Prison Guards and Prison Guardesses

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does. In today’s America large numbers of prison guards in male-only prisons are female. For the sake of clarity, we’ll call them guardesses.

How’s that one working out?

Here’s the latest scandal from the Baltimore City Detention Center, via Justin Peters:

… the Baltimore City Detention Center… had been effectively taken over by a prison gang called the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF). Recently, 25 people, including 13 prison employees, were indicted for their alleged roles in the BGF's robust drug business and other criminal enterprises.

David Freedlander shows what happens when the inmates run the prison:

Female guards smuggled cellphones, marijuana, and prescription drugs to inmates. Gang members ordered hits from inside the jail and dined on salmon and Grey Goose vodka that was smuggled in on their behalf. Corrections officers stood guard for one another so they could have sex with inmates. They warned prisoners of upcoming searches of their cells by unfriendly colleagues. Tavon White, the leader of the Black Guerrilla Family who allegedly impregnated four of the guards and was there waiting for his murder trial to commence, was caught bragging on a wiretap: “This is my jail. You understand that? I’m dead serious. I make every final call in this jail.”

Apparently, the biology of gender differences is at play in highly predictable ways.

Peters writes:

That’s not to say that female guards in men’s prisons have an easy time of it. Women are generally smaller and less strong than men, which can be a problem if you are working in a physically intimidating environment with aggressive men who might want to have sex with you. 

You have to start wondering about the state of the American mind. How did it happen that no one imagined the consequences? How did it happen that no one cared? Couldn't anyone have figured out that alpha males in prison gangs might be inclined to collect a harem of guardesses?

It gets worse. The AP discovered, to its shock, that many of these guardesses had been threatened or intimidated into having sex…  against their will. There’s a word for that, but no one is allowed to use it:

As the AP story reported, “While many [of these sexual encounters] could be considered consensual, incarceration experts and female prison guards say the problem is much more complicated. In some cases, the women reported that they couldn't say no to the inmate out of fear, or were afraid to go to a co-worker out of shame at what had happened.”

American judges and legislators are up in arms about violence against women. And yet, when that violence is part of the job, no one cares. If you do not allow women the opportunity to be part of a prison harem, you are depriving them of equal opportunity. If you, as a matter of policy, put women in a position where they can’t say no to sex you are treating them as unequal.

The depth of the stupidity is difficult to fathom.

Fear not, progressives are hard at work rationalizing this absurd and dangerous policy.

Peters makes a feeble-minded effort in his closing paragraph:

The issue, ultimately, isn’t that female prison guards have no place in men’s prisons. It’s that prisons are terrible places that are often overcrowded and poorly managed, in which the strong will prey on the weak if they are allowed to do so. And that’s unlikely to change no matter who’s on guard.

If the strong naturally prey on the weak, then naturally you would want to give them the opportunity to prey on individuals who are especially weak.

Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak examined the issue and arrived at the politically correct answer.

The real problem, Dvorak says, is that there are not enough men who are qualified for the jobs. Maybe I missed it, but do you really believe that the nation is running short of unemployed able-bodied young men?

If the prison system can modify its requirements to give jobs to women who are manifestly unqualified, why can’t it adjust its standards to give more jobs to men who might have the strength to maintain good order and discipline?

If you believe that these guardesses are being preyed on by violent males, well, all you need to do is to change the meaning of words. By its lights, these guardesses, the ones who are threatened and intimidated into having sex with inmates, are… take a deep breath… sexual predators. They have been raping male inmates.

Dvorak quotes a Justice Department report:

 “Among the 39,121 male prison inmates who had been victims of staff sexual misconduct, 69% reported sexual activity with female staff,” according to the 2008-09 Bureau of Justice Statistics study.

It’s even higher in juvenile detention facilities, where 90 percent of the boys who said they were victims of sexual advances by officers said they were approached — and frequently raped — by women.

For the Justice Department, sexual misconduct as a function of a power imbalance. If a teacher has sex with a student, it is assumed that his position of authority deprives her of her ability to say no. If a president has sex with an intern, it is assumed that his position of authority… you know.

Dvorak wants us to see the prison inmates as victims of predatory guardesses.

And where's your empathy? Don't you know, these women are starved for love.  Dvorak explains their plight:

What about the female guards who are targeted by cunning and charismatic inmates? The women who are loveless, lonely and easily seduced? Are they predators or the prey?

When male prison guards are corrupted, the issue is usually money. When it happens to guardesses, it’s about love.

In Dvorak’s words:

There was surely some of that in this Baltimore case. According to the indictment, investigators found an operating manual of sorts used by BGF that detailed “how new BGF recruits are taught to target a specific stereotype of a CO [correctional officer], specifically women with low self-esteem, insecurities and certain physical attributes.”

Once seduced, the women saw themselves as the wives and girlfriends of White and his associates.

Finally, Dvorak concludes that we should continue to have guardesses, because, male guards have also been corrupted:

Female guards aren’t really the problem; incompetent bosses are. If women weren’t there, White and BGF might have been trying to figure out a way to use money and power to corrupt male guards.

As long as there has been work, there have been men who have screwed it up. Dirty cops, corrupt bankers, shady businessmen, filthy politicians, molesting dentists. At no point do we say, “Men don’t belong in this field.”

After explaining clearly that women cannot do the job because they cannot command respect and exercise authority, Dvorak reduces it to a question of corruption.

Let’s frame the question somewhat differently. Let’s say that women cannot do the basic training required to be in the infantry or to be Navy SEALS or Army Rangers. If so, then putting women in these jobs will reduce the combat effectiveness of a military unit.

Less effective military units are less likely to win wars. So now, the great minds of major media outlets want to rationalize the policy on the grounds that, after all, men have lost wars too?