Television shows such as Orange is the New Black and Oz frequently depict prison officers as rule-breakers much like the inmates themselves, engaging in inappropriate relationships with prisoners or smuggling drugs inside. But they also depict the challenges of these jobs: maintaining order among an incarcerated and troubled population, dealing with the ups and downs of prisoners’ emotional well-being, and managing facilities in disrepair and people in need with very limited resources. Those challenges can vary greatly from prison to prison, and there is in particular a significant difference between men’s and women’s facilities.
The vast majority of people—93 percent— in the prison system are men. While women only make up a small part of the overall prison population, they are the fastest-growing group of inmates. Female prison-population growth has outpaced that of men by more than 50 percent since 1980. Women in prison are considerably more likely to have been diagnosed with a mental-health disorder, to have a substance abuse problem, to receive inadequate health care, or to report experiencing abuse before entering prison. Many have young children that they’ve lost custody of due to their prison sentences.
I spoke with Bisera Habibija, a lieutenant at Timpanogos Women's Correctional Facility just outside of Salt Lake City, about what she’s experienced during her 10-year career in the Utah corrections system, the differences in working in men’s and women’s prisons, and how she maintains strict boundaries with inmates that have been in her prisons for as long as she has been working. The interview that follows has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
[For more of this story, written by Adrienne Green, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...fficer-women/498794/]
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