Blog #13: Women in Non-Traditional Jobs

Most prison guards and correctional officers that are males are portrayed as very strong, brutal, short tempered men that are willing to do anything to solve a problem within the correctional facility. They are "hard" and have an attitude that is "I'm always right". The idea that prison guards are constantly fighting with prisoners is not true. More times than not, prisoners are non-violent criminals that are in jail for offenses such as drugs, etc. In the readings, it discusses the common idea that walking into a prison would be terrifying, prisoners banging on the bars and screaming at the people walking through. Also, Britton talked about how scared she was the first time she went into a correctional facility because she thought the prisoners were all armed. These ideas of prisoners are far from what actually occurs.

Normally, the correctional officers job is not very exciting and because of this portrayal of the prisoners, it's hard to believe that a woman would be able to do this job. Although, the number of women in jail compared to men are fairly low, it doesn't mean they aren't there. This applies to both prisoners and women in positions in the jail. Women that are correctional officers are portrayed as "tough" and "manly" women. Somehow, people think they have to be this way in order to deal with the prisoners that are out of control. Women in these positions are trained identically to the men in these positions to deal with situations. They have the same tools in case a situation arise as anyone else. Normally, a correctional officer is not wrestling prisoners down to the ground on a daily basis. I don't think the perception of men in a men's facility changes when they work in a women's facility, except for they use more verbal abuse for lack of better words instead of physical abuse. I don't think that this is normally the case, however I wouldn't know until I could experience working in a correctional facility. Most prisoners are looking to behave well so they can serve less of a sentence, and it's not necessarily a zoo like it is portrayed to be. The idea that women are not strong enough to be a correctional officer/police officer is simply a myth. There are plenty of women that can train to be stronger and better at this job than some men.