt worked at Goodman Correctional Institution, — now a minimum-security women’s prison but originally a prison for older inmates — that is part of the Broad River Road cluster, in the late 1980s.

“But I didn’t know it was going to be a career until two years later,” she said.

Stukes, who works at Stevenson, modeled herself after a no-nonsense Corrections captain she worked for early in her career.

“She sat me down and told me what I needed to do and what she saw in me,” she said.

SAME RULES

The rules for dealing with inmates are the same for male and female correctional officers.

Be firm. Be consistent. Be fair.

At the same time, there are some benefits to being a female officer in the prison system.

“The inmates seem to have more respect for female officers than they do for men,” said Sgt. LaTanya Taylor, who works at Stevenson.

“I have inmates who would be fussing and fighting with a male officer, but when they show out in front of me, they come and apologize.”

There are drawbacks to being a female Corrections officer.

Sometimes female officers want to nurture inmates, who in turn take their kindness for weakness, Robinson said. Other times, professional relationships cross the line.

“Sometimes young women, if they don’t know who they are when they come to us, they can get caught up” in inappropriate situations with inmates, Robinson said.

But young female officers also face some of the same challenges as their male counterparts.

Taylor majored in psychology in college, so when she started her career in 1995 at Women’s Correctional Institution — now Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution — a women’s maximum-security prison, she had some ideas about how things would work.

“I figured I would come here, I could straighten them out, and they wouldn’t come back.”

That didn’t turn out to be the case. Everyone in prison has a story, and Taylor learned not to get caught up in them.

Instead, she took stories home to her children about the young men and women whose poor choices in friends and activities earned them time in prison.

“I tell them everyone who smiles in your face is not your friend,” Taylor said.
http://www.thestate.com/local/v-print/story/269415.html