Q: Has a rookie walked in for their first day and you thought, "This guy/girl isn't going to make it a week."? Do new CO's get 'tested' by cons?
A: The first year an officer works in a prison is the most difficult and important year of his or her career. The inmates can smell a new officer a mile away and will push every limit to see what that officer will tolerate. It can be pretty rough.
My first year, I was approached by an inmate who hinted he would be willing to pay me large sums of money if I would bring stuff in for him. I declined his offer and told him that another proposition would earn him a write-up and possibly new charges.
We occasionally get new recruits who are immediately pegged as too weak or too stupid to work here. I'm not saying they are physically weak or completely unintelligent; they couldn't have made it out of the Academy if that was the case.
It's just that some people are too emotionally weak to handle violent confrontation or intense circumstances. They end up giving in to the inmates, not acting during critical situations, or just running away at a bad time. I have seen one or two new officers who had completed months of training to work at the prison, only to quit a few hours into their first shift.
The other questionable officers are what I consider 'socially retarded'. They may have a genius level IQ but they can't deal with all of the social intricacies that an officer has to address. Socially retarded officers are dangerous because they mishandle situations, making them worse. Or they'll say and do things that confuse the inmates, and a confused inmate is often a soon-to-be-angry inmate. Once this type of officer has an angry inmate on his hands he has no idea what to do with him. So he ends up creating a situation where he could get himself or other staff members hurt.
One of three things happens to those types of officers: they will quit within the first couple of months; they will find a post, like a tower, where they don't have to deal with inmates; or they will screw up really badly and get fired.
