Vignette: Sunglasses

Abstract

We were brought to the prison by our guide, a former vocational education instructor who had been promoted to be a system-wide vice principal (VP) at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) headquarters in Sacramento. On the drive down, it became apparent that he despised inmates and saw them as always conniving, plotting to cheat, overpowering, or committing some act of manipulation or violence. He mouthed the words of rehabilitation but also expressed his resentment of correctional officers (COs), describing them as “lifer employees” assigned to work with prisoners he considered simply as sociopaths. As an expression of his distrust in prisoners, our guide (and more than a few teachers and educational administrators in the system) repeated the joke, “How do you know when an inmate is lying? When he opens his mouth.”