Giving In

Today I was once again in the control room, the "bubble" as we call it. Our regular guy is still out at training as we all must do one week at least out of each year. I knew why he was out, but it didn't make me enjoy it. It was a busy day and I spent the day leaping up every two seconds and opening doors or not opening them as I saw fit. After awhile I stopped leaping up only because I had stopped sitting down. My coworkers taught me that was an exercise in futility.
There's an inmate we have recently reacquired from the state hospital just recently. One of our problem children who has earned enough "frequent flier" miles with us to buy a castle in Scotland. Actually, I'd pay to fly the little nit to scotland myself, if they would take him off my hands for good. While I am sure he has some deep-rooted psychological problems, I have pretty much convinced myself that most of his problem is behavioral. He acts out because he gets attention, whether it is good or bad. There seems to be a point when he no longer enjoys the attention, such as getting pepper sprayed or coming into sudden contact with the concrete floor with several large perturbed men on his back bending his limbs in directions they don't comfortably go. He usually skates around that point fairly well, but does slip over the line every now and then. I think he's working himself back up to that point once again. Today he was screaming, kicking his door, throwing things, trying to break things, spitting and just being as obnoxious as he could think to be. We weren't paying much attention to him, since he wasn't actively hurting himself or staff members. He doesn't much like being ignored. This afternoon I saw him trying to break the grill out of the bottom of his cell door with a food service tray. He's done this several times before. I reported it to the officers who were working the floor and they went and got the tray back. Then one of the officers went over to the cabinet where there were several paperback books, selected a bible and gave it to him. I looked at the officer and he said "It's what he wanted. It will keep him quiet for a little while." And him being quiet for the last hour of my shift was the high point of my day.