Suppose you were thinking of a career change and going into law enforcement and wanted to go for the “safer” position. Would you choose to be a regular police officer, or a corrections officer at a supermax prison?
Watching TV shows like Cops, you see a lot of mayhem - cops chasing the bad guys over fences, high-speed driving chases, getting shot at, people using vehicles as weapons, etc. As portrayed on TV, being a cop exposes you to a lot of danger.
Aside from a fairly new TV show called Jail, there’s not much on the tube showing what it’s like in a jail, and pretty much nothing describing prison life. From what I understand, working at a supermax has a fair bit of “remote control” aspect - there’s often physical barriers such as bars or break-resistant glass between the officers and inmates, so on the surface, it seems like there would be less risk. Overall, it’s a pretty tightly-controlled environment where people and things entering and leaving are closely inspected*. OTOH, when things go bad at a prison, they can go really bad.
Any Dopers or friends of Dopers have anything to share on this? I know we have one prison physician here. Any police officers or corrections officers among our ranks?
For the record, I’m not looking at changing jobs. In fifteen years, I’ve only had one computer try to injure me, and I’m pretty happy with those odds.
A friend who works on commercial refrigeration systems was on a service call to a prison a few months ago. He went through two metal detectors and got frisked going in and out, and his tools were not only counted, but photographed, so the prison was able to ensure that he left with all of his tools.
Not that I think it is an accurate representation of what normal prison life is like, but MSNBC shows prison life shows all weekend, every weekend. It’s called Lockup.
There are prison documentary shows on all the time on Discovery, etc*. My husband works in the maintenance department of a prison (NOT supermax), so we have friends that are CO’s (corrections officers), and my step-dad recently retired as a policeman in a small town. Six of one/half-dozen of the other from the danger point of view. I know of 3-4 CO’s who have been killed or seriously injured in the region in the last couple of years, and a similar number of police officers over the same period of time in the same region.
I’m sure the danger factor goes up for police officers in metro areas. I can’t speak for supermax prisons, though–no experience of even an anecdotal nature there.
*So the husband works in a prison all day and the comes home and watches shows about them?
I’m an ex C.O. and worked in one of the most famous max security prisons in this country. It ryhmes with Bling Bling. Anyway, I did corrections because IMO it was safer than being a cop. There are certainly scary moments in the joint and the potential for serious violence is always there.
But most inmates want to do their time and not start any crap. That was my experience, it was quite a while ago so things may have changed. Of course, as a young female in a men’s prison, I also got some flack that included “flashing” and inappropriate comments. I still think that cops have it harder.
I have not worked in “corrections” but the sheriff’s office from which I retired was responsible for the County Jail system and the booking and detention functions. I found that police work and detention/booking were roughly equal in terms of potential danger. I would think that, while corrections would be different in terms of types and sources of danger, in general the potential danger overall would be about the same.
I read the book years ago when it first came out. I remember thinking it was ok. He got most stuff right, it wasn’t as dramatic as I thought it would be.
Very accurate. In fact, I know many correction officers have found the book boring because the author so accurately described the day-to-day routine of what we do.
The reality of our job is that we try to keep everything under control. The joke is that our unofficial motto is “we keep interesting things from happening”. A boring day at work is a good day. The biggest challenge is to get everything running in a routine without becoming complacent.
Yes, this is still a poll. The reason I brought this up is that a friend is thinking of a career change and becoming a corrections officer. His sister is giving a pile of grief about how dangerous that is and that being a street cop is so much safer. Strangely she skips right over how her dangerous her career is - she runs into burning buildings to put out fires and rescue people. :dubious:
I caught a couple episodes of *Lockup * over the weekend - they were featuring San Quentin. Great googly moogly, that place looks like it’s being held together with 150-year old baling wire and good intentions. Comparatively, most of the facilities featured on *Jail * look like they were built last week.
So far, it’s looking pretty even on this poll - we have one vote to be a CO and one vote to be a police officer, and a couple thoughts that they’re about equally dangerous, albeit in different ways.
Sounds like a good day in Information Security as well.
The advantage of being a correction officer is that it’s a pretty black and white situation. You have the employees and the inmates; there’s essentially no third parties wandering around.
A police officer deals with a much grayer environment. He or she will be surrounded by people and know the majority of them are harmless. But he or she also knows that a few people in that crowd are criminals and the challenge is to pick that handful out of the crowd.
The disadvantage of being a correction officer is related to this. You’ll be dealing with a concentration of criminals that no police officer would ever face.
