DannyBoyinExile

I saw a story on the news recently, about a guard at some detention center who was assaulted by an inmate. The administration there blamed it on “shortage of staff”. That was so insulting to my intelligence, I HAD to write an essay about it…
In all the years I’ve been incarcerated, I can honestly say that I have never heard an inmate say, “They are really short of staff today – why don’t I jump on a guard?” The very idea is so ludicrous, I doubt that any inmate has ever even thought it.
Guards are assaulted on a regular basis in TDCJ, but never “just because”. It is either because that guard and that inmate had some sort of altercation to trigger the incident – or that inmate decided that he needed to go to lockup like RIGHT NOW, and that’s the fastest way he could think of to get there.
I’ll give you an example of the former: The other day, a guard named Prayez (names have been changed, to protect the guilty) worked my wing. He did a cell search on a friend of line’s cell, and confiscated his open bag of tortilla chips. Why? Because it was tied shut, with a piece of string! (It was actually a shoe string, which is perfectly legal)
That is so ridiculous that it ought to have been a joke on Candid Camera or Punk’s – but he was completely serious. Of course, the friend of mine was getting irate. The bags of tortilla chips they sell us are 16 ounce bags, and cost $2.55. They’re clearly not meant to be eaten all at once – that’s enough chips to last a week!
We are expected to close the bag somehow – or every roach in the city of Huntsville will be making its way to the Wynne Unit, looking for it! (Not to mention how stale they would get if left open for even a matter of minutes) The guard’s response was that we should put them in a Ziploc baggie… How exactly are we supposed to get one of those? That would be way more illegal than the shoe string was. But just because he could, he took the guy’s chips.
THAT is the kind of situation that leads to staff assaults. In fact, if that guy were to work the high-security wing for just one day, and he acted like that – he would probably set a new world record for having the most liquid substances thrown on him in a single day! I’m not advocating that, by any means. I’m just explaining the situation to you. Practically every inmate here has an open bag of chips, or cookies, or coffee that they have resealed by whatever means they could.
Luckily, the supervisor heard the commotion and resolved the situation by telling the guard to give the guy his stuff back – or it probably would’ve escalated. The same inmate used to live on the trusty camp, but was rolled back to the building ( and medium custody) for slapping a female sergeant! (And she didn’t even take his chips from him…)
When an inmate assaults a guard, the administration is going to rain consequences on him, in the form of restrictions, custody changes, loss of good time, possibly a free-world charge – and they’ll probably kick his ass, as soon as they get him by himself somewhere, in handcuffs. Nobody in their right mind would go through all of that for nothing – short of staff or not.
The next time you hear of a guard being assaulted, blame the guy for being an idiot, for sure. (The inmate, I mean!) But keep in mind that there was probably a reason he felt justified in doing so. Justice isn’t just about punishment, but also trying to understand why a person did what he did in the first place. So says DannyBoy.