Bob Walsh
Stockton, CA
Male, 60
I worked for the California state system, starting as a Correctional Officer and retiring as a Lieutenant in 2005. I now write for the PacoVilla blog which is concerned with what could broadly be called The Correctional System.
It has been a LONG WHILE since I was there but the last time I was cadets were free to leave the academy after hours and on weekends. If the classes are large enough some trainees used to be housed off-grounds in motels but that was mostly advanced trainees, like basic supervisors academy and advanced training, not rookie officers.
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Call medical. Get injured inmate out of the cell and get medical attention. Do a detailed body search of both inmates. Check especially for damaged knuckles and defensive wounds. File appropriate report. Refer to supervisor for possible Ad Seg placement.
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What happens next is that someone, usually a Lieutenant, holds a hearing on the administrative charge and determines what, if any, punishment will be applied.
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Sorry, but I don't see a question there. Hard to respond without a question to respond to.
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When I hired on all the background, etc. was handled locally for each hiring authority and was not even slightly centralized. I think personally that, after 60 days (Dec 15) I would send them a polite note to inquire about your status. If they say DO NOT CALL I would be inclined to not call.
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I felt like I was preforming a valuable service for society at large, and I was fairly well compensated for it. Yes, the job was dangerous. Not ridiculously so, but you could not go thru the day with your brain on auto-pilot. Even if you were careful you would, from time to time, find yourself in situations that got physical. That's part of the job. Yes, I would still recommend a job in that field. It is much more "political" now than it was in my day, but I would still recommend it, just not as highly as I might have 15 years ago. The job is definitely important in the whole process. Assuming you allow that locking up bad guys is part of the process there must be somebody to both keep an eye on them and provide them with needed services. Without that aspect the system would come apart fairly quickly.
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A significant percentage of inmates are either totally illiterate or functionally illiterate. Possibly as much as 25%, certainly at least half that. Inmates manage to communicate between one another without that much difficulty, mostly verbally or even non-verbal "body language" communication. There is also a significant number of non-English speaking inmates in the system. The phrase "school to prison pipeline" generally refers to people dropping out of school and ending up in prison. There is also a "books not bars" undercurrent, at least in CA, that assumes (incorrectly) that making school more available to people will mean less people in prison. There is MANDATORY k-12 education in California and most other states as far as I know. You have to work REAL HARD to be kicked out of the system. You don't have to work that hard to stay in and at least TRY to get an education. In my experience most people in prison have CHOSEN to be there. They have deliberately adopted a criminal lifestyle for whatever reason. That reason does not, generally speaking, include lack of educational opportunity (IMHO). I admit it is something of a chicken and egg thing, but I believe that the criminal mindset and lifestyle pushes the education problem, not the other way around..
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