"MY 2 CENTS"
From Scud, Desoto Employee
From: Scud
To: kayleeusa@yahoo.com
Subject: My 2 cents
Date: Sat, 01 May 2004 05:42:45 +0000
I have been a Correctional Officer for the past 4 years at Desoto Correctional Instution. I have read your sight a few times and have had to bite my tongue. I am only 23 years old, I started at the ripe age of 19. I think some things on your site are true but most of the crap on this site is hear-say.If you have never worked in the Department then you really don't know what goes on. I bet most of the so called C.O.'s that write you were fired for doing something against the rules. I just think if you haven't been on the inside of a prision on either side you can't make a decision on who to believe.
Too me a Correctional Officer is like a cop and the Facility is a city. We have a church,educational dept.,vocational dept.,outside work squads,stores,and many other activities to keep Inmates up to date on the life outside a prison and to prepare for the future upon release. Now those inmate that chose to do these and not break the rules are ok, but "most (at-least 60% of the population) is involved in something illegal". Now you can say whatever you want on this site but for us who put are life on the line everyday you are just Frankly FULL OF SHIT!
Lets see Ralph Alfonso hunger strike right, you know why 90% of the inmates do a hunger strike? To get transfered. You know why he was in Confinement? He was staring at a female Officer and Masturbating at her. Now if I or anyone else were to do that on the streets we would be locked up. And you felt sorry for him, I'll shed a tear later.
Now you can judge me if you want but let me explain this I am not a good ol boy. I am from N.Y. and have no Country in me. That to me is a stereo-type remark. Thats like saying all inmates are guilty. Well I will quite bickering now. After everything I will agree on one thing. Thats that Jimmy Ryce should not be aloud. You can put this on your site if you want but do not include my email address being that I am still a Correctional Officer.
Thanks
Scud, Desoto Officer
Hello Scud. It's good to meet you and thank you for acknowledging the truth of 'some of the things' on MTWT. Don't ever feel you have to 'bite your tongue'. Whether you believe it or not, I do seek the truth and am always willing to put up both sides. Just drop me an email at kaylee1@charter.net if you want to tell the other side of any story.
There are good officers and inmates as well as bad on both sides of the bars. You are right... It is very hard to know the truth when so much time and energy is put into covering it up. All I can do is report the stories as they come. In the beginning only the people in prison contacted me. Soon their families came, then the officers who no longer work for the department, but now there are many who still work for the department, even an ex-warden or two, who help me stay on track. Not everyone in the department is okay with the way things are going.
You are exactly right, prison is a contained community. But not a community that is going to teach people inside to fit better in the community outside. In the old days prison workers (your job title until the 1970s) were confidants, councilors, social workers, whatever they had to be to enact safe control and effective rehabilitation.
Today prison workers call themselves 'officers' but have allowed themselves to be reduced to maids and watchdogs. It's not your fault. With enough laws to put 2.5 million people in prison at the same time, you can barely be more than that. I've asked many prison workers if they believed someone should be rehabilitating prisoners and their answer is invariably, "It's not my job!"
I'm sorry you think I'm full of poop, I don't think of you that way. I believe you make valid points and need to be heard. But it sounds like you've already given up on 60% of the prison population and that scares me: What do we do when they get out if you don't do the right thing while they are in there?
I believe that officers, families and advocates working together to get administrators to adopt better methods, including reward systems and really valuable training for the outside world, we could make us all safer.
Kay Lee, MTWT Co-Creator
kaylee1@charter.net
RESOURCES:
"Correctional Officers: Good, Bad,
and Indifferent""
by Richard Korn, Ph.D., formerly
Director of Treatment, New Jersey State Prison
http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/prison/goodbad.html
"The Reproduction of Social
Control: A study of Prison Workers at San Quentin"
By Barbara A. Owen, Research Analyst, Federal Bureau
of Prisons
"If a
prisoner is wrong, stand up to him;
If he is right, stand up for him,
and never, ever give a prisoner a bum rap."
Dr.
Richard Korn