You load 16 tons

So you get up in the morning and get ready for work like everyone else does. At least those that work. I'd get my uniform ready the night before and most of the time I plan on what I will be eating the next day and that is ready too! My wife is an awesome cook! So I try and get the left overs whenever there are any. So in Corrections they have two types of uniforms. Class “A” and Class “2” no it's really class “B” (it's an old joke I know). So depending on your assignment going in to work you dress in the appropriate attire. If it's a class “A” day you should press your uniform and look as good as Correction Officer can look. And if you know you are heading to the woods and Class “B” is the dress code then don't worry about it so much. Really the biggest difference toward the end of my career was the type of pants to wear. Everyone knows the drudgery of getting ready for work day after day. Making your coffee, cooking breakfast, etc... Your timing has to be right to make it to work on time. Stopping for the paper, gas, possible snacks.. That sort of thing. If you're trying to save a buck meeting the people in your car pool. I think you get my point. Here's how an inmate at Georgetown starts their day.
They are roused awake by the lights being turned on and a Correction officer making an announcement that it's time for wake up! They can shower and are required to make their beds. Dress in their work cloths . Which is Basic green! They don't have to prepare their lunch and they only have to wait to walk over and eat their breakfast which is prepared by other Inmates and Staff. They are fed a fairly balanced diet and the menu is rotating and as diverse as most any average School that our kids attend. Actually very similar to school lunches. No car pools no stopping for gas. None of that stuff. They are on a schedule that doesn't vary much. They don't have to attend any of the meals if they so choose at g-town. They can buy food stuffs at the “Commissary” which is sold to them a very reasonable cost. They are provided with a cooking stove and some of them are very creative with the meals they prepare. I've seen some that could definitely work in the business of food preparations. Although I have yet to see “Jack mack” on any menu! They are picked up and taken to work and lunches are prepared and sent with them. Most of the time it's “Hot” food too. No left overs, no sandwiches. Etc... Rice Diablo for lunch again....Great!! I was hoping for Yakisobi!! These foods are are couple I personally had never seen before prior to working in jail. After work is over back to Camp and dinner is soon served.. Later they can play basketball and lift weights and some nights catch a Movie in the Mess hall (converted quickly into a cinema). They can watch their favorite TV shows. play cards,chess, checkers, sometimes softball that sort of thing. Years ago when I first got to G-town they had the “Pond” open for swimming if the weather was right.. Inmate life-guards included.. I'm probably leaving a lot out. But that's the gist of it. They do have some things scheduled for certain days. Things like a day to go to the “Commissary” (store) ( got to pick up some “Top”) Smoking, it's tough to quit.. They have their laundry done for them and that is on a schedule also. Whites one day greens the next. All in all I can see why some of them don't mind being in Jail, and they keep coming back for more. It takes a certain kind of person to keep going to jail. Don't ask me why they do they just do. Some of them, over the years, I got to see again for another 1-3 years. And sometimes another 2-4. Maybe they just couldn't get a good Yakisobi on the street!!

Crews cont.

Crews cont.

Quite a different type of crew work compared to the one I just talked about was taking the Inmates out into the forest and cutting down trees.. I was kind of surprised that the State was allowing the Inmates to use chainsaws. They gave them safety gear, and one and sometimes two Inmates on each crew were tested and if they passed they gave “chainsaw licenses” to them so they could operate the chainsaw.. The rest of the crew would do the axe work or drag the bows off. The State basically handed over weapons to the Inmates just in case they may need them. I on the other hand had no weapons to fend them off if they decided to revolt ! Never had a major problem which was good for me. Other’s have stories of Inmates fighting each other swinging axes trying to take a head off if they could. I was pretty lucky not much fighting and injuries were mostly minor. I do remember having them rip apart a bridge way back in the woods and one of them stepping on a long spike and driving it right through his foot. (ruined a good pair of boots.). He had to be carried out of the woods. which was a lot of work. But he made a full recovery and was back to the chainsaw work fairly quickly. Not long after arriving at Georgetown they took away the chainsaws. Some Officers thought it was a bad thing I personally enjoyed the Inmates cutting down trees with Bow Saws. It was a much quieter day out there. It was a real drag of a job in the winter months. We had this one Superintendent who thought we should stay out all day and not return to the Camp for lunch. No chance of warming up and the days were really long especially on the cold windy days.. Really sucked!! This Sgt. back then (nameless) would actually come around no matter what and make sure you were working no matter what the conditions were. I couldn’t wait to get out of that type of work. But it did have it’s good days out in the fresh air and staying busy would pass the time quite quickly.. For the most part as I got more and more seniority I avoided taking the crews out and moved on to other shifts and other jobs to try and avoid the boredom of Correction work. The crews changed there functions as Georgetown tried to maintain a semblance of purpose. Later becoming more community service oriented. I never like that job at all due to always feeling I was taking the job away from someone who could use a good job. Also they seemed to always find something to get into trouble with,especially in the churches ...I had a crew up in a local town and the Inmates were allowed inside to use the bathroom one at a time. So I let this one kid go in while trying my best to keep the others painting. Only to hear soon after a “rapping” sound coming from the church steeple..Of course I was a little ticked off and he was surprised that it went over the speaker system for the whole town to hear. I never heard anything from anyone in the town. You get what you pay for when it comes to inmate Labor. Of course there are two sides to every coin and some may think well it’s good they give back to the community. I agree with that but maybe they should pick garbage along the roadways more often and stay away from the jobs where they cause an honest working man to not have a job. I guess I am old school in that way of thinking but I think they should be back in the woods chopping and sawing trees. Clearing ski trails that sort of thing. In the woods they can “rap” all they want as long as I can’t hear it!!

Crews

Georgetown, Not sure where to start with what I’d like to say about Georgetown. I spent 23 years there and overall it was probably the best place that I could recommend for most people if they want to work in Corrections. I guess I’ll start with talking about the primary function of Camp Georgetown which is sending the Inmate work crews out into the public and performing various work assignments. Some may view this in their own perspective but here is mine. So back in 87 ‘ they had these wood signs posted on the exterior walls of the the two dorms that had the crew numbers 1-16 ( later 17) engraved on them so each Inmate would know where to meet the Officer to report for work. In those days some of the crews had 12 Inmates on them and many of the crews took a small “school” bus to the work area. What I remember about the gathering of Inmates at the signs on the wall was it worked great if you had the same crew every day but it sucked for a new Officer due to you had to rely on the Inmate to tell you he was on your crew. So it usually meant tracking down the bunch of them and asking the other more "honest" Inmates who had shown up who was on the crew. It was very chaotic on the black top area gathering your crew because of the 190 or so of the inmates in the jail close to 160 would go out to work. That changed dramatically by the end of my 23 years there. I let myself get off track a bit there I wanted to tell a story about being trained to take a crew out. They had this unwritten procedure which was followed if they had enough staff and not followed if they were short on help and that was they would send a new Officer out with a Officer who knew the the ropes. So they did send me out for two days with another Officer. I’ll leave out names but he had been around a while at Georgetown. He knew how it worked and that was important to me to get off on the right foot. It just so happens that they have these jobs there that only come up once in a while and the first day I went out was one of these jobs. We had to go to Utica with several other crews and unload tractor trailers at a warehouse. The food the trucks carried was for charities and was taken to various churches and community centers through out the area. There was a lot to unload and the first thing that made me think ”what the heck” was the Officers were joining in and helping unload. I doubt very much that we should have done this but I joined right in too. We formed long lines and hand over hand we unloaded all the trucks. I remember it was the first day I ever worked up a sweat while working in Corrections. Then we loaded smaller trucks up and helped deliver the food items out into the various areas. Huge bags of rice and bulk items were the norm in those days. Later we did something similar at a much smaller scale and we would unload junk food along with the other foodstuffs. . Which seems a bit ridiculous if your mission is to help feed the needy. But off we went in the bus and I had no idea where these places were but I was along for the ride. We had unloaded most of the stuff and a couple open ripped bags of rice were all that was left. No place wanted the open bags so I remember we ended up taking them to a small farm and feeding the pigs.. That seemed strange to me but this was a new place and Blue is Blue..No one would find out until 24 years later.. It all would have been thrown out anyways but what shocked me about this was all the Inamtes now knew where the farmer lived. If this farmer had a job working in the jail is up to you to decide. haha! All I know is I wouldn’t have did this on my own, but I hadn’t worked at Georgetown very long in fact only about two days! The thing I really disliked in those days at Georgetown was not much in the way of procedure to help a new Officer out. I and many others then and sometimes now, who didn’t know how to get to a work assignment were actually told to ask the Inmates. Which I did and I must say other than one long ride around Syracuse one day they pretty much did tell you where you had to go.. In 87’ and a few years after, once you left you were on your own. No cell phones and very poor radio communication due to all the hills in the area. Everyone pretty much gets through it though and it becomes old hat after a while. Now I haven’t even touched on the work crews who cut down trees but I’ll write about that next time.

Georgetown.

It’s been a while since my last blog. I kind of wanted to wait to write about Georgetown but not this long. I’ll start out by telling about my finding Georgetown and my first day there. I was up North visiting my brother Dan and we drove down to check out the area Georgetown is located in. Very nice scenic area of the state. I remember having a tough time asking the locals where it was located, due to no one seemed to know for sure. I guess I should have looked into the address prior to driving down there but who would have figured it would be a bit hard to locate. Got the right road from some local guy who was a Pastor or Minister something like that and took his word for it.. "I think it's over on the road that goes over to the Deyruter". So driving down route 16 keeping an eye out for a prison and taking my time, and I drive right by the place. I actually thought it was a Boy Scout Camp. Picnic tables out front. Log Cabin visible from the road. These days it looks a bit different they have added a nice large sign out front, and they moved the Totem pole out in front of the Cabin, and across the road is the "Con" shop. There was no fence or anything that would indicate in 1987 that it was in fact a prison. IN those days in the summer months people would pull in driving there RV’s and ask for a spot to Camp. So this is a bit of a shock to me.. Quite a bit different from Mid-Sate and Green Haven. But it fit quite nicely into my backwoods upbringing in Redfield. My first paid job on the books was cutting ski trails up near Orwell, NY and who would have figured that years later I would find myself doing the same thing with a Crew of Inmates. The big difference was the pay was probably 10 times more and later even ore than that!! I took a test in High School that once done would tell you what a good career might be for you. It didn’t say Prison Guard! But it did say Forrest Ranger.. This Georgetown place wasn’t to far off. Woods every where and dirt roads going all over the place. So I reported the first day and Officer DB (real funny guy) sees me coming in the front door dressed in my class “A”’s and he comes out to meet me and immediately tells me to put my “Bus driver” hat back in my car, you won’t need it here..