Advertisement 00:00:00 In more than 28 years of corrections I have used or supervised pepper ball hundreds of times. Now, as a master instructor for pepper ball, I teach others about the versatility and effectiveness of this pepper ball system. From cell extractions to disturbances on the rec yard, pepper ball is the first option in my correctional toolbox. One of the most dangerous times for officers is during cell extractions. Pepper ball allows officers to respond with the lowest level of force and still be effective and ready if the situation escalates. The responding officer controls where the projectiles are aimed, how many projectiles are launched, and how rapidly they're deployed. This allows the response to be tailored to the moment. To learn more about pepper ball, go to www pepper ball.com, or click the link below in the show's information guide. Pepper Ball is the safer option first. Hello and welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast.
Michael Cantrell 00:00:57 Uh, today's episode I'm gonna talk about PREA. It's something I've put off for quite a while, and it's something that, um, you probably don't want your children to listen to. Uh, it will have, uh, a little warning on here. And, and I can also, uh, put a deal for 18 years and older on the podcast, and I will be doing that because I'm gonna talk about some subjects that, you know, aren't comfortable with a lot of people, but it has turned into a huge part of what we do as prison officers. So this is your chance to go ahead and turn off before I, I talk about some subjects that might be disturbing to people, and, um, I'm not gonna pull a whole lot of punches. I'm not gonna get gross and graphic, but I'm also not gonna pull punches a as I go through this.
Michael Cantrell 00:01:48 So, in my years in corrections, I have been around and seen the results of several rapes. Uh, several of several of 'em were violent. Uh, I have seen and dealt with inmates who were raped in prison. Um, it is a very violent, traumatic thing. Uh, people don't realize, not just the mental and emotional pain that those inmates go through, but also sometimes the physical pain, the, the rapes that do happen in prison sometimes are just absolutely horrible. And it's something that most people can't imagine. And, you know, there's a lot of people out there in the public and, and you see it on comments and stuff, and, and they say, well, you know, those inmates got what they deserved. You know, they got what they had coming. It has to do with pedophiles, child molesters. You know, I think there's some public perception that if that happens to them in prison, that they're getting what they deserve.
Michael Cantrell 00:02:47 Now, myself as a prison officer, I can't have those type of thoughts. I don't think about it one way or the other. What people deserve in prison can't come into my thought process. My job is not to decide what their punishment was or how that comes about. Uh, it's just, it's not my place. My number one job is, of course, to keep the inmates behind the fence. That that's why we go to work every day. That's the number one job that we have, is to try to protect the public from those inmates. But my second job in there is to protect those inmates from each other, because most people, and you'll hear this, uh, they have this thought that once an inmate is sentenced to jail, so and so got 10 years for this, or, uh, 15 years for that. And you'll hear people say stuff like, well, good.
Michael Cantrell 00:03:38 Now they won't hurt anyone. Well, the problem with that type of thinking is that it couldn't be farther from the truth. Violent inmates are still violent in prison. They still have the ability and, and access to each other to injure, rape, uh, sexually assault and and kill. And that includes staff, you know, they have access to us. Uh, staff have been taken hostage, staff have been sexually assaulted, staff have been killed. Um, so to say that, you know, they won't hurt anyone now cause they're in prison, is such a fallacy. And so that's part of our job is to keep them from hurting each other and keep them from hurting us. And, and one thing that people don't talk about is that inmates, while incarcerated still have an impact on those, on the outside, through threats on the phone and mail, uh, through messages carried out of the prison from everything from released inmates, volunteers.
Michael Cantrell 00:04:35 And, and unfortunately, sometimes those messages are carried by dirty staff. That's not a, a huge amount of the staff that work. It's a very small percentage, but, uh, it does happen. And so these inmates are violent inside. They're violent outside, they're violent to each other, and they're violent to staff. Now, I told you, I've seen and been around the after effects of several rapes in prison. Um, I've also encountered many instances of consensual sex. Now, policy says there's no such thing as consensual sex in prison. Okay? That's what policy says. But I challenge you to show me an example of a large group of people anywhere confined with each other for long periods of times that don't have sex with each other. It's human nature. I'll even, I'll go as far as to say it's a human need. So to say that we're gonna write a rule and now, um, there's not gonna be any sex in prison, is, is just a crazy thought to start with.
Michael Cantrell 00:05:43 It's like saying, well, I'm gonna make a rule that nobody can murder anybody anymore, and therefore we don't have murders anymore. It, it's not, uh, it's not a rational thought and thinking that that's gonna stop anything by policy isn't irrational thought either. So, kind of to go back to the beginning of some of this, in 1992, the Federal Bureau of Prisons did a couple of, uh, surveys and, um, they came up and estimated that between nine and 20% of inmates had been sexually assaulted. And there were some later studies, um, one in 1996 that concluded that the rate was somewhere between 12 and 14%. And another study by, uh, Daniel Lockwood in 1986 put that number around 23% for maximum security prisons in New York. So these studies came out, and that garnered a lot of attention. Um, when you say that a quarter of the inmates in a maximum security prison are being sexually assaulted or raped with that, there are other studies that show the numbers significantly less.
Michael Cantrell 00:06:56 But the thing that all of these studies, whether it's got the high number or, or like 1986, Daniel Lockwood studies says, a quarter of inmates in a maximum security prison, um, are getting raped. What these studies fail to realize is that you're never going to get accurate numbers by asking men if they had consensual sex in prison. You know, if they have acknowledged that they had sex in prison, um, most of the time they're gonna claim that they were raped. If they, if they say that they had sex in prison, most of them aren't gonna admit to consensual homosexual sex. It just isn't. It's not talked about very much. And if you do hear it in prison, um, and if you've worked in prison for any amount of time, you've heard inmates talking and they say stuff like, I'm not gay. I only pitch, I don't catch.
Michael Cantrell 00:07:47 Which means that they're the person having sex with another inmate. They don't consider that maybe homosexual. And I've heard 'em, you know, say stuff like, well, I'm not anybody's prison bitch. And then the next thing you know, they say, I'm, I'm gonna punk you out, which means they're gonna have sex with you. And I've even, I've had some inmates who were really honest with me, and, uh, they went as far as to say that they're not gay. The minute they get back out in the world, they will only have sex with women. They're not gay. They don't think they're gay. Um, they don't think they're homosexual. Um, the minute they have a chance to have sex with women, they will. But they've said they have a need while in prison, uh, to have sex. So this gets really complicated. What's the truth in there? You know, is the truth that a quarter of the inmates are getting raped in prison?
Michael Cantrell 00:08:40 Or is the truth that a lot of people are having consensual sex in prison, but aren't gonna admit, admit it as consensual? And I don't think there's enough study. I don't think we went far enough to think about that before. You know, we started talking about Priya and you know, I'm gonna go ahead and say, I've never worked a women's prison, so I can't speak for that. I can't, uh, I don't know what the incidence of rape is there. You know, I would assume that it's far below what the public perception is, or far below what definitely the media's portrayal is on, uh, um, oranges The New Black. I made it through about three quarters of one of those episodes, and I was, I was kind of done with that. But, um, I'm gonna say that I'm gonna say that the instance of rape is not near that high that they portray.
Michael Cantrell 00:09:31 Now, none of this that I've talked about that doesn't justify in any way sexual assault or rape, but I'm just saying my experience, my knowledge, there is a lot more consensual sex in prison than there is rape. And only those that work in prison are ever gonna understand this. But that didn't stop. The federal government did it. So on September 4th, 2003, president George Bush signed into law the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which right there, the Prison Rape Elimination Act. If there's something like rape that we can eliminate, then why can't we eliminate a lot of other stuff in this world? Let's eliminate murders. Let's eliminate child abuse. The whole acronym of PREA Prison Rape Elimination Act was a, was a misperceived attempt at something that's not even feasible. Um, that was the beginning of this. We started off with this, with this act, and it listed as its goal at the time to eradicate prisoner rape in all types of correctional facilities in this country.
Michael Cantrell 00:10:37 The act aimed to curb prison rape through a zero tolerance policy, as well as through research and information gathering the act called for developing national standards to prevent incidents of sexual violence in prison. It also made policies more available and obvious. Well, first off, I've been working in prison. You know, I've been around this for more than 30 years. There's always been zero tolerance for rape. Nobody is letting rape happen in prison that I knew of. I'm not saying that there aren't bad staff out there, there's always that small percentage of bad staff. But to say that this law started a zeros tolerance policy, that's not true. It's been in policy ever since I started in corrections. And by making data on prison rape, more available to the prison administrators, as well as making corrections facilities more accountable for incidents pertaining to sexual violence and prison rape.
Michael Cantrell 00:11:37 But the other thing PREA does is it authorizes money in the form of grants for a wide variety of implementation, um, associated with activities. Um, these grants can be utilized by state agencies for personnel training, technical assistance, data collection, and equipment to prevent, investigate, and prosecute prison rape. But now we're talking about preventing in the body of the law. They're not talking about eliminating the elimination. That was just purely for the media having that in there. But here's an interesting thing. Failure by local authorities and operators of such facilities could to comply with the provisions of PREA results in a 5% reduction in federal funding to that agency for each year that they failed to comply. So the federal government decided that they were gonna hold federal money over everybody's head to ensure that they jumped on board this, this new law. And so they dole out millions of dollars a year these agencies can put in for that money to pay for some of the stuff that this law caused, which is more personnel to investigate, to track, to, uh, keep compliance with audits, to keep compliance, uh, letters going to the federal government, all the stuff that goes with PREA <laugh>.
Michael Cantrell 00:13:00 So the government said, well, we're either going to give you some money so that you can do all this, or we're gonna take money away from you, your choice. Well, as you can tell, that's that's not much of a choice. And it lists in there the objectives. The objectives of the PREA grant program are to reduce sexual abuse in confinement facilities. Once again, this is the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but we're talking about reducing, which I'm all for, to increase staff capacity per, for preventing sexual abuse in confinement facilities, to promote integration of the PREA standards into the day in to day operations and cultures of confinement facilities to identify and document innovative and promising practices in order to form similar efforts across the nation. And to create cultures of zero tolerance of sexual abuse in confinement facilities. So that's what they want to, um, accomplish with the grant program.
Michael Cantrell 00:14:02 Almost none of that has been accomplished. I have not seen any change to the positive in my career with PREA. I, I don't know that I see less inmates having consensual sex than I did before, and I still see incidences once in a while, like I did before of actual prison rape. So what do we have here? What have we created? Well, we talked about what PERA was supposed to do. So now I'm gonna talk a little bit about what it's actually done. One thing that it's done is it's hampered staff's ability to conduct appropriate visual searches. Now, there's a lot of talk out there, you hear a lot of people discussing the number of cell phones, phones that are in our prisons, the, the amount of contraband that's coming in our prisons these days. And the direct correlation with a lot of that. One, I will admit is the size of technology.
Michael Cantrell 00:15:06 Technology has gotten much smaller than it used to be. So it is easier to move that contraband. But the second thing that's happened is staff are nervous, um, about doing visual searches because so many, oh, I, I'm going to even throw out a number here. I'm gonna guess just in my experience, that 70 to 80% of visual searches that staff do these days turn into a PREA accusation, which has to be investigated. Now, I'll go into that a little bit more, but so staff are weary. They don't want to do visual searches, which is the only way to stop contraband in your prisons. A lot of people may not like that. A lot of people don't think it's right for me to step up to an inmate and say, come here, take 'em into a room and say, I need you to take your clothes off.
Michael Cantrell 00:16:02 I wanna see what you've got on you. We wouldn't have to do that if inmates didn't conceal contraband in places that they shouldn't. Okay? Inmates carry contraband tucked up under fat females, I've heard, do it tucked up under their breasts. Uh, men do it between their butt cheeks. Uh, women and men both insert contraband inside of them in order to get away with not getting caught with it. One, one of my early examples at Leavenworth, uh, we had an inmate who would go through the metal detector and he went off. Well, he would, uh, you know, he told us, I've got a pin in my hip. I had surgery, I've got a pin in my hip. And he was taken off to the side and he was visually searched several times, strip searched, um, and had nothing on him, had absolutely nothing on him. So people got used to that, and they started letting him go through the metal detector.
Michael Cantrell 00:17:02 Uh, he'd, he'd set off the metal detector, but they'd let him on through with a pat search because he had a pin in his hip. And then I remember burn, I don't remember the exact staff member, but kudos if, if somebody else does. Um, one of the staff members decided one day, I'm gonna go over to medical. I wanna know, does this guy have a pin in his hip? And he goes over to medical. And sure enough, um, this guy doesn't have a pin in his hip. He's never, he had a, uh, accident where he had some surgery, but there's no pin, no metal pin in this inmate's hip. So goes down, talks to the investigations, they snag up the inmate and say, come here. You don't have a pin in your hip. What are you hiding? And they were getting ready to get, you know, needed permissions in order to do possibly a cavity search, which has to be done by a doctor.
Michael Cantrell 00:17:50 And the inmate decided he didn't want that done. And he said, hold on, hold on. And squatted down and popped out a Swiss army knife, okay? One of those knives that, you know, unfolds and has, uh, everything on it, a little saw, a little file, a little knife, all that stuff. He had been carrying that Swiss army knife for more than two years since he came into booking <laugh> at, at the county level. He'd had that with him and carried it all the way through booking, through court, through sentencing. And now here he is at Leavenworth, and he still has it with him. When you say that, you know, we're too paranoid or that, you know, inmates can't do that, that's crazy. Yes, they can, they can do stuff that the normal person can't imagine. So it's instances like that. Why do we need the ability to do a visual or a strip search?
Michael Cantrell 00:18:46 That's the reason, because inmates routinely on a regular basis, are hiding stuff from us in some of the most personal areas that they have. And we have to be able to look at those. We have to be able to see, um, whether or not they are hiding contraband. Um, because it's not just a Swiss army knife, sometimes it's a shank, sometimes it's a cell phone. So when I talk about it hampering the staff's ability to conduct these searches, that's what I'm talking about. Staff need to be able to do that. But they're reluctant now and almost scared to put hands on inmates due to these perceived PREA threats. So the, that has upped the amount of contraband that's roaming around in our jails and prisons. My opinion, PREA audits. So in order to be compliant with the national standards, every agency has to have all of their jails, prisons audited once every three years.
Michael Cantrell 00:19:50 Okay? So normally there's a rotating, if you have multiple, multiple prisons, multiple jails, then there's gonna be a rotating schedule. But once during three years, every one of them has to have a PREA audit. So what do these PREA audits accomplish? Well, you have auditors that come through and they try to decide if you're keeping up to the minimum standards required by law with PREA, are you tracking? Are you doing the appropriate investigations? Are you doing investigations on every single instance or claim of sexual assault or sexual harassment? Now, let's talk about that for a minute. Do you think inmates ever lie? Well, if you don't, I'll tell you, they do. Inmates will tell you that they have been raped when they haven't been. Inmates will tell you that they have been sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by a staff member who is doing a pat search that he reached up while he was doing the pat search and groped my testicles.
Michael Cantrell 00:20:57 Uh, he felt my penis while he was pat searching me. Inmates are gonna claim that staff walked by their cell and stared at them naked. Every one of these accusations has to be an investigation, and it has to be done a certain way, and it has to meet certain timelines. And even if, and I've had so many of these, I, I used to have one inmate who almost daily, if not every other day or three times a week, would put a piece of paper out through the cell bars to the officer, send this to investigations. And when we'd look at it, and he claimed that a staff member came in his cell and had sex with him, well, the first thing we'd do is pull the cameras and he was in a cell, and from that point on, remained in his cell that was in front of the walk cameras so that we could pull that up.
Michael Cantrell 00:21:50 Well, at no time did anybody go in his cell or stay in his cell or spend time in his cell or do anything through the tray slot to him. Um, this was an absolutely false allegation. Not a little false, not a maybe false. It is absolutely false. Nobody had contact with this inmate, um, on any of the instances, and we were getting multiple instances weekly. Every one of those has to be investigated exactly the same. You can't say, well, this inmate has not, uh, been truthful in the past. This, you can't say this inmate has made a hundred false allegations, therefore, I shouldn't have to do as much investigation of number 1 0 1. You can't do that. Every one of those has to meet a certain format, has to meet certain criteria, and has to get, and is gonna get audited <laugh>, uh, within the three years to ensure that you're doing all of this.
Michael Cantrell 00:22:51 Now you wanna talk about a waste of time. You want to talk about staff's ability to find real problems in prison telephones, gang problems, fights, assaults, be able to investigate that stuff. But no, what are they tied up doing? They're tied up doing these PREA investigations on an inmate who couldn't have possibly been sexually assaulted or raped. So that's one of the problems that we have, and that's one of the things that PREA's created. It doesn't allow for any common sense. Sometimes I don't even know what to <laugh> what to say about some of this. PREA frustrates me so much and, and it frustrates me the most because there is no common sense. There's nobody involved in the making of these laws who understand the way prison works. These laws were brought about as a knee-jerk reaction to some incomplete data who everybody jumped on, and it made them feel good to make a law that was going to eliminate rape.
Michael Cantrell 00:24:04 So that's why it frustrates me so much. That's what you hear in my voice. I've dealt with this for many years, not only as an officer, you know, getting false accusations against me, but as an investigator and then as a supervisor and administrator. Um, and at no point during that did it make sense what we were doing and the money we were wasting. The millions of dollars that get wasted every year on a law, on a, on a perceived goal, that can never be a reached. Um, not saying that we couldn't and can't do a better job at it, but PREA was not the answer and PREA is not the answer. But with all that said, PREA is what we have to do. PREA is mandated by federal law. So, you know, like most things that the federal government touches, it has become big and overburdened, and it's not doing what it was meant to do, but we have to deal with it.
Michael Cantrell 00:25:07 And even though it's doing a lot more harm than it is good in our jails, what can you do now? You know, as, as a prison officer, what can you do to deal with this inside your facility? And sexual assault in prison always has been and always will be zero tolerance. It, your policy says it's zero tolerance. It always has. So it's our job to protect those inmates from each other. Just because I don't like PREA and I don't like the implementation of it, and I don't like what it does to our system, doesn't mean that I should turn the other way. When there are things going on in prison that involve rape or sexual assault, that our inmates are being taken care of from each other. And sometimes staff. And I know that a lot of people are gonna throw that up. It's been in the news lately.
Michael Cantrell 00:25:59 Um, there was a, uh, news article, I believe still going on with a warden at a female institution who was sexually assaulting, sexually harassing. I don't even know what all, uh, he's been convicted of. But, um, you know, those make everybody look bad when that happens. That's a small percentage of the number of people that are out there working, doing a good job. And it's hard to, for people to see that. It's hard for him to see that because you can save a hundred lives today in the prisons you work in, you, you can wade through blood and, and save that guy who's tried to hang himself. You can break up that fight and probably got yourself hurt breaking up a fight between an inmates or a gang. And the newspapers aren't gonna report that. It's not gonna be anywhere on the newspaper, on the internet.
Michael Cantrell 00:26:51 Um, but when something like this happens, of course, every major newspaper and every television media outlet, you know, they cover that. Like it has something to do with all of us. And it doesn't, it's not part of our culture. It's not part of who we are. It is a very small piece of dirty staff, and there's no occupation that you can find who doesn't have dirty staff. If you go into big business and finance, you're gonna find people who start pyramid schemes and and steal from people. If you go into, uh, police departments or fire departments, if you go into oil workers <laugh>, you're gonna find people on the fringe who are, uh, criminal, who don't do a good job and who do criminal stuff and are trying to get by with stuff they shouldn't in their job. And, but that doesn't reflect on all of us.
Michael Cantrell 00:27:49 And I hope you guys can step away from that and, and not let that feeling bring you down. But back to what I said, it's our job to protect them from each other. And in the rare occasion, it's our job to protect them from us. Um, so that, that's one of the things that we can do right now. And, uh, we have been doing in your facility. There should also be a, a zero tolerance for sexual harassment. Um, not only of each other, but of staff. And a lot of places think staff, you know, you took this job, you should expect some of that. And to a certain degree, I understand that for myself, I don't let a lot of those things bother me and I would ignore them, and I did for years until I realized that by me ignoring what they were saying to me, that it was kind of giving them permission to sexually harass the other staff.
Michael Cantrell 00:28:46 So I had to bring myself around and say, look, I've gotta have this zero tolerance for nasty talk. Um, you know, from inmates, don't allow them to talk to you in a derogatory or in a sexual way. Uh, not even with jokes. You know, I, I have seen staff who swap jokes and, you know, dirty jokes with inmates. We can't do that. If, if it's at all sexualized, that's wrong in the workplace and it gives that inmate the impression that they have the ability to do that with other staff. So we have to have a zero tolerance for sexual harassment. Once you allow that type of behavior, it will only get worse. Now, another part of that is chronic masturbates. And I know of any of you that have worked in jail or prison for very long have chronic masturbates. It's, uh, I've worked in high security and mental health most of my career.
Michael Cantrell 00:29:40 So I've dealt with a a lot of this. And it's one of those things that yeah, you can walk by it and let 'em do their thing and do your count and ignore it, or you can hold them accountable for it, uh, which is what we should do. Uh, staff shouldn't have to go to work and see that every day. Um, even if you think you can push that outta your mind, uh, that kind of stuff gets to you. And besides that, it makes a sexualized nature in your unit or in your facility. So we've gotta check those chronic masturbates. And there's a few ways that you can do this, and none of it's easy. I'm not gonna tell you this is one of the hardest problems to, to deal with in prison. But, but one of the first things you can do is your facility needs to contact the local prosecutor.
Michael Cantrell 00:30:28 And don't just go there to ask, but go there prepared. Bring law with you copies of that so that you can talk to them knowledgeably about having a sexualized agency or facility or culture. But talk to that prosecuting attorney. Bring him examples of what's going on in your institution, the way inmates sometimes have even tried to assault staff with masturbation, uh, through the tray slots or through the door. So bring that to him. Tell him, you know, what kind of a problem this is, how it affects, how it causes a culture in your facility that needs to be dealt with. And see if you can't get some help from the local prosecutor on prosecuting these inmates for sexual assault. If you were to stand out in the mall and masturbate like these inmates do in prison, you would absolutely get arrested and put in jail, would you not?
Michael Cantrell 00:31:28 So why do we allow them to do it inside our prison? That can be prosecuted, but you're gonna have to have the local prosecuting attorney on your side to do that. Some will, some won't. I've ran into both, but that's the first place to start. You know, if that prosecutor doesn't want to deal with it, I'm just gonna say sometimes a little public pressure can sometimes help you. So maybe you wanna make, you know, the general public aware of what your staff are dealing with and see if that public pressure can't bring that local prosecutor around to helping you out with this. Another thing you can also do to slow this behavior, and I'm gonna say this stuff, but you have to make sure it's within your policy and that your administration backs it. One of the ways I've dealt with it in the past is, first you can start by minimizing the inmates view of staff.
Michael Cantrell 00:32:21 Okay? Place them in a cell that doesn't give them the ability to look directly at staff. Sometimes that'll slow it down. If they can't look through that window, be staring at staff, be goading you and and antagonizing you while they're masturbating. Sometimes that in itself will slow it down. If that's not enough. Check with your policy. Check with your administration and see if you have the, uh, opportunity to build window flaps or to put up one way film, um, you know, like tint. And I've done both, both of some. You're gonna have the chronic masturbates who that's not gonna help at all. You can build little flaps that go over the window so that during checks, you can pop it open, make sure the inmates live and well, and doing good for your, your checks up and down the range and for counts. And then the rest of the time that flap can be shut so that the inmate can't see staff and have that sexual gratification of masturbating to them.
Michael Cantrell 00:33:24 Um, the one way tint works good, uh, sometimes you have to buy and try that out. Depends on the amount of light in the hallway and the amount of light in the cell. But those, both of those can be ways that you can slow that if you're having that problem. One of the next things we'll talk about is pat searches. A lot of staff are hesitant to do pat searches these days. And the reason, once again, is because of these false allegations of a Priya. You know, that, that the staff is trying to get sexual gratification by groping their genitals. Uh, these inmates learn what the law says and how to phrase what their, you know, these false accusations. So how do you take care of that? Do you stop doing pat searches? Of course not. We can't do that. It's too important of a part of our job.
Michael Cantrell 00:34:14 So first, if possible, position yourself under a camera whenever you're gonna do pat searches. If you're doing random pat searches on the yard or, uh, in the hallway, make sure that you've found where a good angle is for the camera so that you can have the inmate step over and be pat searched there. And that way if something does come up and it does need to be investigated, these accusations are made. It's right there on camera and everybody can see what's going on. Another thing that I like to do as a captain, and you other administrators can do this, the inmates complain about how the officers do pat searches. Well, I'm the one that taught the officers how to do pat searches. I know the thorough pat search. I expect when I had the opportunity going to mainline, going to the yard or, or being in the hallway, I would do random pat searches that way.
Michael Cantrell 00:35:07 The inmates saw that this wasn't just officers doing a pat search, a thorough pat search, that it was expected from all staff from the top down. And so if you're an administrator in one of those agencies, and you can set the tone, you can set the culture by doing those pat searches yourself, and it'll slow a lot of those PREA uh, allegations it did where I worked. You know, finally these days, just never conduct a visual search alone. Uh, doing a visual or a strip search was a regular thing when I came into corrections. Matter of fact, for a few years, I worked at a work release camp and I saw so many naked butts. I took the mirrors outta my bathroom. And I know that's a joke, but every day, you know, two to 300 inmates came back in the prison from outside work release, and we visually searched all of them.
Michael Cantrell 00:36:00 Every single one. It was like two hours of doing nothing, but, um, visual searches and strip searches, however you refer to it. So now we still have to do 'em, but make sure that there's another officer with you, even if it takes a few minutes for you to wait for somebody else to come there. Don't give up on doing good visual searches, wait till somebody else is there. It gives you a witness, it gives someone else to, uh, be there and say, this is what we found, or this is what we didn't find. Or, I saw Officer Cantrell and he did not do anything inappropriate during that visual search. He never touched the inmate, which during a visual search, you're not going to, you know, those are some of the things you can do. PREA compliance isn't a choice. It's not something that we get to choose whether or not we're gonna be compliant with PREA.
Michael Cantrell 00:36:51 So we have to work within it, and we have to continue to do our job to keep ourselves, to keep the other inmates safe inside that prison and to keep the public safe. I don't know if that helps any of you. I want, I've been wanting to talk about that for a while. It's a tough subject for most people, and I just tried to be honest and tell you how I see this from my point of view and from my time working inside. So, well, before I leave you today, uh, there's one more thing I wanted to talk about. The other day. I was interviewed and one of the questions that they asked me was, why do you do the Prison Officer podcast? And I hadn't really put it into a why. I mean, I had some ideas when I first started this, but if you've listened to this podcast before, you know, I'm a big believer in having a, a personal vision statement.
Michael Cantrell 00:37:45 You know, something that, uh, that guides you in life, that gives you purpose in what you do. And I believe that vision statements for companies are very important because it allows for, um, staff from the top to the bottom, everybody to be on the same sheet of music so that we're all working towards the same goal, so that we know, you know, what the finish line is, what why, why we do what we do every morning. So after he asked me that the other day, I decided that I probably ought to put together a vision statement for the Prison Officer podcast. And so I've done that and I thought I'd share it with you before I left. Why do I do this? Why do I do the Prison Officer podcast? Well, I've got four reasons here. And the first one is, of course, to, to
Speaker 1 00:38:35 Advocate for and encourage the forgotten officers that work in our prisons and protect the public daily. Now, I hope that some of you get encouragement from this podcast. I know that I try to be an advocate for corrections everywhere that I go, whether I'm teaching with pepper ball or whether I'm, uh, doing an interview with this podcast. I want to be an advocate for corrections as a whole, corrections as a career, as a profession, as something that we hold up, um, as good. And I, I do truly believe that. So that's the first one. The second one, to raise awareness of the difficult job these forgotten officers do so that others may sleep peaceably at night. And that was probably one of the first things that I started this podcast for, was I wanted just to get it out there, you know, to the general public.
Speaker 1 00:39:26 Uh, we're so hidden and our agencies and our departments keep us hidden. They don't like people looking at what we do, and therefore they don't get to look at the good stuff that we do either. And I do see some of that changing. Uh, I see a lot of it changing in some of the private, uh, correctional companies. You know, they do a pretty good job on social media of putting out there the good stuff that goes on in their, in their agencies, in their companies. So, but I wanted people to know that they don't get to go to sleep at night just for no reason. There's people working every day 24 7 to make sure that they get to do that. That they get to have a life that's not just crime ridden, that they get to go to sleep without worrying that somebody's gonna break into their house every three minutes.
Speaker 1 00:40:12 And that's what you guys do. That's what the prison officers do out there by keeping these inmates and these people that are sentenced for their crimes inside the walls and inside the fences. So, um, I just wanted to raise awareness of that, that was another part. And next, um, to provide education and information to prison officers so that they may excel in their profession. And I know myself, when I first started, I didn't see that there was a, um, that there was a career ladder, that there was a place for me to go, that there was something for me to reach for. I, I didn't feel like that. I felt like, you know, I was going to be a correctional officer my whole life. And I don't want people out there to think that, think that way. There are huge opportunities right now, um, more, more so than ever before.
Speaker 1 00:41:04 If you wanna, if you wanna go up administration, if you wanna move over from corrections into some other discipline, whether it be education or psychology or social work, you have the abilities to do that too. There's a lot of aspects to corrections. So don't just limit yourself to where you're at right now. You should be growing every chance you get, and hopefully listening to this podcast, uh, will help you with that. You know, you can get smarter about what we do do as a career, and, and I hope that helps you. And then finally, the last part of the vision statement was to raise awareness of the Global Corrections family. Although separated by mountains and oceans, it is still the same important work performed daily by amazing people. And that's not something I knew early in my career. Matter of fact, it wasn't something I really knew till I started this podcast.
Speaker 1 00:41:57 And I've gotten the chance to talk to so many people around the world, from Columbia, from Australia, from Canada, from England, you know, I get to talk to these people as a, a regular part of my job in a regular part of this podcast now. So, uh, it excites me to learn that, you know, that there's so many of us out there. You don't have to feel alone. You know, sometimes you do, sometimes you're working that housing unit all by yourself in the middle of the night, and it doesn't feel like anybody else knows what's going on with you or the troubles that you're having or how stressful that job is. But the truth is, worldwide, there's somebody doing that job everywhere. We are one big global corrections family. So I hope people get that from this podcast too. I just wanted to share that with you before I left today, uh, that I had put that together and that that's what I hope I I do. And that's what I hope that this Prison Officer podcast can bring to people. Uh, we've been more successful than I ever thought we would be. And I thank all of you who listen and who, uh, support this podcast and who buy the book and, uh, everything that goes with that. So I hope you all have an amazing day and be safe out there.