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.
Sorry but no, I can't. I have been out of the system for 12 years now and I have zero information on it. I am GUESSING that it is a halfway-house type environment for prisoners who are nearly at their release date or who are in fact out on some form of supervised conditional release, but that is only an educated guess.
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As far as I now you can not be hired as a peace officer until you are 20 1/2 and can not begin work until you are 21. Some jurisdictions also hire "jailers" (various titles in various areas) that are not peace officers and which you could possibly be hired for at age 18. You could also look into non=peace officer employment with an agency until you get the age in. Also many community colleges have correctional science programs which might give you a leg up. I would stay away from privately operated training systems. IMHO they are of dubious value. Good luck.
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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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Sorry, but I don't see a question there. Hard to respond without a question to respond to.
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Hairstylist and Makeup Artist
What's the grossest hair ailment you ever saw?
Chef
Do you get offended when a customer sends back a dish?
Birthday Party Clown
What's the meanest thing a kid ever said to you during a party?
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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They are primarily paper pushers. They prepare board reports, pre-release reports and stuff like that. Their principle attribute must be the ability to think critically and write clearly and concisely. they must have a good understanding of "the system" and how it works.
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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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