I'm back... muther fukers!!! BOP Style

(Well officially it will be tomorrow) But I probably won't be on to post, so enjoy!

Today I start a new adventure! It is one of those that has been long in the making. As of today, I started my first day on the job with the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a correctional officer. Like I said long overdue.

This story starts about six years ago. A year after graduating college I finally was able to get a shot at a decent career. I applied to the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a correctional officer, hoping to land a gig someplace. I really didn’t have any particular place that I would have liked to start, so it didn’t matter to where I was to end up. 

After about a 3-4 month wait to hear anything back from them I got the call and the paperwork to fill out more in depth information about future employment. I sent all that in and a short time later I received word that I had been selected. One catch it was for a federal prison in Herlong, California. Herlong, California? Anyone tell me where this place is? Because I had no idea.

I looked it up on the map and well, it was located in northern California, up past Lake Tahoe. I liked to say it would be like living in Balko, OK. Nothing there! Herlong used to be an old military Army depot for munitions. I guess the federal government got the land for cheap!! It was a new prison that is why I had been selected, because it was new and they needed quite a few employees willing to move out to the middle of nowhere. 

I took the offer and packed my things up and head west. You never say never, but I probably would have not thought I would ever live in California. But it happened. 

Well this ties into a previous blog about drinking and driving. So I get out to Herlong, complete our two week initial training program and figure it would be nice to go out and have drinks with the other six guys that had come in with me in our class. Sounded good right, WRONG! So long story short, that is where I picked up my DUI and actually worked for the BOP for about six months when all of the sudden they were like, “Um I think its best that we part ways, because of your little hick-up.” I really couldn’t do anything about it; I messed up, which in your first year of employment is not good. As a new employee you are on probation for the first year, which means no; I mean absolutely no screw ups!

I guess you could say I learned my lesson the hard way. 

Fast forward almost six years to the date of getting hired the first time around and I am getting a second chance to prove what I should have been doing this whole time. I think I know what I am up against this time and in this line of business, I can’t afford three strikes and you’re out. I have to make this one count. 

So as I complete my first day of institutional formularization, I am sitting here smiling as I get that second chance to make a great impression. I am going to make the most out of it and do my best. 

Working as a correctional officer is not my ideal career, but the avenues it can lead to are wide open. The sky is the limit here; it’s all how I chose to look at the bigger picture.  Hopefully I can do my time for a year or two on the corrections side and then transfer to the non-custodial side and push paper around being a desk jockey. I like that idea a lot more then supervising grownups that for whatever the reason is couldn’t make a good decision that day and now are behind bars for any length of time. And that is where you have to be on your toes. 

At the end of the day I look at it this way. I know I can go home at the end of my shift; it’s how I chose to leave at the end of the day. The inmates aren’t going anywhere, so most of them have nothing to lose. I have it all to lose. You can bet which way I am leaving and that is on my own two feet, just the way I came in. I am not there to be John Wayne, but to make sure they all are doing what they need to do and I’ll do what I need to do; and everyone wins!! 

I think from this experience everyone will enjoy reading my blogs relating to my new job. I know I’ll have some good stories to tell. Word for the wise though, some of those stories will be not far from that you see on television; so be prepared. Until then, happy hunting.