Job Security

"We will never run out of stupid people". -Darev2005

I quoted that to myself. Not enough people have said it before me, apparently. It's like P.T. Barnums' "There's a sucker born every minute." He found a niche market where the demand never decreases. As have I. Unfortunately, I got into the business too late to get rich off the idea like ol' P.T. did. But as long as stupid people are getting together and breeding stupid children I will have a job.

Case in point our newest knucklehead today. Teenager. Doing double digit time. Thinks if he can act crazy enough he'll get to spend his time in the "hospital" or in a nut hatch somewhere instead of out on the yard with the big bad inmates. In six months in prison so far he's spent a grand total of seven days out on the hill. The rest of the time has been on suicide watch or Protective Custody. Just transferred to our camp on thursday and they brought him down today for suicide watch because he was "hearing voices" telling him to hurt himself or someone else. SO we stripped him out and put him in a camera cell. He started kicking his door and punching the window, trying to hurt himself. The problem was, he was hurting himself. We watched him on the camera. He'd do a few practice swipes at the window screen, then punch it. Then he'd hold his hand to his stomach and hop around the cell in pain. It took awhile for it to sink in that if you want to hurt yourself, it hurts.

Watched him bang his head on the door a few times. Same result. He was hurting himself, but not enough to hurt himself. It was funny and painful to watch at the same time. Stupid kid. He'd bang his head then reel around the cell in pain. Never even hit hard enough to make a good lump.

When that didn't work out for him, he tried playing the "unresponsive" game. He laid on the floor in the front of his cell and wouldn't move or respond when someone came by. The problem was, he was laying on a cold concrete floor on a kevlar smock and couldn't get comfortable, so he'd have to move every now and then and we'd see him moving. Finally, when we decided we didn't want to play anymore, a couple officers went to his door and tried to get him to respond. When he wouldn't, they signalled and I opened the door. As it came open, one of the officers crouched down and said "Kid, if you move suddenly, we're going to pepper spray the s**t out of you." He kind of froze, then did everything they told him to do after that. Sarge went in and read him the riot act and after that he laid down and was calm for the rest of our shift.

Tomorrow might be a different story. Hell, next shift might be a different story. He's got this GREAT PLAN formulated in his head and he's determined it will work. I'm pretty sure it won't.

Job security.

Hey, maybe he'll finally get out and have a couple of stupid kids of his own.....

I got a golden parachute, after all. Wow.