Mindsets- part two of the cross-section.

I posted a cross-section of events, and would like to clarify that the cross-section is not an average day.  It's a time-compression of a week, a month, the events within that time period.  Certain things like the incident involving the bench warrant almost never happen, and it's more representative of the major events that occur every once and a while, hence it's out of place in the locational progress of the cross-section.  That's not to say it's unheard of for a unit to be rocking and rolling all day like that, it's just rare.  Recently, though, at one unit, in a week, there were a large number of incidences that classify as major incidences.  The week started with a stabbing, led into a number of Offender Protection Investigations - allegations that the janitors on two wings were extorting sexual favors from offenders - saw yet another stabbing, a few suicide attempts, and reached its peak of scary when a mental health offender managed to kick a steel mental-health door open with his bare feet and tearing 1/8'th inch steel sheet like it was paper.  Nobody was injured, thank God.  All through this, the building schedule was maintained.  Nobody stayed late, and all scheduled events occurred, albeit late in some cases. 


So what the cross section actually represents is an average of the selected events and an average of how they are often handled.  By policy or not by policy, seemingly wrong or right, they all need not apply.  What happens in an incident is often fluid, and always shaped by the culture of the prison system.  Strip searches are informal punishment, homemade alcohol is destroyed if it's found in a common area, two fighting 'inmates' are merely told to stop, and an 'inmate' who attacks a 'boss' always bleeds.  What is right or wrong in there?  Policy stands behind each example in many ways, but not in all circumstances.  

I like to call the prison surreal.  It is altered from an outsider's perception of reality.  Men and monsters act so similar, and yet so differently.  The same man who's the best worker you've encountered is the man who killed five people in a bloody rage 20 years ago.  The man who just jumped on an officer, who's tattoos cover his entire body, embezzled a quarter million from his own company.  You never really know, and the only thing you can expect is that things will not go as expected.  The situations you encounter as a correctional officer are often highly irregular, so far as an individual's normal day goes.  I offer some perspective now: 

• Polunsky Unit - January 2010 - five offenders find God and try to escape from prison after evening church services.  They were stopped by a shotgun, but were not killed.  Stand behind that shotgun for a minute, if you would please; now point it at those five men and pull the trigger.  Did you remember to chamber a round?  Take off the safety?  Yell at the men to stop?  Ask yourself, now, what does it feel like to kill somebody?  Shoot again; you need to shoot again!  you are what stands between these five men and freedom.  Can you hear the AR-15s of the pickets above you, popping, cracking as they join your barrage?  Four shells are yours, 36 lead pellets.  Drop that empty pump action, it's worthless now.  Draw your revolver.  Are they still moving?  Does it matter anymore?  Do you keep shooting?  Answer quickly, answer honestly, lives and jobs hang in the balance.  Can you answer?  Is it heroic?  Stop.  Now.  Stand alongside yourself.  Take away that adrenaline and the smell of gunpowder.  Look at the men; five unarmed men, not moving.  Did you kill them?  Did you hope?  That they lived or died?  These are hard questions if taken seriously.  Can you answer them?  

•  Any Unit - Any Given Day- 30 offenders approach a wing door, returning from chow.  Pat searching them is routine.  The offender standing in the middle of the hallway isn't.  Offenders walk to the sides of the hallway so there's always room for staff to transit by the quiet lines of offenders.   I hope you feel up to this, because you have to correct this offender's behavior.  Approach him.  He's bigger than you, doesn't matter how big you are.  Tell him to get out of the middle of the hallway.  He doesn't want to.  Ask him for his ID card.  He won't give it up.  Worried yet?  Look around, who has your back?  One officer two corridors and barricades away.  What bout the 20 offenders in the hallway?  Concerned yet?  Where's the cellblock picket officer?  3 row, along with the other wing officers.  Do you let the big offender go?  Do you let the disrespect stand?  Answer now, there's no time for contemplation.  Don't back down now, a test of intent is needed.  Order the offender to the wall.  Can you muster a commanding voice?  Tell him to submit to a strip searc, by policy he cannot refuse.  Does he comply?  What if he doesn't?  Can you summon additional staff?  Will your supervisor stand behind you and lock the offender up for refusing to submit to a strip search?  Is all this worth it to keep a guy out of the middle of the hallway?  Think fast, time wasted here means more problems on your wing as offenders go into the wing from the chow hall with alcohol from the dishroom and stolen food off the serving line.  Is this one more important than any of that?  Is any of it important?  Why?  Think fast! There's no right answer, but you do need to answer.   

CO's are more likely to encounter scenarios like the second one described than the first.  Surreal is feeling alone amongst 100 people that you know and probably talk with.  Did I forget to mention that?  Work on a unit long enough and you will get to know the offenders.  You will learn their lives, their habits, their dreams and strives, and no matter how well you keep your life secret, they will know yours.  Would that cloud your judgement?  Imagine, then, being alone amongst them.  A gray uniform in a sea of white.  Will one of those offenders jump in to help you?  It's a possibility.  Don't count on it, though, no matter how well you know those offenders.

In the end, law enforcement and corrections is all questions; a day of a thousand questions that have no right answers, but do have wrong ones.  You get better at answering as time goes along, but lessons are learned the hard way.  The big inmate in the middle of the hallway might be getting ready to shank somebody, or he could be a deaf janitor.  While dealing with him, 2 gallons of alcohol might make it onto your wing, and a brawl erupts in your dayroom later due to that.  If you stop one of the worst case scenarios, or if you stopped neither, did you do your job right?  I'll leave it at that, and up to you. 

A cross section of a prison.

I want to make it clear that what is to follow is not the average day in a prison.

Macroscopically the schedule of a prison is: Wake up call for breakfast chow at 1:30 AM. Chow begins at 2:15 AM and runs for an hour. After chow is complete, there's 4 AM count, and at around 5:30 AM offenders are staged for vocation and work turn-out. Work turnout runs solidly past 6 AM, and occurs as First Shift officers are taking over. 7 AM count comes and goes, and medium custody showers before lunch chow occurs at 9:45 AM. Lunch chow ends an hour and a half later, and outside rec is called for, as well as church services on certain days. Things calm down for an hour or so, and then 12:30 PM count begins. 1:30 PM, should count clear, sees workers turning back in and the beginning of workers turning out for second shift. Second Shift officers take over at 2 PM, and turn out workers for the next hour. At 3:15 PM, education lets out, and at 3:30 PM count time again. 4:30 sees the beginning of evening chow, as well as the beginnings of building showers. By 6:30 chow should be done, as should showers, and recreation is called for. 7 PM is count time, with a recreation house-call at 8-8:30 PM, and another count at 9 PM. Workers turn in at 9:45, and third shift turns out at 10, while Third Shift officers are taking over. After that it's rack time, lights out at 10:30 PM and count at 11:30 PM, then the day begins anew.

From the outside, looking at that schedule, it would seem the prison would work like a Swiss watch, beautifully intricate and delicately precise. Truth be told, a prison runs more like a $2 timekeeper from walmart; it gets the job done accurately and with little fanfare, but how it does it is neither pretty, nor delicate.

-- 12:30 AM -- A block -- Suicide attempt.
"A wing" as it's called, is the lockup block. It is arranged differently than other blocks. It's two stories tall and has fewer cells per row. Aggressive offenders are housed here. Some cells have an inner and outer door used to isolate the offenders inside - Normally those doors stay open. Tonight, at 12:30 AM, an offender has decided to try to hang himself. He made an ordeal of it, and the wing lit up with calls for the wing officer. The offender was ordered to stop, and incident command system (ICS) was activated. Within a minute, three responding officers, the third shift lieutenant and a video camera operator arrive to intervene and document. The offender is successfully talked down, but initially refuses to submit to restraints so they can move him to a psych observation cell. It takes 30 minutes to convince him. Secured in the cell, ICS is deactivated.

-- 02:15 AM -- B&C corridor - Fire
While putting up offenders after breakfast chow, the C1 block officer notices an outlit sparking and flaming up in one of the empty wing cells. ICS is activated and maintainance is called. The fire geos out when the circuit breaker pops, and ICS is deactivated.

-- 06:00 AM -- D&E corridor - Confrontation
A worker from B1 wing cuts across the hallway to talk to an offender on E1 wing. Ordered to go around and get back in line, he refuses. The offender becomes belligerent and verbally abusive. The officer orders the offender to submit to a strip search, and the offender complies. No contraband is found during the search, and the offender is allowed to go. The issue is considered to be informally resolved.

-- 08:00 AM -- Infirmary Corridor - panic button pushed
The Psychological Services panic button is pushed, initiating a rapid response from the south searcher's desk officer and the pill-line officer. A tense situation with a mental health offender and a psychiatrist has arisen and defused itself in less than 30 seconds. The offender is restrained and moved to an observation cell in the infirmary. ICS is not activated.

-- 1 0:00 AM -- South Chow Hall - fight
During chow, an offender throws a plastic cup at another offender. A fight breaks out. Officers working the chow hall deploy chemical agents. ICS is activated. Additional staff, a supervisor and a video camera operator arrive as the two offenders are being restrained, and one after the other, they are escorted, on camera, to the infirmary for a post use of force/fight physical evaluation, and then to the lockup wing to await a hearing for the disciplinary infraction of fighting without a weapon. ICS is deactivated.

-- 11:30 AM -- Turnout Corridor - contraband found.
While pat searching offenders turning out for the kitchen, an officer finds on one offender: 2 pornographic pictures, 3 tobacco cigarettes and 3 marijuana cigarettes. ICS is activated, and the offender is restrained. A supervisor and video camera operator arrive, and on camera the offender is escorted to A wing. Office of the Inspector General is notified and takes possession of the evidence. ICS is deactivated.

-- 12:00 PM -- D1 Wing - forced move.
An offender refuses to respond to a bench warrant. ICS is activated and use of force is authorized to get the offender out of the cell and out to the waiting law enforcement transport. A five-man move team readies, putting on protective equipment. The offender is read a statement of intent to use force by the shift captain, and fifteen minutes later, after continuing to refuse to go, he is sprayed with OC pepper spray. He is left there for 15 minutes, then asked again if he will move. He refuses once more, and the five man team moves into position. He is sprayed again as the team opens the door, quickly moving in and restraining the offender. He is carried out of the cell and placed on a waiting gurney, and wheeled out of the unit to a waiting transport vehicle, and then forcibly placed in that transport vehicle. Once the door is closed, and the transport is on the way, ICS is deactivated.

-- 04:00 PM -- F&G Corridor - discrepancy in count.
F2 wing count and recount do not initially match. The initial number has been called in to central searcher's desk, and a second recount is done to verify one of the two numbers. The second number is verified, and the correction is called in, creating a panic as the new number indicates 1 offender is missing. Using turnout rosters, housing rosters, the wing count sheet, and the unit count sheet, the missing offender is identified, and the search begins. He is found shortly thereafter in the shower, having been overlooked when the north hall officer counted the work group he was part of that had been stuck in the shower through count. Count clears late.

-- 07:15 PM -- H&J corridor - Alcohol found.
While counting the H2 wing dayroom the wing officer finds a bloated bottle filled with an orange liquid. Removing the cap and smelling it, the officer determines it to be homemade alcohol. It is confiscated and destroyed. A search is done for more, but none is found. H2 wing is medium custody.

--08:00 PM -- H&J corridor - Shank found.
While pat searching an offender coming on to J2 wing from the rec yard, an officer feels a long, hard object along the offender's inner thigh. The offender pulls away and the officer draws his Carry On Person chemical agent and orders the offender to the ground. ICS is activated and additional staff, a supervisor and a video camera operator arrive. The offender is strip-searched and a metal shank is found taped to his inner thigh. The shank is made from a piece of fence-wire. The offender is restrained and taken to A wing. ICS is deactivated.

-- 09:45 PM -- K block - Alcohol poisoning.
During an ingress an offender is seen to be being assisted out of the dayroom and back to his cell. Later, the offender is found unresponsive and ICS is activated. The offender is brought to medical and woken with smelling salts. He becomes belligerent and is returned to the wing. Non-responsive, ICS is re-activated, and the offender is taken back to the infirmary. He is diagnosed with acute alcohol poisoning and is treated and kept in an observation cell. ICS is deactivated.