Lee’s Blog 16

Amazingly, previous law enforcement experience is not a requirement to become a corrections officer. The requirements are actually quite lenient. You must be at least twenty-one years of age, have no felony convictions, and have a high school diploma. Jobs in a prison are not really attractive to people in today’s society. It seems like many people that end up in prison work never planned on it. They just sort of “drifted” into it. Some people wanted to be police officers but, when they could not do that, chose to be corrections officers.

Corrections officers start out at about $ 23,000 per year if they have no experience. This is actually below the national poverty level. However, if you do not have any education after high school, this tends to be the pay level you will find a job in. One good thing about being a corrections officer is that there is usually a great deal of room for advancement. Perhaps because of the low starting pay, the benefits packages tend to be very good for corrections officers. Many females, African-Americans, and Hispanics can be found in these positions. Britton tells us that most of the corrections officers she interviewed did not plan to be in their current position (pg.80). Absolutely none of her interviewees planned while growing up to be in this position. Many of them bounced from job to job before ending up as a corrections officer. An interesting tidbit here is that one percent of children surveyed in a survey said they wanted to be a corrections officer.

Forty-four percent of the men Britton interviewed had some sort of military experience before becoming a corrections officer. Only seven percent of the female interviewees had military experience. No men had clerical experience prior to entering their current position, but thirty-seven percent of the women did.