Correctional officers have supervised and managed thousands
of murderers, sex offenders, thieves and drunk drivers while housed inside
their jails and prisons. Yet on any given day, they don’t palaver much on these
things surrounding them twenty four seven. They don’t talk much about how this
job they have impacts their lives and minds. It’s just a routine that nobody
else seems to understand.
So why don’t officers palaver much? How come they remain so
quiet and say nothing about the stress and struggles they endure on this
job. Their silence isn’t because of some
rule or law and contrary to the code of silence being real, they know
everything and more about criminal behaviors but rarely talk about it.
It is my opinion, for the lack of a better explanation,
correctional officers don’t palaver much because they want to leave their job
where they work. Bringing it home or to the outside may complicate their lives
even more than it already is. They already knowingly how ugly society can be by
being amongst those murdering and thieving persons called inmates.
It could be because they are keenly aware of how Americans
appear to have a lack of empathy or concern for what goes on inside those
walls. It could because everything that does happen inside prisons is contrary
to everything that is good in society and the truth is best be kept hidden. Thus
it becomes normal to bastardize the concept of their limited role as prison
officers and let it lay still for it’s best to leave sleeping dogs lie.
America doesn’t care what goes on inside prisons. They don’t
want to know. I could run through a litany of grave injustices and grievances
and nobody would turn a head. There is no need to address such things as it has
been established that prisoners are the enemy of the state and best be kept
locked up with ball and chain.
So when does the public care? They care when an officer
makes a mistake or the agency releases a criminal to the streets too early. They
care they are being victimized by criminals on parole or probation and shout at
the top of their lungs to do something about it. They don’t care about justice,
healthcare or even educational benefits for these criminals until they find out
these individuals are going to live on the same street they do. They have no
horse in the race until it knocks on their doors.
They only care if the illegal alien or murderer breaks out
of prison and roams their communities looking for way to get away. These contradictions
are many and feeds the frenzy when things go wrong in the prison world like it
does so often but rarely talked about. Quick to criticize the administration
and officers for not fulfilling their simplest tasks, they refuse to give them
the funding and support needed to keep public safety number one.
They hear that prisons keep the worst of the worst but
refuse to acknowledge the good in people that get the job done. They have no
confidence in the system that incarcerates them and naively presume that all is
all right until something breaks. One has to wonder why correctional officers
don’t palaver over their jobs much. One has to wonder if anyone cares what they
do inside those dangerous prison walls each day and every night.
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