Back From The Dead Part VIII

[darknight1]

Another long period of silence has passed since I last logged on. I've made it over 2 years working in corrections now. I left CoreCivic back in March of this year after a lot of frustration with their lack of incentive towards employees, plus their political efforts to further privatize our entire correctional system nationwide. I couldn't stomach anymore their efforts to push for more stringent sentencing laws, all of which were (and are) done to make a further profit off of locking people up. I went back to ComCor in Colorado Springs as a shift supervisor in early March. That too did not last long - in early May, I was contacted by the Colorado Department of Corrections regarding some applications I had submitted for their Denver complex (home to three correctional facilities) and for the Canon City complex (home to 10 facilities ran by the department - three of which at present are utilized primarily for training). To my surprise they were interested, even despite at least four previous failed attempts to get aboard. I went through a drug panel screening, full background check, several phone interviews and a physical fitness assessment test before accepting a position as Correctional Officer I at one of the three prisons at the Denver complex in mid-June. I started with the department on July 2nd, initially at the Correctional Training Academy ran in Canon City.

 

At this point, I have been a state employee for the state for close to six months now. Everything I thought I knew working community corrections through ComCor and CoreCivic was wrong. Fundamentally wrong. At my current facility, we handle intake and diagnostics for all persons convicted of a felony crime from across the entire state. We basically see what kind of mental health treatment they need, if any, along with what kind of security threats they present to not only us working on the inside but also the public at large (mainly - escape risk, gang membership, violent traits, drug dependencies), vocational needs (if any), educational needs, medical/dental issues...the process of doing all of this can take anywhere from a few days to a few months, and often with offenders who are part of a well known case that our inmate population will be aware of, we either place them into protective custody or send them to another state through what is known in the business as an interstate compact. I've made my fair share of mistakes on the job - I do admit that. And I hope none are bad enough to affect my future with this department, but nothing criminal in nature. I find it an awesome and sometimes nerve wracking environment to work in, as most times there is one officer on the floor (either myself or another person) and one working in a control room (usually me these past few months).

 

The control rooms basically allow us to control doors throughout each unit remotely, as well as cell access. It is the number one place where many of us, myself included, make our fair share of mistakes. An average weekday, depending on which unit I am working in, can be very chaotic, with back to back phone calls from case managers, clinical staff, drug and alcohol treatment staff, mental health staff, unit sergeants, lieutenants, captains, other line officers, laundry staff and others throughout the prison going on all day. Sometimes, it can be so chaotic as to compromise your ability to be able to focus on paying attention to both sections of a unit - the living areas we call pods, which consists of three levels of cells, several shower and bathroom areas and a dayroom. It is problematic when the phones are ringing off the hook and something is going down in a pod that requires your immediate attention. It can lead to friction between staff if you are not on top of it right away. The offenders I find do not help, often buzzing through the intercom systems with repetitive questions or some other mundane thing. By comparison, offender movement and management in a halfway house can be much, much easier. Oftentimes, many of these offenders are the very kind of people you do not want on the streets - many of them have actually worked to earn a place in prison as part of an almost perverse code of honor among criminals, with many having committed murder, assault, theft, drug sales, rape and a vast array of other sorts of crimes we on the outside don't think twice about. More than a few on the streets have shot other people just for thinking those people looked at them in an imaginary way they did not like. I find when I am on the floor, I am vigilant to extremes, often always looking around my entire surroundings and especially over my back to watch them. That behavior has translated into having odd habits when in public - I am finding myself seeking out a space at clubs, restaurants, bars and many other places where I can have my back to the wall, close to an exit and able to observe the entire place for potential threats. It is almost done unconsciously at this point.

 

Our medical wards are nothing like they portray in our mass media, either. Often, the rooms in which they are housed are very spartan in nature, with the most basic of medical equipment utilized. I have heard it described by more than one correctional medical employee as not that similar from a small hospital in a very rural area. On this I am able to speak freely, given that it is like this in nearly every state and federal prison throughout the country, and it is not secret knowledge by any means. Most of the offenders in such settings are generally elderly, or riddled with diseases that are destined to send these offenders to an early grave. A few are in there for mental illness watch in order to prevent self-harming behaviors, while others are there for things such as temporary illnesses or injuries. Working in one of these wards (infirmaries is what we call them on the inside) can be tedious, with constant rounds being done. Any officer who has ever stepped foot into such an area can attest to this. Even a guy in a wheelchair has proven capable of trying to kill staff using very creative means. There are stories of this happening all across the web and across the country.

 

Our dining halls and kitchens are no better. It is no secret that prison food really is as horrible as they say it is, although some officers have managed to take a liking to some of it. Often, there are just 4 officers in a small dining room to face off against 50 or more offenders at any given time. Trust me when I say we have our exits very accessible, and our emergency response plans constantly up to date in the event of a riot or a fight. These do happen, but not that often where I work at. The kitchens we constantly keep an eye on simply due to what could be used as a weapon in there, and everything is either anchored to a table bolted into the ground or monitored very, very closely. Intake and transport hubs can be busy, too, with hundreds of offenders in there at any given moment. Transport hubs are no secret - it is where we ship offenders out to other facilities and receive offenders from other facilities. Intake just deals with offenders brought in from parole or from county jails all across the state. It is very much like what you would see on shows like "Locked Up", with stations for mental health, fingerprinting, clothing issue, property, clinical evaluation and the like. It is rare any major incidents occur there. In the housing areas? Maybe a few times a week something happens, and even then, it is not all uncommon to see uniformed officers arrive within moments at the scene of a disturbance or even a drill. In one recent instance, I observed 15 officers arrive within 30 seconds to deal with an uncooperative offender who refused to lock down in his cell. Seeing that kind of response could easily give a person with control issues a power trip. Naturally, we all strive to police ourselves in that area as much as possible.

 

In some ways, my work environment is similar to what you would see on Locked Up, and in other ways different. The tension they speak of between staff and offenders can be present at times, if only for short periods of time. That usually happens when the entire facility is on lockdown, with offenders usually having to remain in their cells for a day or longer. This usually is done in response to acts of violence that require an investigation by what outsiders would think of as Internal Affairs - officers who are tasked with investigating criminal incidents in a prison in addition to compromised staff, outbreaks of a virus of some sort (usually norovirus or the flu), negative behaviors by the offender population or some other extreme circumstances such as a staffing shortage or inclement weather. We don't see the amount of incidents that these shows claim happen on a daily basis either. Oftentimes, while shows that deal with showing life inside of a prison can focus on a person's crime - almost to the point of depicting offenders to be utter monsters (which I do confess some are - we just don't say it out loud much), for myself and my fellow officers, we simply can look at a guy from one of these shows and (if it is based in our state and we recognize the person) say something to the tune of "That guy was one of my best porters" - porter being a prison term for unpaid helper who volunteers to do so - or something along those lines. We are aware of their crimes, but do our best to not think of them. If we did, we risk falling into our worse instincts when it comes to treatment of criminals.

 

As for my training I experienced, compared to other states...it I think was relatively lacking. Four weeks in their academy...a total of 17 days plus one for graduation. I learned the very basics of self defense, use of chemical agents (they gave us secondhand exposure to pepper spray - it still can affect your vision and breathing regardless of the setting), the law related to corrections, first aid...followed by another week of facility specific death by PowerPoint (which was most of my academy training), a week of shadow training (mostly flying on your own with a little bit of direction - if any) and a 90 day FTO program where to be frank, I worked maybe twice with my assigned FTO the entire time. That was all there was to it. No live firearms training - unless you get a spot on external security (think working in one of those towers you see on the outside of a prison, working a front gate or doing perimeter patrol). No taser training unless you are lucky enough to get approved for it...no low lethal training (rubber bullets comes to mind)...it to me is a little frustrating to lack these things. Most of what I am capable of doing is from trial and error by this point.

 

The world I work in now is way, way different than any I have ever known in my working life. I've done my best to explain it to you all, and I hope it clears up just what it is like from those of us who are behind a badge - myself now included. Any questions, hit me up. I will answer what I can, provided it doesn't come into conflict with my employer's rules and regulations. I live in a strange world now, and definitely work too many hours at times. It beats working for a sketchy corporation at least.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Good to hear from you. 

Glad you are working in a less egregious environment, although I'm sure underpaid and underappreciated like most government employees.  😞The way you describe it sounds similar to what I hear about all important government agencies... understaffed. Thus putting a lot of strain on people that work there, on top of making it harder and harder to have much empathy for people because the workload is so high.   In your case, I'm sure it's especially hard knowing that your life might be at risk at almost any moment. People don't tend to thank officers for being officers but honestly, your work is appreciated, at least by me. 

The thread that runs through your whole post there about the correctional facility environment being far different than you would have thought is pretty eye-opening.  The corporations own so many politicians and have so many people duped. Which 'inform' the judicial system that makes our country have the largest incarcerated population in the world is the start of the problem. The lying sack of garbage elected politicians and the various propaganda that keeps the myth that being "tough on crime" means "Throw the book at everyone you can as hard as you can and if they go to prison fuck em they deserve it"  without taking any practical considerations on how to actually fix the problems so recidivism isn't so bad is just disgusting.  

The number of people that have no clue what they are talking about expressing the above opinion is embarrassing.  But I don't fault any of them for it, that is after I calm down at how easily mislead we seem to be.  We have a whole news organization (the most watched one in the country) consistently pushing that ideology. Its no wonder people are so misinformed.   I try hard to draw a distinction between the liars and the lied-to.  

 

I do have a lot of respect for the people that have to work at correctional facilities though.  It's not their fault the system is underfunded, misguided in its priorities and manipulated by the billionaire class via their political puppets to be a for-profit enterprise (even government-run correctional facilities have all sorts of corporate money funned through them making the situation worse) with no moral compass outside of profit.   

We luck out and get good people trying to do good and make the situation better but until we remove the corporations from the political process and thus remove them from using public systems for private gain we are stuck. 

I hope your mental and physical health is doing well.  

 

 

[darknight1]

Troy, I don't know if I am okay physically or mentally. When it comes to my diet, I have to admit that it has fallen hard in the worse way. We're pretty much reduced to finger foods to eat, and even then we are not able to take more than a few bites before being interrupted by a phone call from another part of the facility, an unexpected visit by shift commanders, something that needs to be done in the schedule posted for offenders each day or having to rush groups of offenders either off to our transport hub, clinic, dining hall or elsewhere in the facility itself. I seem to live off of exorbitant amounts of energy drinks, coffee or Mountain Dew. Many of us do try to slam down water to compensate for what we put in our bodies, but when you are often having to eat something you can throw in a microwave to heat up and eat in pieces...the options for that are not the best in the world, and it is no secret that many of us are paying a price in terms of our physical fitness.

 

Mentally? I fear the worse. I've seen things in the time I have collectively spent around offenders in a prison and a halfway house. CPR on a guy who had been dead for almost an hour? Check. A cell filled with human blood? Check. Bodily waste used as a decoration? Check. The brutality of a fight gone bad between offenders? Check. Self mutilation? Double check. I've seen things I would not wish on anyone here. I've dealt with more individuals than I can count who are high on methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, synthetic drugs and almost any other street drug I can name. The toughest ones are always on meth, it seems - I've got two teeth missing in the back of my mouth from fighting one in just one instance. Being around this kind of crowd puts one on edge. I certainly am, and I admit I get very impatient, almost angry even, with other people outside of work. I look for threats that don't exist all of the time. And often, I find I do not have the energy or interest to want to talk to anyone once I am off. I find myself most days just hurrying through traffic to get home and get lost in a book or sleep.

 

The hours can be unforgiving, too, as mentioned before - I'm up just before 3 AM five days a week, and on the road no later than 4:30 AM. Our roll call starts between 5:40 to 5:45, and sometimes earlier depending on which captain or lieutenant is in charge for the day. By 6:15 AM, I am either working the floor or in one of the control centers for each unit, which we dub the "bubbles" - the entire time on the intercom system cajoling offenders to hurry up and get dressed, and out the door to chow. All day it is like that with them. It can be very repetitive from our perspective - a life spent between being ushered to chow, medline, classes, clinic and maybe one or two dayhalls over the entire day. From my own perspective, I could not handle being in a situation like that for years on end. Once 10:30 AM hits, everything stops for standing formal count - where we go into each pod to do counts of how many offenders are actually there. For floor officers, we have to hit both pods and then get our count sheets up to master control, who then tallies up the numbers we provide, before we resume moving offenders around the facility. Usually it is within minutes of us turning in these count sheets that count gets cleared and we have to begin preparing them for afternoon medline or chow again. It is weird for me to refer to every meal they have as chow still - I don't use the same terminology at home, preferring to refer to each meal I have as breakfast, lunch or dinner. At 1:45 PM, swing shift arrives for their briefing. We turn in our equipment, provided we are not having to work an extra shift (which is too often given the constant staffing shortages) and start to get ready for shift change - even as we are running dayhalls for offenders in both pods that usually begins at 1:30. Between 2:00 and 2:15 PM is when swing shift arrives - they take a long time to do their rounds. That has been a reality since day one up there. I have yet to see a day where we are out of there before 2:30 PM, unless we are working on external security, in which case they leave at around 2:00 PM. By the time I get home, it is usually between 3:50 PM and 4:30 PM. I will have been awake at that point for 13 and a half hours. To feel remotely refreshed for work, I find myself in bed between 5 and 7 PM. Saying that I miss out on a lot 5 days a week would be an understatement. My days off, I mostly want to just sleep in - again, I cannot overstate how much you get drained doing this kind of work.

 

As far as money being a huge factor in our corrections system, you are entirely correct there. In most of the states, the single largest provider of offender communication services and monetary management is J-Pay. GTL is also big, managing tablets they provide at no charge to many, many offenders. Where they make a profit at is the amount they charge for every single thing offenders could download or even do on these tablets. An entire album, for example, that we on the outside might pay $10 for on something like iTunes would cost them up to $40 or more. An email we send for free? 50 cents or more. Canteen services for offenders often are ran by corporations like Aramark and Sodexo, both of whom make a high percentage of their company profits in correctional services. Going out even further, there are three large corporations that dominate much of the country's correctional system with regard to for-profit prisons - CoreCivic (formerly known as Correctional Corporation of America or CCA), GEO Group (known as Wackenhut in the past) and Utah based MTC (Management and Training Corporation). In the south, there is a fourth company that is gaining prominence - LaSalle Southwest Corrections. All four prison corporations have an abysmal record with regard to treatment of offenders (with officers working for those companies often being the abusive type - many there do not cut it with a state ran DOC or were drummed out of service), a lack of offender services meant to promote rehabilitation, poor to nonexistent mental health and medical services, shoddy maintenance and an exceptionally high amount of violent incidents. Despite the problems associated with facilities ran by these corporations, they are still allowed to run facilities in up to 20, almost 30 different states simply because the state ran facilities (and federal ran facilities too) are overcrowded, thanks mostly due to harsher sentencing laws that, upon closer examination and utilizing FOIA requests for documentation, were almost written wholesale by all four companies and passed into law by Republican oriented officials at the state level and at the federal level.

 

Halfway houses are no better. All but maybe 1% of the halfway houses in the United States are run by for profit corporations that either masquerade as non-profit organizations or, in the cases of CoreCivic and GEO Group (who currently are going to war with each other - snatching up almost every operating halfway house they can in numerous states), are blatantly for-profit operations. Security in these places is laughable, with drug contraband being the number one issue almost every halfway house in the country grapples with. PREA incidents occur at a high level of frequency in these places as well - PREA meaning Prison Rape Elimination Act. Yes, rape and sexual assault instances do happen even in halfway houses, and unfortunately they tend to be covered up by the owners of these places so that they do not look bad in the public's eye. Offenders who go to such places often pay exorbitant amounts of their meager earnings from their jobs just to have a bed, and it is also commonplace for many who are on diversion sentences or on parole to get automatically sentenced to a halfway house, thanks in part to the political influence these places can have at the county, state and federal level. If they cannot keep up, they get sent back to prison. If they fall back into drug use (which mostly goes unchecked in these places by careless staff - I saw it firsthand), it is back to prison or jail. Fail to miss a meeting with a case manager? Back to county or prison. There are no medical services available in a halfway house - the responsibility alone for handling medications issued to offenders exclusively falls onto untrained security staff members. For any needed medical treatment or medical emergencies, that is left to community health agencies or the hospital. For mental health, drug treatment or any other needed classes these people may need? It is heavily left in the hands of community mental health agencies, many of whom are overcrowded and underfunded, or with religious organizations that run an NA type of program or AA program. The amount of staff corruption in such places is horrifying, too, with no UAs being required, no extensive background checks conducted on staff, no real checking of references and training periods that may very well last only three days at most. It is not that uncommon to run across halfway house staff who are related or friends with the offenders in some way, and not uncommon for halfway house staff to have prior felony convictions on their own backgrounds.

 

I could speak volumes on the insane, horrific practices at work in these places that I was witness to for over two years, but I cannot. At least not yet. I'll throw up more on my thoughts regarding the political costs associated with reckless legislation and how we arrived at this point with regard to our criminal justice system if not tomorrow, then within a few days. I've had a lot to learn and absorb these past few years, and much of it is enough to turn everyone's hair white. Good night, everyone.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

On 12/22/2018 at 11:27 PM, darknight1 said:

Troy, I don't know if I am okay physically or mentally. When it comes to my diet, I have to admit that it has fallen hard in the worse way. We're pretty much reduced to finger foods to eat, and even then we are not able to take more than a few bites before being interrupted by a phone call from another part of the facility, an unexpected visit by shift commanders, something that needs to be done in the schedule posted for offenders each day or having to rush groups of offenders either off to our transport hub, clinic, dining hall or elsewhere in the facility itself. I seem to live off of exorbitant amounts of energy drinks, coffee or Mountain Dew. Many of us do try to slam down water to compensate for what we put in our bodies, but when you are often having to eat something you can throw in a microwave to heat up and eat in pieces...the options for that are not the best in the world, and it is no secret that many of us are paying a price in terms of our physical fitness.

 

Mentally? I fear the worse. I've seen things in the time I have collectively spent around offenders in a prison and a halfway house. CPR on a guy who had been dead for almost an hour? Check. A cell filled with human blood? Check. Bodily waste used as a decoration? Check. The brutality of a fight gone bad between offenders? Check. Self mutilation? Double check. I've seen things I would not wish on anyone here. I've dealt with more individuals than I can count who are high on methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, synthetic drugs and almost any other street drug I can name. The toughest ones are always on meth, it seems - I've got two teeth missing in the back of my mouth from fighting one in just one instance. Being around this kind of crowd puts one on edge. I certainly am, and I admit I get very impatient, almost angry even, with other people outside of work. I look for threats that don't exist all of the time. And often, I find I do not have the energy or interest to want to talk to anyone once I am off. I find myself most days just hurrying through traffic to get home and get lost in a book or sleep.

 

The hours can be unforgiving, too, as mentioned before - I'm up just before 3 AM five days a week, and on the road no later than 4:30 AM. Our roll call starts between 5:40 to 5:45, and sometimes earlier depending on which captain or lieutenant is in charge for the day. By 6:15 AM, I am either working the floor or in one of the control centers for each unit, which we dub the "bubbles" - the entire time on the intercom system cajoling offenders to hurry up and get dressed, and out the door to chow. All day it is like that with them. It can be very repetitive from our perspective - a life spent between being ushered to chow, medline, classes, clinic and maybe one or two dayhalls over the entire day. From my own perspective, I could not handle being in a situation like that for years on end. Once 10:30 AM hits, everything stops for standing formal count - where we go into each pod to do counts of how many offenders are actually there. For floor officers, we have to hit both pods and then get our count sheets up to master control, who then tallies up the numbers we provide, before we resume moving offenders around the facility. Usually it is within minutes of us turning in these count sheets that count gets cleared and we have to begin preparing them for afternoon medline or chow again. It is weird for me to refer to every meal they have as chow still - I don't use the same terminology at home, preferring to refer to each meal I have as breakfast, lunch or dinner. At 1:45 PM, swing shift arrives for their briefing. We turn in our equipment, provided we are not having to work an extra shift (which is too often given the constant staffing shortages) and start to get ready for shift change - even as we are running dayhalls for offenders in both pods that usually begins at 1:30. Between 2:00 and 2:15 PM is when swing shift arrives - they take a long time to do their rounds. That has been a reality since day one up there. I have yet to see a day where we are out of there before 2:30 PM, unless we are working on external security, in which case they leave at around 2:00 PM. By the time I get home, it is usually between 3:50 PM and 4:30 PM. I will have been awake at that point for 13 and a half hours. To feel remotely refreshed for work, I find myself in bed between 5 and 7 PM. Saying that I miss out on a lot 5 days a week would be an understatement. My days off, I mostly want to just sleep in - again, I cannot overstate how much you get drained doing this kind of work.

 

As far as money being a huge factor in our corrections system, you are entirely correct there. In most of the states, the single largest provider of offender communication services and monetary management is J-Pay. GTL is also big, managing tablets they provide at no charge to many, many offenders. Where they make a profit at is the amount they charge for every single thing offenders could download or even do on these tablets. An entire album, for example, that we on the outside might pay $10 for on something like iTunes would cost them up to $40 or more. An email we send for free? 50 cents or more. Canteen services for offenders often are ran by corporations like Aramark and Sodexo, both of whom make a high percentage of their company profits in correctional services. Going out even further, there are three large corporations that dominate much of the country's correctional system with regard to for-profit prisons - CoreCivic (formerly known as Correctional Corporation of America or CCA), GEO Group (known as Wackenhut in the past) and Utah based MTC (Management and Training Corporation). In the south, there is a fourth company that is gaining prominence - LaSalle Southwest Corrections. All four prison corporations have an abysmal record with regard to treatment of offenders (with officers working for those companies often being the abusive type - many there do not cut it with a state ran DOC or were drummed out of service), a lack of offender services meant to promote rehabilitation, poor to nonexistent mental health and medical services, shoddy maintenance and an exceptionally high amount of violent incidents. Despite the problems associated with facilities ran by these corporations, they are still allowed to run facilities in up to 20, almost 30 different states simply because the state ran facilities (and federal ran facilities too) are overcrowded, thanks mostly due to harsher sentencing laws that, upon closer examination and utilizing FOIA requests for documentation, were almost written wholesale by all four companies and passed into law by Republican oriented officials at the state level and at the federal level.

 

Halfway houses are no better. All but maybe 1% of the halfway houses in the United States are run by for profit corporations that either masquerade as non-profit organizations or, in the cases of CoreCivic and GEO Group (who currently are going to war with each other - snatching up almost every operating halfway house they can in numerous states), are blatantly for-profit operations. Security in these places is laughable, with drug contraband being the number one issue almost every halfway house in the country grapples with. PREA incidents occur at a high level of frequency in these places as well - PREA meaning Prison Rape Elimination Act. Yes, rape and sexual assault instances do happen even in halfway houses, and unfortunately they tend to be covered up by the owners of these places so that they do not look bad in the public's eye. Offenders who go to such places often pay exorbitant amounts of their meager earnings from their jobs just to have a bed, and it is also commonplace for many who are on diversion sentences or on parole to get automatically sentenced to a halfway house, thanks in part to the political influence these places can have at the county, state and federal level. If they cannot keep up, they get sent back to prison. If they fall back into drug use (which mostly goes unchecked in these places by careless staff - I saw it firsthand), it is back to prison or jail. Fail to miss a meeting with a case manager? Back to county or prison. There are no medical services available in a halfway house - the responsibility alone for handling medications issued to offenders exclusively falls onto untrained security staff members. For any needed medical treatment or medical emergencies, that is left to community health agencies or the hospital. For mental health, drug treatment or any other needed classes these people may need? It is heavily left in the hands of community mental health agencies, many of whom are overcrowded and underfunded, or with religious organizations that run an NA type of program or AA program. The amount of staff corruption in such places is horrifying, too, with no UAs being required, no extensive background checks conducted on staff, no real checking of references and training periods that may very well last only three days at most. It is not that uncommon to run across halfway house staff who are related or friends with the offenders in some way, and not uncommon for halfway house staff to have prior felony convictions on their own backgrounds.

 

I could speak volumes on the insane, horrific practices at work in these places that I was witness to for over two years, but I cannot. At least not yet. I'll throw up more on my thoughts regarding the political costs associated with reckless legislation and how we arrived at this point with regard to our criminal justice system if not tomorrow, then within a few days. I've had a lot to learn and absorb these past few years, and much of it is enough to turn everyone's hair white. Good night, everyone.

 

The diet part is huge.   I know you need the energy to get through stuff but in the long run especially sugar, sodium (frozen/canned stuff) and too much caffeine / Taurine (monster) will kill you and before that you will get diminishing returns and have to take more and more of the stuff to keep going which makes it even more dangerous.  I didn't start watching what I eat until like 2 years ago when I was so depressed/anxious and not sleeping due to the PTSD, eating better was a HARD switch but I feel much better.  Not great, but better.  That water idea if you can't stop drinking the other stuff is a good idea, it helps balance out all the bullshit.  Don't skimp on the water, especially in the semi-survival mode you seem to be in.   Really feel for ya brother. 

 

Any easy-ish way to avoid the frozen/canned garbage is meal replacement shakes.   I recommend Lean 1 or  Truefit.  You can slam them and get what you need without sacrificing your health.  (too me a while to figure this part out too) because even in my far less demanding schedule than yours I find myself having no time to actually sit down and eat much. 

 

The shit hours...  is there no union for officers?  The last thing we need is tired as hell correctional facility workers being tired as hell, that will just make things even worse.   *bro hug*

 

Yeah, the rapist prices in the commissary (that the right term)?  Seem crazy.  These are typically people that can least afford stuff... so let's rip them off.   GJ.

 

Halfway houses yeah... yet another rich people scam.   Same for drug rehab centers (most of them anyway)  there is no good regulation, no "advocacy" groups with any real power. 

 

We used to know the rich greedy billionaires were the enemy, apparently now we vote for them and let them run things since you know... billionaires always have our best interest at heart.  They helped us out causing virtually every major depression/recession in the history of the USA. 

The Young Turks (nothing to do with Turkey it's an American news outlet, the term comes from an old political group of young politicians that were fighting mad to change things)  They actually talk quite frequently about correctional facility issues. 

More than any other outlet I'm aware of.  (they are on youtube and other places)  Largest non-cable news outlet in the USA. 

Although their primary goal is to focus on getting big money out of politics which corrupts the whole American system. 

 

 

 

 

 

[darknight1]

On ‎1‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 9:59 PM, Troy Spiral said:

 

The diet part is huge.   I know you need the energy to get through stuff but in the long run especially sugar, sodium (frozen/canned stuff) and too much caffeine / Taurine (monster) will kill you and before that you will get diminishing returns and have to take more and more of the stuff to keep going which makes it even more dangerous.  I didn't start watching what I eat until like 2 years ago when I was so depressed/anxious and not sleeping due to the PTSD, eating better was a HARD switch but I feel much better.  Not great, but better.  That water idea if you can't stop drinking the other stuff is a good idea, it helps balance out all the bullshit.  Don't skimp on the water, especially in the semi-survival mode you seem to be in.   Really feel for ya brother. 

 

Any easy-ish way to avoid the frozen/canned garbage is meal replacement shakes.   I recommend Lean 1 or  Truefit.  You can slam them and get what you need without sacrificing your health.  (too me a while to figure this part out too) because even in my far less demanding schedule than yours I find myself having no time to actually sit down and eat much. 

 

The shit hours...  is there no union for officers?  The last thing we need is tired as hell correctional facility workers being tired as hell, that will just make things even worse.   *bro hug*

 

Yeah, the rapist prices in the commissary (that the right term)?  Seem crazy.  These are typically people that can least afford stuff... so let's rip them off.   GJ.

 

Halfway houses yeah... yet another rich people scam.   Same for drug rehab centers (most of them anyway)  there is no good regulation, no "advocacy" groups with any real power. 

 

We used to know the rich greedy billionaires were the enemy, apparently now we vote for them and let them run things since you know... billionaires always have our best interest at heart.  They helped us out causing virtually every major depression/recession in the history of the USA. 

The Young Turks (nothing to do with Turkey it's an American news outlet, the term comes from an old political group of young politicians that were fighting mad to change things)  They actually talk quite frequently about correctional facility issues. 

More than any other outlet I'm aware of.  (they are on youtube and other places)  Largest non-cable news outlet in the USA. 

Although their primary goal is to focus on getting big money out of politics which corrupts the whole American system. 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm familiar with TYT. Them, Democracy Now, Mother Jones and the ACLU itself all have a body of work on the problems surrounding our corrections system. We do have a union where I am at, but at best I think it is ineffective. We are still hemorrhaging staff like crazy due partly to the lack of a meaningful pay raise for years. It is widely known that one of the reasons why the pay has not been raised to better help our officers meet the cost of living increases in this state is due in part to our state legislature - they, to date, have balked at giving out any raises until their demands for criminal justice "reform" are met. On the Republican side, that usually has to do with this perception that we all live pretty large as officers - eating steaks and fucking around on the job. They tend to lean heavily towards privatization and as a result are more hostile towards us because they view the private sector as somehow being better for determining our wages, even with the incredible amount of evidence that points to the polar opposite of their thinking on this subject. As for the Democratic Party, they view us as the bad guys here, and tend to be in favor of a correctional system heavily based on the Scandinavian model, which while admirable, simply cannot work at this point in time in our own country. The concept they favor is something I hear often referred to as "Hug A Thug". They do not seem to recognize that many of the people who are serving out sentences in our system are almost lost beyond most hope of true recovery and rehabilitation. This is due to a combination of some very powerful forces those of us who work in this field are having to climb uphill against - gang involvement, drug abuse, drug trafficking, epic mental health issues, a high lack of education, a huge lack of common sense...there seems to be so many and so little time to even list out what I am seeing among offenders.

 

I often think all of this could have been averted years ago had we as voters actually successfully demanded and received reforms for the key areas where I tend to believe criminal behavior stems from. The biggest one I feel is our mental health system. I tend to feel that overall it is a fucking joke. A lot of these people come into correctional facilities with serious, untreated mental illnesses that on the streets simply were not either treated properly, detected or taken seriously enough. The going trend that seems to exist is that we as a society love to go on about how much we care about mental health treatment, but the reality is that from our perspectives within the system, we are the ones left to handle their issues, and I feel it is a damn shame it is even this way. Mental health treatment it seems still is very much privatized in this country, with far too many insurers being unwilling to cover any meaningful mental health treatment for people who need it. Forget about Medicaid and Medicare, too - it seems that as a rule people who are covered by both are delegated to community mental health organizations which usually in my experience tend to be underfunded by local government, state government and even less by the federal government. Without proper treatment by psychologists/psychiatrists, coupled with proper pharmaceutical treatment methods, too many of these guys end up self medicating with street grade methamphetamines, crack cocaine, heroin or any other myriad of street drugs I could name. From there, a vicious cycle of frequent incarceration emerges, mostly stemming from actions committed while under the influence of said drugs - assaults, homicides, theft, fraud...I've seen hundreds of cases where, aside from a paltry few, most charges a person in the halfway house or prison is serving time for directly stemmed from a combination of mental illness and/or substance abuse. Maybe, just maybe if we made it socially acceptable for people to go get help instead of bleating about it on social media every single time a horrific incident comes up in our society without doing a single meaningful fucking thing, we could cut our offender population nationwide in half. And that's not even the start of it.

 

I mentioned earlier a lack of education. From what I have seen up close, the bulk of the offenders I have come into contact with throughout my career to today operate on something close to a 4th or 5th grade level. Yes, they are capable of working at construction jobs and hard labor. It is easy enough to mimic that when on the job. When I speak of a lack of education, however, what I am seeing is that there seems to be no comprehension on their part of attaining a better life partly through being an educated, involved member of society. There seems to be a lacking depth of knowledge regarding mathematics, civics, engineering, literature, history, contemporary events, sociology...there seems to be so much that they lack in, and that our society at large seems to lack itself. I would posit that the lack of an education is what leads a good amount of these people to pursue the ends that they do. There is simply no concept with many of them as to what they could have if we were in a better society. I guess my point here is that I would prefer that we as a society hammer away at education from an early age and do it in a manner that is serious and allows for much of our society to truly flourish in terms of science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. Inspire coming generations to reach for the stars themselves, as it were, rather than leaving them to contend with a system that is very much still rooted in the Industrial Revolution and heavily depends on pointless testing standards that do nothing but prepare each succeeding generation in our schools to try and eke out a miserable, poverty filled existence in which the temptation to try and attain a better life by illicit means proves to be the downfall of so many. I would rather have a society full of people striving to be the best they can be, rather than browbeaten human beings who took to selling toxic substances to live comfortably, only to end up rotting away in a correctional facility simply due to the fact that our own educational system essentially told them their only place in this society is to be slaving away for very little while the wealthy at the top of the chain continue to profit off of the misery they have been allotted. I wish even further that the opportunity to attain an advanced degree through a college or a university was not prohibitively expensive, either. The chance to achieve one's goals early in life should never be dependent on a dollar amount, and it frustrates me that beginning in the elementary level and ending at the university level, too many are stymied from pursuing the ability to make this entire world a better place because of the cost and ending up being driven to a point where illicit methods are considered the only option to getting by in life. I would think the idea of a better future should be motivating to many of these people, but I think our educational system helped hammer into their heads this absurd idea that they are only to live a certain life depending on what label is attached to them by the very so-called leaders of our educational system at every level.

 

That last part, while seemingly disjointed, leads me onto my next point. Another factor of what I see as being a driving point behind many people landing in a prison, halfway house or a jail is the fact, once again, that a lot of them resort to get rich quick criminal efforts in order to provide for themselves, their loved ones or to be as comfortable as those who go without almost every single financial stressor we at the bottom of the ladder live with every single day. What am I getting to? I think that maybe if our wages we earn were actually meaningful and did not leave anyone behind to consider selling drugs, participate in scams or fraud of some sort, we would see some sort of reduction in our prison populations. I don't know about any of you, but I find this argument that our wages are sufficient enough for people to live on to be utter bullshit, just as much as this idea that wage growth should be left to "the market" and not the government. History shows us again and again that for-profit enterprises that are not regulated will do as much as possible to pay as little as they can while maximizing the cost of the products they push. Thus, it is up to government, at our behest, to make them pay a fairer wage. Coupled with that issue, I do not see any reason why rental prices are allowed to skyrocket the way they are nationwide. This to me is an echo of the issue of land speculation from the 19th century all over again. Similarly, I fail to see why it is the cost of food that is inexpensive to produce must jump to unheard of heights. We have the technology and the ability to address almost all of our economic maladies in a manner that will leave everyone in a better standing position. Why is it we allow for-profit enterprise to fuck people over and over again, and leave them even consider committing a crime in order to get by? I cannot count the number of people I have dealt with who admitted this to be an issue - their financial worries were enough that they fell into criminal behavior in order to get by. Now, my final piece for now.

 

Healthcare. We, in addition to being the largest provider of mental health care in the United States, also are the largest providers of medical care in the United States as well. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who commit crimes just to have access to healthcare for a wide range of conditions that they cannot afford to address on the streets. With that in mind, at what point do we stop letting for-profit medical companies, pharmaceutical giants, hospital chains and health insurers to stop dictating our healthcare priorities? At what point do we step up and institute a national universal healthcare system that we all pay a little into per person as taxpayers, and get rid of this bullshit idea that our medical needs, our very bodies, are something that must have a dollar sign attached to? I have a difficult time fathoming the very idea that any one person would willingly go to jail just to get dental work done, heart problems treated or cancer treated. And these are all things I have actually seen happen. It kills me to think how much of that we could avoid if we only stopped making excuses and installed a healthcare system that valued saving lives over profit, and not driving a person to destructive ends to get helped.

 

I state this as my ending for now: I am not excusing any of what people who are incarcerated have done. I do recognize that even with our best efforts, there are some in our society who simply should not be in the free world at all. I am more frustrated by the lack of progress to address the root causes of crime itself. They are myriad and number likely in the dozens, if not hundreds. We could put a cap on it, if only more of the country stopped making excuses and saw beyond money as an issue. In time, we would reap far better rewards, in terms of monetary gains, cultural development and morality if we did the right thing and started by addressing even two of the three problem areas noted above. It kills me that we only can see the short term losses, and nothing else. We need to do better. I want a world where my job is not needed. Where our energy is better spent contributing to building a better society for the human species, and not squandering it. I challenge everyone else to do the same.

[kat (1)]

What is up, man? 

[darknight1]

3 minutes ago, kat said:

What is up, man? 

All of the above. I'm running on fumes tonight and still not in bed. And the day starts again at 3 AM in the morning.

[kat (1)]

Dude! You need sleep. 

[darknight1]

1 minute ago, kat said:

Dude! You need sleep. 

I will after my laundry is done. I need clean uniforms for tomorrow after all.

[kat (1)]

Yes, clean clothes are good. Also showers and teeth.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Holy shit a Democracy Now reference on DGN.   We win the internet!

 

The pay is a problem with the SUPER rich bastards that own most of the politicians.  They don't live on the same planet we do.  Their only loyalty is to money. In the mid 60s  average CEO pay was 20x the median worker, now it's INSANE.   Worker productivity goes up every year but pay does not.  Inflation/CPI (CPI / Consumer Price Index) is actually rising MUCH faster than they say.   Almost all non-government sources the BLS - Bureau of Labor and Statistics says Inflation is around 4% but wont release how it calculates that.  Almost all legit economists put that number somewhere around 10% per year.  Which is massive.  Doesn't affect the super rich, but does effect the bottom 90% fully and only the top 9% a little.  

 

We are all in the end, responsbile for our own actions.  Society would have a hard time functioning if we were not.  But environment has a HUGE impact in a way that cannot easily be controlled.  The last article I read about violent criminals was that some huge percentage actually should be in mental health facilities not jail, but there aren't enough to go around and we are more focused on "punishment" than "rehabilitation" which should be the focus from a pragmatic standpoint.  It was much more of a focus in previous decades but not now.  

[darknight1]

On ‎2‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 9:54 PM, Troy Spiral said:

Holy shit a Democracy Now reference on DGN.   We win the internet!

 

The pay is a problem with the SUPER rich bastards that own most of the politicians.  They don't live on the same planet we do.  Their only loyalty is to money. In the mid 60s  average CEO pay was 20x the median worker, now it's INSANE.   Worker productivity goes up every year but pay does not.  Inflation/CPI (CPI / Consumer Price Index) is actually rising MUCH faster than they say.   Almost all non-government sources the BLS - Bureau of Labor and Statistics says Inflation is around 4% but wont release how it calculates that.  Almost all legit economists put that number somewhere around 10% per year.  Which is massive.  Doesn't affect the super rich, but does effect the bottom 90% fully and only the top 9% a little.  

 

We are all in the end, responsbile for our own actions.  Society would have a hard time functioning if we were not.  But environment has a HUGE impact in a way that cannot easily be controlled.  The last article I read about violent criminals was that some huge percentage actually should be in mental health facilities not jail, but there aren't enough to go around and we are more focused on "punishment" than "rehabilitation" which should be the focus from a pragmatic standpoint.  It was much more of a focus in previous decades but not now.  

Yes, I name dropped Democracy Now. I even had the privilege of meeting Amy Goodman at a talk she hosted for her last book tour at Colorado College a few years back. There is so much to fix here and just no way I see of getting it done in any manner short of resorting to extreme actions. And I am burned out of my skull from seeing the fucked up consequences of decades of irresponsibly cast votes for people who never should have been allowed within any remote reaching grasp or even a slight touch upon the levers of power.

[darknight1]

I should not have to state this, either, but I must, just in case: what I say are my personal thoughts, my views on our system we live within. They are not those of who I work for, with as much as people out there like to insist they should be just because of where I do and do not work at. I do make it a point to treat them with respect on the inside, and reserve the times for tough talk when the situation warrants it. I use professionalism and diplomacy at every turn, even despite what I am thinking inside. With how monumentally fucked up I think it all is, and how monumentally bad we need reforms and better oversight. I know of a select few I work with in there who feel and say the same often.

[Soulrev]

Hey buddy! Are you still in the springs? My ranch is about 50 miles from town east of the Springs.. You doing correctional work still? My wife/ex wife who I need to track down for a divorce, works at the Cheyenne Mountain Reentry Center.. Fuckin bitch lol. Anyway if you're still around hit me up man I have a huge ranch now.