Life as a Correctional Officer

Get this: Someone made an impressive dildo out of jolly ranchers. It looked like they took a jolly rancher, sucked on it, and stuck it onto other jolly rancers and molded it in the shape of a phallus. And yes, it looked obviously used. We found it during a random room search in someone's closet.

A lot of people who are incarcerated are mentally ill and do not have the resources inside prison or outside to get the help they need. Then you have the manipulative people who do things like swallow objects because they heard that if they almost die they can be released from prison (this is what they told staff). This individual has swallowed pens, nail clippers, razors, paper clips, and their shoelaces in an attempt to make themselves sick enough to get medically released from prison. No, it did not work and yes they are still incarcerated.

Hearing someone scream is a sure fire way to get the blood pumping. I just passed this person's locked cell at night when I heard a bloodcurdling scream. I'm by myself with over 100 people and every bad scenario you could think of went through my head; is someone getting raped, an assault, amputation. I run to the room and I see a person jumping around their room, screaming their head off. As soon as they see me they plead for me to kill it as tears are going down their face. I will admit that it was a fairly large spider, but it was a harmless spider so I could not help them out. This individual has a traumatic brain injury that reduced them to mentally being about 13 and I felt pretty bad that I couldn't help them out.

I can't speak for everywhere in the USA, but in the state I'm in the correctional officers are committed to reducing the rates of people coming into prison. On our days off we spend time talking with our state government about ways to reduce recidivism. We actively push for laws that reduce the amount of people being incarcerated on drug charges and victimless crimes. We push for help for people who mentally ill. We vote and campaign for people who will help support our goal of a safer state through education and rehabilitation and not mass incarceration for the crime of being an addict.

I have many fun stories about things that has happened to myself and my coworkers. I don't care if this makes front page and as long as at least 10 people enjoy this I'll make another one that is much longer.