Bad Girls

Irena sent a message today: "You have described the BG (bad guys), and the EBG quite a bit. But, your portraits are all male. Any female BGs?"

Oh, yeah. In general, like most male officers, I don't like working with female inmates. Forget the prison movies, the majority of our female population have had shitty nutrition since childhood, never exercised, have very odd notions of hygiene and (like the men) far too much exposure to drugs and alcohol.

Without the "tough guy" image to maintain, they are also extremely whiny (far more than the male inmates) and used to an environment where offering easy sex is a primary strategy of control and, far too often, making money or getting drugs.

Aside about whining: there are three basic types of criminals. The most common are the low level hustlers- pimps, pros, druggies, dealers, petty thieves etc. They make up the majority of the population in jail. They are not used to doing things for themselves. One of my inmates claims to have fathered "around" 30 children. He thinks he is a good daddy- he brings his kids stuff when he has money (charges are dealing drugs and prostitution). I asked him who paid for the kids basic food and clothes and rent and ... he gave me a disgusted look. That's what welfare is for. I wish, in typing, I could give you the inflection of his voice- he wasn't saying welfare would take care of his kids, he was saying that welfare existed for the sole purpose of leaving him free NOT to take care of his kids. That's what welfare's FOR.

Anyway, raised in an environment where basic needs, including you children's are somebody else's responsibility it seems obvious that if you want something somebody should give it to you. You ask, demand, whine or take. With male inmates, the strategies are heavy on demand and take; with females on ask and whine.

So, to sum up, working a female dorm: imagine 60 sallow skinned, mostly toothless, either meth skinny or McDonalds obese women with bad skin and frequently open sores who are convinced that if they can find the right combination of whining and flirting they can control any man.

Open sores. I was flashed by an inmate once. She yelled, "Sarge, I want you to see something," and whipped her shirt up. I'm pretty sure I know what she was trying to show me, but I've seen those before. What I saw was a boil about half as big as a fist oozing pus all over. Before that day, suppurating pustule was just a word to me....

So yeah, Irena, there are bad girls. Some of them are very nasty and some of the stories are so nasty....

A couple of mild ones- there was a crack whore once who tried to gouge out my eyes with inch-long red fingernails. It didn't work.

And once a three-hundred-pound stark naked woman who had taken all of her dealer son-in-law's meth knocked everyone else off as we were putting her in a cell and some clumsy git of a partner shut the door with just me and the inmate inside. There was a very quick use of force- I swept her legs out and knelt on the elbow like in hiki mawashi (Sosuishitsu-ryu referance, everyone else disregard) and waited for someone to open the door. The worse part of that wasn't the visuals or the force. Really really obese people with bad hygiene smell like rotten cheese. Women with really bad hygiene smell like rotten fish. Yeah, it was like that. In an enclosed cell.

And hinting at a really nasty story: If an OB-Gyn doctor calls from the prison clinic and says, "Sergeant, I think I found some contraband..." you're going to have a very icky day.