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Comment by randomacct8162 | Hacker News Reader

I did have one positive interaction with a guard that stood out to me from my time in there

I was being transported to a hospital for a medical procedure, and I was talking to the guard who taking me, to pass the time. I asked him why on earth he would want to be a prison guard -- after all, they are in there with us for 10 hour shifts, and prisons are some of the most bleak/depressing places on earth. That has to take a toll on their mental wellbeing too.

He said that he originally was a regular police officer, but after seeing how much corruption there was in the police force and the things that happened, he felt like a hypocrite, so he said the better alternative was for him to be a guard.

That conversation has stuck with me for a long time now.

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I put myself through community college working overnight shifts cleaning restrooms in a theme park and was briefly homeless a few times. Several of those times happened to coincide with finals week and resulted in missing exams and failing a few classes. It ended up that, by the time I graduated, the only major I could successfully complete was in Philosophy, with a minor in Biology. I was the first person in my family to ever go to college and didn't exactly have much in the way of advice or help to go on. It turns out those aren't particularly lucrative fields and don't really point you in any specific direction when it comes time to look for jobs.

Well, back then, the state of California guaranteed a minimum starting salary of $79,000, and paid overtime, to prison guards, which was roughly double what I was looking at making from doing anything else. So I applied. The only reason I didn't end up ever actually working in the prison system is that the background check and psych eval process took over a year to complete, and by the time they gave me an offer, I'd already joined the Army.

Almost 18 years later, after going back to school again while in the Army for Applied Math and Computer Science, here I am, but in another timeline, I'm a prison guard.

I taught a semester in a max security prison. It was described to me as a controlled movement facility. It was an interesting experience and one that stuck with me. That prison was a bad place. Thanks for your anecdote about the former police officer.

Thank you for doing that, it's an important job. I learned spanish by taking an hour-long spanish class every weekday while I was in there.

If your class wasn't mandatory, then I'm sure you know that most people were just there probably to get extra time out of their cell or to break the monotony. And I assume most of them were complete assholes to you.

After I am financially independent, I want to try to get state/federal funding so that I can go back to prisons and teach programming AND partner with companies to have jobs/interviews lined up for release dates.

The worst part about being incarcerated isn't even always the time you serve, it's that our justice system means that you usually can never get a good job again, regardless of what your charge was (in my case it was one of the lowest class of felonies). It's like a ghost that haunts you forever.

I quickly figured out they were mostly there to break the monotony. I threw out the curriculum and did basic graph theory and some logic stuff. I only had one run in with someone. The prisoners treated me decently. I gave them all passing grades and just wanted them to get out of the experience whatever they wanted to get out of it.

How did you get into that? It's something I would love to do but I never knew how or if you could volunteer to just do a single course, if you'd have any sort of support, etc.

The college I worked at had a few classes at the prison. I was an adjunct and agreed to do it. None of the tenured faculty would do it. Didn’t really have any support. Did wear a body alarm. One way the body alarm would be activated was if it was horizontal for more than 3 seconds.

Not the poster, but I taught a computer science class in prison. I did it through a college which operates a degree granting program in the state prisons (in addition to normal college operations).

Most of the professors were paid, I did it as volunteer work.

|After I am financially independent, I want to try to get state/federal funding so that I can go back to prisons and teach programming AND partner with companies to have jobs/interviews lined up for release dates.

There are certainly NGOs who will help you with this mission. Do some research and let us know.

I had a conversation with a police sergeant because of a car accident we had. He said that we seemed to be right, but some lawyers will likely try to sue us because it's in the gray area that they usually "farm". The thing I remember was he said something along the lines of, "These lawyers are even worse than police."

I didn't think police were bad, but that made me reconsider it.

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