Being an officer who protects and serves is already quite terrifying. Having to be with inmates that have killed or assaulted people are the worst of the worst. A correctional officer has big responsibilities to keep themselves safe and their families safe when they go home later that day. You have to think about what goes through the minds of the inmates when you have to keep them in check, or watch over them. Do they want to kill you, your family, show up at your house. Some of these things can be scary to think about. Expect to be trained hard and strictly for the job. Corrections officers need to be prepared for anything to go wrong inside the prison or outside. The training aspect of this profession lasts between several weeks or several …show more content…
It is everything that you will need to know the most of because it can save your life. Whether it is knowing how to fight or how to get away from an attacker, officers need to make sure they get home safely to their families. You can find yourself in the unique position of fighting for your life one minute, and fighting to save the life of your attacker the next. Say that an inmate attacks us and we knock them out cold on the floor. You are required to provide medical care to all the inmates in your charge-including the inmate who just attacked you. You are trained to end the encounter quickly, without causing needless or excessive injury. You are also trained to avoid fighting …show more content…
Some officers will probably not follow this part of training because of them thinking they can take the inmates because they are in charge over them. But you need to think about your safety and what you have outside of your career. An important ability to have is situational awareness, ability to monitor others, read body language and prepare for an attack. All of this is crucial to this profession because you just don’t know what you will run into that day. Textbook self defense scenarios leave the attacker lying on the ground, unconscious, crippled and bleeding. As you can see the defense of the guards is violent and very aggressive. It has to be because it could be between life and death. Either the inmate kills you or puts you in the hospital or you go home safely to your family. To make these defensive tactics violent and actually work, you learn where the soft tissues and joints are because they are favored target areas to hit an attacker. Rake to the eyes, strikes to the groin or throat, blows and trauma to the joints are often taught to officers before they job is given to them. If you are unable to defend yourself and the attacker has the upper hand then techniques taught are selected for their ability to stop the attack, disable the attacker, and allow for safely escaping the encounter. Every officer should not panic when in this situation because it makes it easier for the
These officers have little contact with the inmates or other correctional officers and because there are such few escape attempts, it’s easy for these officers to become complacent (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Perimeter security officers are typically assigned to towers, wall posts, and patrolling of the perimeters (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015).
Being a prisoner has more restrictions than one may believe. Prisoners are told when they should participate in daily activities and what they are allowed to say or do on a daily basis. This is not a life anyone is determined to experience during any period of time. However, all though for most prison life is just a depiction in a movie or on television, it is a reality for many. Their crimes and behaviors brought them into a world of being stripped of their freedom. Those who oversee the prisoners must control order within the brick walls. An article discussing the duties of a prison officer, defines it as one who “...has responsibility for the security, supervision, training and rehabilitation of people committed to prison by the courts”
With the articles and past research that I have collected, studies tell us that less than 3 percent of police-citizen contacts involve the threat of physical force by the police. The percentages are higher when the level of force is below lethal force, for instance 20 percent of arrests may involve some type of special or needed force to obtain and control the suspect in able to put him in custody. In the academy, police officers are taught to use equal or greater force to subdue the suspect and do what is necessary to protect the public and also look out for officer safety. Most incidents of force are low level applications such as using the arms, hands, legs, or their bodies to gain control of the suspect. Every police officer is supposed to be trained to a certain standard, and should be able to use the correct amount of force for the situation at hand. Police officers have situational training in the academy on what level of force to use if necessary. All police officers are equipped to handle most if not all situations or levels of force that is need to
The use of force, particularly with correlation to officer morale and/or inadequate education/training, has become particularly problematic. Measures should be taken to reduce the injury to suspects, particularly physical injury resulting from poor officer tactics or malicious intentions not related to upholding the law. These are problems, which, if properly handled and rectified, will result in improved officer morale, improved relationships with the public as well as ensure a continued upstanding reputation for the oldest police force in the nation.
Assaults on correctional officers in prison are not uncommon. Aggressive inmates need to be kept under control, which can sometimes cause fights between themselves and the officers. According to Stephen C. Light, a graduate from SUNY Plattsburgh “The sample consists of the 694 incidents of assaults by prisoners on offices that were reported to have occurred in 31 New York State prisons” (Light, 1991). The amount of assaults on officers demonstrates how violent inmates can get. Over 600 assaults in 31 different NY State prisons, displays one of the many hardships and challenges that come with being a corrections officer. Prison cells and housing areas are two places where prisoners spend most of their time. Those areas are the ones with the most frequent outbreak of assaults occur (Light, 1991). However, there is more to the assaults on officers than just how many there are and the location of where they
One thing that they probably learn is the dynamic resistance response model (DRRM). This model suggests, “where the dynamic indicates that the model is fluid, and resistance demonstrates that the suspect controls the interaction…in this view of the suspect’s level of resistance determines the officer’s response.” (Peak, 1947, p.161). This model helps teach the amount of force that a police officer can use against a civilian. If a citizen is resisting, it depends if it threatens the officer in any way then they can use deadly force. According to the book, if the suspect is passively resisting arrest by moving away then the officer can use appropriate responses like a firm grip. If the suspect is aggressive then the officer can use personal weapons like the hands, feet, batons, and etcetera. If they are a deadly resistant suspect, then the police officer can use deadly force to apprehend the suspect (Peak, 1947, p. 161). The police officers need to use appropriate reaction to the suspects manner. In the cases mentioned earlier if they are not resisting arrest, then there is no need to use deadly force. Officers need to be educated in handling suspects because that would decrease the amount of African Americans dying at the hands of police officers. According to the Associated Press, “there is a three-day course that is aimed at discouraging verbal and needless physical abuse…once you put your hands on someone, you can’t go back” (Hays & Long, 2015.). These courses that officers go through encourage police officers to stay calm and never lay a hand on suspect. This will help prevent them from becoming liable of a lawsuit or getting charged. Police officers need to be retrained and educated about how they respond to
Police officers must be trained to shoot with precision; correspondingly, they must not solely be trained to shoot to kill, but also to shoot to simply harm. Once they are taught both ways, they must learn to assess their situation to conclude whether it requires the former or the latter. This is highly important for the reason that it can spare a life, and it easier to prosecute officers who failed to use proper protocol for shooting. Furthermore, this training helps to prevent discrimination against minority groups. Many officers target male minorities; however, when officers do sensitivity training and assess their situation, the officer can keep his fear at bay and civilians will be treated
Working in corrections has been associated with higher stress rates due to the unpredictable nature of the field (Parker, 2006). Correctional officers are forced into dangerous situations without adequate protection as a result of the prison environment, which can further lead to physi...
In today’s pop culture, media of all forms portrayals of correctional officers are almost always negative. Correctional officers are portrayed as bad, “meat head” type men. They are depicted as authoritarian, insensitive and without any redeeming qualities. This image of correctional officers is one in which many people believe and think of when they view prison life. These images can be found in films like “Shawshank Redemption”, where guards brutally beat, sometimes to death, the inmates they are responsible for. It is portrayed that the guards do not care about the inmates but instead hate them to the point that most believe they are always harsh and use excessive force. One harsh officer claimed he “wouldn’t piss on them [inmates]
In the mandatory training for police officers, there should be different mock scenarios where police officers take action as if it was a real crime and get assessed and evaluated on their behavior. Although it is difficult, police officers need to be trained to shoot to wound the arms or legs instead of shooting directly in the chest.
A typical day for a Correctional Officer would be the preparing of inmates for court appearances. They also receive new inmates to the facility brought in by the Sheriffs Department. Each new inmate must be photographed and fingerprinted upon immediate arrival to the Pre Trial Centre. They are then stripped and fully searched inside and out. With that ...
Corrections officers are often faced with unimaginable situations in their role in providing the structure for prisoners to go back into society. In corrections facilities, there is a high turnover rate due to the physical and mental strain these officers endure. Issues such as riots, fights, gangs, dealing with inmates with mental health issues, and the potentially negative personality issues that prisoners bring with them to prison. This stress can lead to mental health issues, physical health disorders, and family problems. We need to provide them help and find ways to make the job more manageable to ensure the corrections officers are able to not only do their job, but also lead a productive life outside of work.
What would prisons be like without a correctional officer? Imagine what life would be in prisons around a bunch of inmates, not having any protection from anyone, being around people who you know have killed, or have done other crimes. A prison officer, also known as a correctional officer, detention officer or penal officer, is a person responsible for the supervision, safety, and security of the prison, jail, or similar form of secure custody. Historically, terms such as jailer, jail guard, prison guard, and turnkey have also been used. Correctional officers are not just helpful in prisons, but also when transporting inmates from one place to another.
The guards were given very little prompting in what their job was to entail, and so they were able to create their own ideas and ethos of what the model prison guard should be like. The guards, using this new power given to them, ruled over the prisoners with an iron fist, exacerbating the already present issues that the test environment had brought. However, the guards and the prisoner had no clear differences between each other before the experiments beginning, in fact, the process of choosing who would play which role was entirely random. As a result, we saw two not incredibly dissimilar groups of individuals take on very different roles in the days that followed, simply because that was what the new lay of the land had called
...d procedures that help regulate an officer’s conduct. While these are a good base point for how an officer should act, a lot of times these regulations can be very detailed or too general. This is where ethical training comes in to