LIFE AND TIMES OF A CORRECTIONAL OFFICER
By R. Mark Shepard

(Chapter 7)

Getting back to the inmates that have to do what they have to do to survive in the Prison System: One particular inmate that I remember waited for his turn in the System and worked his way into a job in Food Service. This inmate had been trained throughout the years in the Culinary Arts. He was an Excellent Baker, and could make Biscuits that would melt in your mouth, not that I would know, this was just hearsay.

This Inmate had multiple Life sentences, and had been in The Prison System for the past 17 years. Most of the prisons in The State were run by the prison staff. But this particular prison had a contract with an outside agency. These outside contracts sometimes cause problems because the outside people who are contracted to work in the Kitchen are not Correctional Officers, and are not security minded. They don't understand the Environment that they are in and they do not understand the thinking of an inmate.

As all outside food service companies do, they hire women as well as men to fill the positions that are needed, but they do not think of the risks and dangers hat they are putting an untrained female into. This of course leads back to the story of the skilled inmate in the kitchen.

He was working with one of those female employees and got friendly enough that they were on a first name basis, (which is NEVER supposed to happen). One day I saw this particular inmate go to work.  At the same time, I saw the female worker walking into the food service building. It wasn't even 15 minutes later when a call came from the food service director that an inmate had one of his employees’ held hostage in the dry storage room.

The inmate had methodically planned this kidnapping very well. The room he took her to only had one door which he barricaded with heavy boxes of canned goods. The room had no windows, and the locked Escape Hatch in the ceiling was blocked with even more boxes of canned goods. The only door in the room did have a window made of ¾ inch Lexan, only the strongest plastic that they could purchase. He was barricaded in, and set up for a very long period of time.

The Female employee apparently had gotten so friendly with this inmate, that she had given him a scarf with the scent of her favorite perfume on it that he could keep forever. Seeing that he was never getting out of prison, and she thought that he was such a nice person, and he treated her with so much respect, it would not hurt to give him something, and she figured that there would not be any problem. Well, something happened with her newfound friendship with the inmate, because she apparently asked for her scarf back and he inevitably said, 'NO!' Not handling rejection well, and thinking that he would never see her again if she quit, he decided that it was no skin off of his nose if he killed her and then killed himself.

After the prison officials, Hostage Negotiators and Inspectors from the State arrived, hours of talking and demands were made and met. He had demanded a coffee pot and a phone so he could call his mother. A few Professional hostage negotiators tried to talk to the inmate. Only one, after hours of talking, having communication skills beyond her normal reach, she talked him into releasing the female hostage. The next step was to retrieve the distraught inmate.

The local swat team was already in the compound waiting to go in if the Prison CERT Team had any problems. With 4 officers ready and armed to shoot him if he did not comply with any order of surrender which was given by the head prison inspector, the inmate complied.  He was handcuffed and taken out with no further incident.

As time went by, I learned that this was not the first time that this inmate had taken a female employee hostage. The good old Classification Department strikes again. I don't mean to come down on the Classification Department so hard, BUT... this was not the only incident of Mistakes by them, Trust me.

In fairness to the Classification Department, I must talk about some of the other Departments who have done such a fine job in the system. The Medical Department comes to mind. It is supposed to be one of the most Professional departments, not only in the Prison system, but also in the eyes of everyone outside of the system. All of the employees who are hired by the State, be it in the Medical Department, Classification, Security or whatever Department it is, go through a Rigorous background check.

I'm not really sure where to start, when it comes to talking about the Medical Department, you know, being a lowly Correctional officer and all.

The CHO (Chief Health Officer) has a tremendous responsibility, as a Doctor making decisions would. After all, where else could a Doctor go and make a salary in excess of $120,000 a year, with no overhead, and not have to pay Malpractice insurance, which the state pays, or have to pay for any supplies or amenities that is also supplied by the state? The Doctor's secretary, who is also a Trained Professional and gets paid a decent wage, deserves a lot of credit. She makes decisions that the Doctor has ordered her to, like setting up her paperwork to make sure that everything is PER the State's Requirements. This means that the secretary must come in on Saturdays, on her own time and catch up on the tedious and tremendous amount of work.

After a month of coming to work on Saturdays, taking time to clean her office and the doctor’s office, along with her regular duties, this secretary began to call the same inmate to her Office to help her every Saturday at precisely the same time. Being security minded, suspicious and generally nosy, Captain Jim, Sgt. Fred and I had already figured out that this was definitely not the normal routine duties of a doctor’s secretary, even though the doctor, herself, gave the secretary permission to do this.

Capt. Jim appropriated the necessary keys to get into the Medical Department and, with the captain leading the way, we waited for a short period of time before we entered the doctor's office. When we arrived at the office door, we could not see the secretary nor the inmate, who was so kind as to take the time out of his day every week to help the secretary.

We entered through the secretary's door and walked to the doctor’s office, where lo and behold, there they were. The secretary was butt naked on top of the doctor’s desk, along with the butt naked inmate making mad passionate Love. Sgt. Fred ordered the inmate to Stop, and not move a muscle (imagine that).

After a few seconds, the secretary, and the inmate got dressed, and the secretary was escorted off of the compound, never to return. The Inmate was locked up in a Confinement Cell, and later transferred to another Institution. The Doctor was shocked that someone on her staff would have anything to do with a convicted criminal.

WELL... what she also didn't know was that there were two other female staff members, Registered Nurses, who were having Relations with inmates at the same time. Without going into a lot of boring details, both Nurses quit their jobs at the prison and married those inmates when they were finally released from prison. The First Nurse had 2 children by her wonderful convicted criminal husband, who divorced her later on and left her out in the cold.  And the second Nurse who married her wonderful convicted criminal husband, went out of her loving way to send him to school so he could become a model citizen and a productive human being. He eventually left her at one of his family reunions, and ran away with an old lover, taking her money and checkbook, leaving her in debt up to her eye brows. OH, by the way both ex-husbands are back in Prison. Isn't Love Grand!.

CONTACT MARK SHEPARD
markshepard2003@yahoo.com

(Chapter 8)