By By Sid Salter / syndicated columnist
June 12, 2002
Hold onto your hats. Mississippi is first in something. There's only one state in the union in which female correctional officers (read that prison guards) supervise the majority of male state inmates Mississippi. And we're not talking female first offenders or juveniles, either.
State Department of Corrections (MDOC) officials say that Mississippi has a 61-to-39 percent ratio of female correctional officers to male inmates the highest such ratio in the nation. Think about it, folks. The majority of the correctional officers at Unit #32, the maximum security unit at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, are women. Unit #32 houses those male inmates convicted of the most violent of crimes murder, rape, you name it.
As a reporter, I've been inside Unit #32 a couple of times over the years interviewing inmates. I'm not a small man and one of my jobs during college was working behind the bar of a rather notorious Hwy. 45 roadhouse herding rowdy Saturday night drunks.
On the inside unarmed
But I've never heard the "clank" of the doors behind me at Unit #32 that a cold chill didn't run done my spine. A man who isn't afraid in those environs is simply a fool. But what about a woman?
Sgt. Linda Gaither-Johnson, 43, is a correctional officer in Unit #32. She stands 5'4" tall and is of medium build about the size of my 80-year-old mother.
For 20 years, she's gone inside Parchman to manage the inmates. For every correctional officer, there are 50-to-100 inmates. During most days, Linda walks unarmed among the baddest men Mississippi society has chosen to incarcerate. Linda says she isn't afraid.
Danger high, salaries low
After 20 years guarding the baddest of the bad, Gaither-Johnson makes "a little under $25,000" per year as a state correctional officer. Starting salaries for CO cadets is $17,072. Experienced officers make between $20,000 and $22,600 annually.
The state's female inmate population is guarded by female correctional officers, said state Department of Corrections Commissioner Robert Johnson: "We're able to keep that situation in place at the Rankin County prison so that female prisoners are guarded by female officers."
Gaither-Johnson isn't concerned about getting more male officers at Unit #32. "We need more correctional officers in the system, period," she said. "There are some tasks that only male officers can perform and it would be nice to have more help, but male or female, the officers are exposed eight hours each day and the state needs to get us more officers." Mississippi's prison system has consistently been a political football.
Legislators concerned more about using the penal system as an economic development tool than operating a safe, efficient system hasn't helped. The current budget morass in state government has taken its toll on MDOC.
Public safety isn't an area in which penny-pinching should be the guiding force in policymaking. Next time you're tempted to dismiss state employees as riders on some spendthrift gravy train, think of Sgt. Gaither-Johnson who stands between you and the worst criminals Mississippi can muster.
Unarmed, she walks a tough beat a beat made worse by legislative indifference and budget games.