A Day In The Life

Rated R

Visitors come in to visit on weekends. At the camp where we have female inmates, a lot of kids come to visit their mothers. We have games for them to play. We have a kids room where they can watch cartoons.

Parents come and husbands and wives come to visit. They are allowed to sit and hold hands and chat. They can play cards and eat snacks.

Sometimes, they want to do other things.

There is only one officer in visiting at the camp. I process in visitors. I check their identification, make sure they are approved, and make sure they are within the dress code. Then I search them with a hand held metal detector, sort of like the airport. Then I call the inmate, and I have to process her in. I go in a little back room and write down everything she is wearing. Then I do a pat search and she goes out to see her visitor. When they are done, I pat search her again, sometimes I have to strip search her, and check that she came out with the same stuff she came in with. In between that, I walk around and make sure everyone is behaving.

As you can see, I am very busy. And I can't possibly see everything.

One day after visiting is over, several inmates and a couple of visitors told me that one of the other inmates was acting inappropriately during visit. According to them, every time I left the room to process an inmate in or out, the inmate and her visiting boyfriend would start kissing and groping one another. Since I didn't see it, there was little I could do.

Once everyone was cleared from visiting, I called the inappropriate inmate up to the office. I along with another officer, tell her in no uncertain terms, that this will never happen again. The inmate apologized. She begged forgiveness. She promised never to do it again. She claims she is embarrassed and shocked by her behavior.

Over the next few days, she apologized again and again.

A month or so later...

Same inmate gets a visit from that same boyfriend. But this time people don't wait until after visiting to begin telling me what she and her boyfriend are up to.

Now I am on alert. I am watching them. And I see him with his hand on her crotch. And before I could say anything, he had his hand up her shirt and she had her hand in his pants.

OMG!

Then they see me coming at them. The break it up and decided to end their visit. She was crying when she went back to her room.

And she didn't have any more visits again while she was incarcerated there.