Confessions of a Juvenile Corrections Officer

What they don’t tell you in training is that humanity is raw and that everything you see is uncut and mortal. These young people who have done wicked and unthinkable things are not monsters but a complicated consequence of humanity’s failures.

While we all go about our day, driving to work or dropping off our kids at school, seldom do we know what is happening in the shadows of society. When you are a juvenile corrections officer, you see those shadows and what has made them.

What I hadn’t learned in a classroom is that these juveniles are children, lost children, either forgotten or have been unloved by the ones they trusted. They’re all suffering from some form of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Fear was their only reminder to stay alive, while love seemed like a fantasy they could never obtain.

They don’t teach you how painful it is to witness the detainees hurting themselves, wishing they could just die, because they have nothing left, no one left. You see them cut themselves apart and you work desperately to remind them that they do have a chance, and that love is theirs.

However, there are times they see a uniformed officer, but then the patches of the uniform grow bleary, and they see you as a human being who cares, which terrifies them more.

Training has taught me how to look the other way, to not allow yourself to be swallowed by their shadows. If we do become too close, it could damage us or break us apart. We as officers, do have to protect ourselves mentally, physically, and even spiritually.

As a correctional officer, I see protection is vital to our survival too, but I cannot turn away from their pain. Their pain is mine too. Their successes are my successes, their failures are my failures, and I am with them.

So, can I not feel when all I want is to teach them to dance, to have hope, and to love themselves? The feeling is costly, and it shows the ugliness of a world absent of love, compassion, and hope. It pays the price of having to walk the thin line between love and loss. But it is true, and truth to a detainee is gold even when it terrifies them, they know it’s real.

Every second in the cell block is counted for, acknowledging this, is one of the heaviest burdens I carry. I could hide behind my badge, remain as only an officer, and become the cold steel against the fire. But I cannot, because I am watched by them all, they all look to me. I have their comfort in my hands, but I also have more to give, and they know it too.

However, they never mention the overwhelming feeling you get when you see something has changed in their world, like a glimmer of light flickers in their eye, and you see hope begin to evolve. It’s a tidal wave of something that the taste of honey if you could feel honey instead of taste it.

I would be a fool if I did not recognize the juveniles as my teachers on this very word, “hope.”