Female Correctional Officers

[Big Bwana Jake]

I have heard some staff make the comments that females shouldn't be working in a male prison. Not alot of staff, but enough to guide me to make the point, the ladies are here, deal with it. What brought this up is that a cell phone was found in one of the units three days ago and the subject of dirty staff came up. True, over the past few years and just recently, the dirty staff have been mainly, women. Again, true, there have been male staff that were also caught with their hand in the thug cookie jar and terminated.

But the just of it all is this. Women tend to be high profile and are subject to more observation then men, i.e. shaking down, searches, type of clothing they are wearing when coming to work and so on. This is an issue for me just as much a a male staff coming to work in the proper uniform, a clean uniform, doing there job ect....

Being the large hairy back lad that I am, I do have a tendency to be some what protective of ALL females in general. What with two daughters and a wife that I would give my life up for, it's not hard to carry that over to my job. No male macho BS here ladies, just being me. In fact my youngest daughter wants to be a correctional officer when she is old enough, (Yikes!!!).

I have known both male and female staff that I have worked with that drive me up the wall, as we all have. Then there are females that I have worked with where I would not want to be on the recieving end of the riot baton they are using. We have had two on my old DCT Team and they were both bone crushers.

If us old hands work at keeping the young male and female staff on the up and up, we all win. It's reasuring to know that there are females out in the prison world that can toe the line as well as there male counterparts. And to them, hats off!!

[co1669]

There are a lot of female staff i would rather have watching my back than some male staff.

[Von Nanega]

Big truth there BigBwana! I have to say, since there is lots more males in corrections I have seen more numerically speaking dirty male staff. Percentage wise more females though. I think that prison systems are hurtin' so bad to find female staff, they are not looked at as hard as male staff. Thus the problem. All that being said though, I have worked with many outstanding female officers and staff in my years on the tiers.

[shakedownshorti]

Originally Posted by Big Bwana Jake

I have heard some staff make the comments that females shouldn't be working in a male prison. Not alot of staff, but enough to guide me to make the point, the ladies are here, deal with it. What brought this up is that a cell phone was found in one of the units three days ago and the subject of dirty staff came up. True, over the past few years and just recently, the dirty staff have been mainly, women. Again, true, there have been male staff that were also caught with their hand in the thug cookie jar and terminated.

But the just of it all is this. Women tend to be high profile and are subject to more observation then men, i.e. shaking down, searches, type of clothing they are wearing when coming to work and so on. This is an issue for me just as much a a male staff coming to work in the proper uniform, a clean uniform, doing there job ect....

Being the large hairy back lad that I am, I do have a tendency to be some what protective of ALL females in general. What with two daughters and a wife that I would give my life up for, it's not hard to carry that over to my job. No male macho BS here ladies, just being me. In fact my youngest daughter wants to be a correctional officer when she is old enough, (Yikes!!!).

I have known both male and female staff that I have worked with that drive me up the wall, as we all have. Then there are females that I have worked with where I would not want to be on the recieving end of the riot baton they are using. We have had two on my old DCT Team and they were both bone crushers.

If us old hands work at keeping the young male and female staff on the up and up, we all win. It's reasuring to know that there are females out in the prison world that can toe the line as well as there male counterparts. And to them, hats off!!

I am just waiting for Cross Timbers to chime in and tell everyone how great I was to work with!!! Hmmm....Hmmm....Hmmmm!

[AZCorrections84]

I have no problem working with any of my female staff. The other few that left and went to different shifts or units, good riddance because they were lazy and passed off the work to me.

The other two ladies on our shift are outstanding, I'm constantly seeking advice from the one who has over 15 years in, and the other is just plain cool. I have their back, they have mine.

The only thing I wish is that they could be allowed to do strip searches on the male inmates ha!

[Jinx]

For the most part, it's easier for female COs to get cooperation from male inmates, and for males to get the female inmates' cooperation. Especially when the inmate is 10-96! Nothing like a little schmoozing to gain compliance without needing a cell extraction

[shakedownshorti]

I know that I had to prove myself, but once I did I had Officer's tell me that they would rather have me with them when there was trouble then some of our male Officer's whom we referred to as "Lop's".....I not only had Lt's but I also had Officer's tell me that I could work circles around alot of our male Officer's (except Cross Timber's of course!!!)
Unfortunately, as I have stated before, one female can ruin it for all the other females....we had a rash of "dirty" staff at one point, seems like they came out of the woodwork, but there was also a lot of dirty male staff in that group.
At a Male Institution, a female has to prove herself but once that is done things work out great.....I dished out as much as I took believe me!

[Crosstimbers Okie]

Shorti was always there when the chips were down. If I remember correctly, the injury that got her medically retired was sustained while fighting a couple of drunks.

[dilligaf]

As a female in corrections I have to say this topic hits close to home. I would NEVER work with females, they are crazy B1tches! As a female in a male correctional facility you have to work 2x as hard to prove yourself as any male. I knew that going in because I worked juvenile before and we were the same way. Face it, there is a high number of females that end up dirty. If you are for real and in the profession for the right reasons then you better buck up, be able to take it and be prepared to prove yourself. I am hard on female new hires too. I guess it is because I don't like to see women become a statistic because that makes my job that much harder.

We belong, but only the right ones. Ha!!

[Greg]

Face it, working in a prison with offenders of the opposite sex is tough whether you are male or female. Having first-hand knowledge of the numbers of male staff at a female facility that get compromised, I would say that the percentage of female staff that get compromised at male facilities is no higher. The males that get compromised are real slimeballs from what I have seen.

A female in a male institution has a very tough line to walk. If they show any sign of not being firm enough, the male offenders will walk all over them. If they go the other direction, they are a turbo-b!tch. There's not a lot of ground in between the two from what I have seen.

My hat is off to the quality female staff that I have worked with.