Corrections
I had a funny day at work.
My day job is with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, and it was my task today to fix eight large metal screens which are used to catch Kokanee salmon. My boss found out that the cheapest way to fix the screens was to take them to the metal shop at the Canon City correctional facility. I woke up early, loaded the screens in the truck, and drove about four hours to Colorado's largest maximum security prison.
When I finally arrived at the jail, I stopped at the initial check-point. The guard at the entrance looked up my name and found me on his list. They had done a background check on me the day before, and apparently I passed. The guard was a young blond kid in his early twenties who seemed pretty laid back about his job at the prison. He smiled and directed me to the Freemont Correctional Facility metal shop a few miles down the road.
The Freemont Correctional Facility is a fortress. It is surrounded by four stacks of spiraling razor-wire. Inside the glittering razor-wire fence is another fifteen-foot fence with angled barbed wire at the top. I passed another check-point in front of the fences, and then I drove around to the back where deliveries are made.
I parked the car at "Gate 1." The gate slowly opened, and I drove into an outer courtyard area still outside of the razor-wire. An armed guard peered down at me from what looked like a smaller version of of an air-traffic control tower. A second guard on the ground met me at my truck, took my drivers licence, and asked me to step out and sign some paperwork. He asked if he could search the vehicle and I said of course he could.
With in a few moments of searching the truck, the stared at me wide-eyed holding a shotgun shell in his fingers. "Is there more ammunition in this vehicle?" I said that come to think of it, there were hundreds of bullets in the truck and in fact there was a gun behind the seat. It was all standard issue gear for the Division of Wildlife.
"Do you realize you just committed a felony?" the guard said.
I don't remember exactly how I responded, but it was something along the lines of "Oops."
Prison guards don't have the reputation of having a great sense of humor, and this guy was no exception. I thought it was a pretty funny situation, but he didn't return my smile. I noticed that his heart rate seemed to be quickening much faster than mine, and soon both my pulse and facial expression matched his. He told me that I need to return to the first check point to lock up my "arsenal."
When I got back to the first check-point, I told the blond kid what happened. He said, "You need to tell me if there are weapons in your truck, man." I apologized. He said, "That's cool," and I could tell that he was really hoping that it would be. I gathered up all the bullets from the floor of the truck and put them with the shotgun in a large metal locker.
I drove back to the "Gate 1." I passed the vehicle check this time and was allowed through a second gate into the actual prison grounds. I unloaded the screens with another guard who had even less of a sense of humor than the first. While we were unloading the screens, a overweight prisoner with a large goatee approached the guard and ask him to sign some papers for some work he had done. The guard was rude to the prisoner and said he would only sign one of the six papers. The prisoner smiled sheepishly at the guard, revealing only a few teeth on the right side of his mouth, and then walked away. I was allowed back through the two gates, and then drove to the intial check-point to pick up my weaponry. Needless to say, I felt very liberated to be back on road, driving for the next four hours back home again.
On the drive back, I couldn't help but to think about what a horrible job it would be to be prison guard. The prison guards in Canon City work in a terribly desolate place, surrounded by unpredictable felons who visciously hate them. How do the guards get themselves out of bed to go to work in the morning? The prisoners are of course paying for crimes they committed, but on some level the guards must also be paying for some kind of mistake. Perhaps their crime is something more vague like not studying hard enough in school or simply making bad career choices. Or maybe they are serving time as some sort of deeper karmic penalty. Whatever they've done, they serve their sentence alongside the prisoners they watch. I imagine that there are some prisoners who finish their punishments and move on with their lives before some of their guards do the same.
I'm grateful for my freedom.
posted by nowwhat at 10:37 PM
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