medicine, or motherhood. Increasingly, it was a purely administrative position that required an expertise in staff management, food preparation, health services, and custodial care, along with â quite obviously â criminal behavior. If she had to do it all over again, Gwen Harding wouldâve gladly chosen to be a nurse, a teacher, or a mommy. But she didnât and she couldnât.
Gwen looked at the JRU International staff seated before her. She sighed. It was a big waste of time. As she tried to concentrate on the ongoing monotone monologue of the bald one, she realized that she wasnât sure she knew what she was any longer; the thrust of her job had changed too much. She had more and more paperwork, less and less contact with the inmates, and virtually no programs in education and rehabilitation. The greatest focus of her workwas on cost containment â especially since JRU had begun to explore the privatization of Jennings nearly a year ago.
Baldy finally stopped speaking and a member of his very young crew was now going on about a âfacilities facilitatorâ, who would make the buildings better, stronger, cleaner, bigger, and more beautiful. It wasnât clear to Gwen how this was going to be achieved without an immense infusion of money. The Jennings infrastructure hadnât been invested in in decades. She couldnât even find money for routine maintenance.
It was very difficult for Gwendolyn Harding to comprehend how an underfunded and crumbling government-controlled institution for the so-called ârehabilitationâ of women could suddenly be transformed into a profitable subsidiary of an international corporate conglomerate. Not only did Gwen have difficulty imagining how it could happen, she was also becoming unnervingly aware that these JRU fools seemed to believe it would be up to her to see that it did happen. Ha! Not even Warren G. Harding could do the job. The job Baldy had in mind for Gwen to do required an understanding of sales, marketing, and most aspects of the private sector. She had no experience or expertise in any of these areas â nor did she want any.
What if these bozos did succeed in getting a contract from the state? When it came to the state, anything was possible. What kind of havoc would ensue then? Gwen envisioned management so cruel and incompetent that an armed insurrection would not be altogether unlikely. She looked at the twentysomethings gathered before her. If each and every one of them were blown away in an Attica scenario she wouldnât be sorry at all. Sheâd only regret that the inmates would be forced to serve more time. And as faras Gwen was concerned, it would be grossly unfair to serve time when you were just trying to perform a service for humanity.
Gwen was growing weary and angry at these jackals. What if the staff whom she had hired and trained over the years was fired so that some twenty-three-year-old âexecutiveâ could take over? What if she herself was replaced by a âfacilities facilitatorâ or an âinmate output management specialistâ? Jennings was a correctional facility for women, not one of those âcountry clubâ joints for the white-collar crooks from Wall Street.
That reminded Gwen of the intake meeting that was scheduled for that afternoon. Jennifer Spencer â the Wall Street showboater who the papers said was âsentenced to three to five at a country club prisonâ was due to arrive. A country club! Someday Gwen wanted to visit one of those fabled facilities for herself. Maybe they existed somewhere for male white-collar criminals, but to her knowledge â which was extensive â there wasnât a correctional facility for women anywhere in the United States that was not miserably overcrowded, pathetically understaffed, and/or dangerously in need of major repairs. There was nothing at Jennings that even remotely resembled the amenities of a country
Elizabeth Ashby, T. Sue VerSteeg