A correctional journal: an optimistic choice.

I grew up with a couple of correctional employees for neighbors and family friends. They have worked for the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) for more than 20 years, and though they tried their best to discourage me from following them into a career in federal corrections, they failed miserably. They told me I would likely become jaded and develop a cynical view of the entire criminal justice system and with humanity in general, like so many who work on the front line of CSC. But even as they warned me, they inadvertently revealed what I saw as a career with the potential for amazing opportunities, and I could not help but ignore their counsel.

I have heard a career as a correctional employee in Canada described as 30 years of mind-numbing boredom and 30 minutes of heart-stopping terror. Only halfway into the second year of my own career, I can already attest to the boredom. And no one wishes for it, but there are also those occasions when correctional employees face the real danger of not going home to their families.

Unlike police officers, correctional officers are rarely armed, and they must work rather diligently to ensure that neither are their charges--an act of self-preservation more than anything. Where the police have the task of tracking and arresting offenders, correctional employees must interact with these offenders on a round-the-clock basis in jails that resemble the dungeons of medieval Europe. Police are respected and lionized for their work--and rightly so. Correctional officers, however, are often misunderstood and viewed as little better than those they guard. Thirty years ago, according to one of my college instructors, the requirements for prospective correctional employees in Alberta included having little more than a high school diploma, being over 6 feet tall and hopefully having high school football experience because brawls with offenders were a daily occurrence. It was said that the difference between the keepers and the kept was what side of the bars they were on.

So, why would anyone choose such a potentially dangerous and thankless profession? For a great many reasons, I assure you, but it is not a choice for those who cannot embrace the concepts of humanism and restorative justice.

Absolutely no one can do anything to change or prevent a crime that has already been committed. What we in the law enforcement field can do--and what I believe is incumbent upon every one of us in that field to do--is make every effort to prevent an offender from committing another offense. And prison, though a very attractive deterent for all of us with thoughts of retribution, simply does not work. What prison often does well is teach inmates how to be better offenders and hardens them in a ruthless and survivalist environment. It also can slowly divest an individual of the ability to think and act responsibly for one's self. After years of being told when to eat, sleep, wake, what to do and how to do it, how effective do you think that individual will be as a law-abiding citizen, expected to make his or her own choices? Furthermore, it is an incredible drain on Canadian taxpayers. It costs Canadian taxpayers nearly 80,000 Canadian dollars per year to maintain each and every male federal offender in prison. With a national inmate population of about 15,000, that is a lot of wasted money--to the tune of more than $9 billion per year, every year. And the cost is only going up.

Prison can also be just as hard on the correctional employee; it is said by the Canadian correctional services industry that they, too, serve a life sentence--they just get paid better. Imagine having to drive to work, shift work, in a nondescript car because you do not want to risk having an offender be released from prison and recognize your car while you are on a family picnic at the park. You wear a $10 watch because you do not want your nice one stolen or broken. You work in a concrete building with shatterproof windows and lit mainly by fluorescent bulbs in tamper-resistant casings. You are constantly abused verbally by dozens of offenders who would not hestitate to hurt you as soon as they look at you. But that is all part of the job, right? Yes, but it does have a profound effect on the worker. Defense and coping mechanisms become a part of the routine and one becomes hardened, jaded and cynical, which is precisely what those neighbors of mine were trying to keep me from.

I am 6 feet 3 inches tall. I have a high school diploma. And I not only played football, but rugby as well. Thankfully, this is not what qualifies me to work in corrections. I also have a college education in corrections that was founded on the concept of restorative justice and on the idea that in order to reduce the recidivism rate in Canada, we need to do more than just cage our offenders. They will be let out one day and I, for one, would prefer they knew something more than how to be a better predator.

It is easy to see why a correctional employee can become cynical, and very easy to sympathize with the idea that "once a con, always a con." The challenge is in seeing the possibility for something better and working to achieve it. And that is why I chose to work in this profession; not to fall into the excuses and cynical attitudes that offenders are inherently evil and beyond hope, nor to work in a prison--prisons are ineffective, ultimately more harmful than good and a colossal waste of money. In my opinion, I choose to maintain a positive outlook and accept the challenge to make every effort to protect the public and assist every offender I can to become a law-abiding citizen because I believe in the potential to succeed at it. Naive? Possibly. The wide-eyed, take-on-the-world ravings of a young newcomer to the field? Maybe. But then, those are the kinds of cynical viewpoints I intend to shun. I do not expect to be thanked for my efforts, but then, that is not why I ignored the counsel of my family friends in the first place.

RELATED ARTICLE: Make ACA Your Employment Source

To place an ad in the Job Bank section of the ACA Web site, e-mail a typed copy of the ad along with your billing information (contact name, billing address, phone number) and ACA membership number, if applicable, to: Vanessa St. Gerard, associate editor, [e-mail]. The cost to ACA members is $400 for 200 or fewer words and $500 for nonmembers. For ads with 201-300 words, the cost is $600 for ACA members and $740 for nonmembers.

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C. Shawn Sapriken is a federal correctional officer in Alberta, Canada.