"Up the River"

OSSINING, NEW YORK

Every morning, before Corrections Officer David Luther steps through the gates of Sing Sing Correctional Facility, he looks out across the Hudson River at the wooded cliffs of the Palisades.

"I take a deep breath, then I put on my game face and walk in," says Luther, 38, the recording secretary of Local 1413 (Council 82). "At the end of the day, when I come out, I look at the Palisades and take another deep breath. It's good to be alive."

Five days a week, Luther walks into this maximum-security facility of 2,360 male inmates with only a baton, a radio, his wits and his fellow corrections officers (COs) to protect him. The historic prison is built on a hill, and Luther climbs up several series of stairs before reaching his post at the special housing unit -called SHU or The Box -which houses prisoners too violent and unmanageable to be mixed in with the rest of the inmate population.

Like the 100,000 other AFSCME represented corrections employees across the country, Luther knows the dangers of his job. But when his youngest daughter asks him why he doesn't do something safer, he tells her, "This is what Daddy does. Corrections is my life."

COVERED. "This is the toughest beat in the world," says Luther. "Everyone around you is a criminal. A violent offender. Murder, rape, manslaughter, all the big ones. I'm outnumbered 75 to 1. We have assaults on staff, crimes committed behind the wall. Do men die in jail? All the time. And what about TB, AIDS, Hepatitis B and C? Those are the things you can't see. More than once I've had to throw my uniform away because there's been blood on it."

Treating all blood as if it's infectious provides some protection against bloodborne diseases like AIDS and Hepatitis. But, not surprisingly, working in a prison offers few guaranteed protections. In 1996 alone, there were some 13,700 assaults by inmates on corrections employees - 2,192 of them serious enough to require medical attention. Three of those attacks were fatal.

Luther says the first time he doubted his chosen profession was in December 1995, when an inmate threw cups of feces, urine and caustic soap on him.

L"I was covered from head to foot," Luther recalls. "That smell. The skin on my face was burning. My eyes were burning. I couldn't see. I stepped away from the cell and just kept trying to wipe off my face so I could see." Though angry he maintained his calm. "I walked off "the block, maintaining my professionalism."

After showering three times, Luther was taken to the hospital for treatment. The inmate exercised his legal right to keep his medical records secret, so Luther and his doctors didn't know to which diseases, if any, he was exposed.

In May 1996, AFSCME persuaded the New York legislature to pass a law making such "throwing" a felony But inmates are still allowed to conceal their medical histories, even after such incidents, though AFSCME continues lobbying strenuously to change that.

For days after the incident, Luther says, "I couldn't get the smell out my nose. If I smelled my hands, I swore I could smell it. If I smelled my clothes." The officers have their blood tested every six months and until two of those tests had come back clean, Luther worried about what he might be taking home to his family. He says, "I felt like coming home, washing everything in bleach. I didn't want anyone coming too close."

For this work, Luther is paid $32,000 a year. After 8 years of service in New York, I officers make $36,000. After 20 years, they "max out at $42,000. Having a union helps: Nationwide, COs max out at an average salary of $33,229.

ATTITUDE. Luther has been at Sing Sing for four years. He transferred into corrections from the state's Division of Youth to support his family - he and his wife have four daughters ages 10 through 17- and because the field offered opportunities he didn't see elsewhere for someone without a college degree.

"I saw in corrections that it was wide open," says Luther. "If you took the test, paid attention, had a good rapport with other people. A man could start as a CO, end up as commissioner."

But what keeps him in the job, he says, is "the fellowship among the officers, your brothers and sisters in the union. No matter what your differences on the street, when you walk through that door, you would lay down your life for them."

He says one of his most rewarding experiences on the job was working as a training officer, "seeing these kids come in with fear on their faces, not knowing if this job is for them. And four weeks later, seeing them run the galleries like they'd been doing it for years, believing in themselves."

Because most COs transfer to more affordable regions as soon as they can, Sing Sing has high turnover and many young, inexperienced officers. Until last year, when he chose to bid into The Box, Luther trained all new officers at the facility; last year alone, he trained 2,100 new officers, men and women, to fill some 700 permanent positions.

To help them deal with the tense, volatile situations they would face every day, Luther reminded his trainees: "Be firm, fair and consistent. Corrections is an attitude: I've been empowered by the state of New York to enforce the state's laws." He told them: "When I lose control, I may lose my respect, my dignity. I may cross from force into excessive force I may lose my job, my life, a fellow officer's life. Because when you lose control, you're no better than the men you're incarcerating."

Clearly, his supervisors respect Luther's professionalism as much as his colleagues do. They have appointed Luther to two statewide teams of officers that handle prison riots and hostage negotiations.

HEART. Sing Sing is the stuff of legend, the place people meant when they first referred to "Up the River," "The Big House" and "The Last Mile." Opened in 1825, the facility now houses 1,800 maximum-security inmates and 560 medium-security inmates. It's ringed by nine working towers, concrete and wire fences, barbed wire, tension line and infrared sensors. The room that once housed the facility's electric chair is now the small engine room of the vocational training center

Built long before any real estate boom, the prison is now in the middle of wealthy Westchester County, making local housing unaffordable on a CO's salary. Like many of his fellow officers, Luther has a long commute - close to two hours from his home in Millerton, on the border of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Unlike many of them, however, Luther has chosen to stay at Sing Sing, even though he has the seniority to transfer closer to home.

He says it helps his marriage to have that time in the car at the end of the day Though no formal studies have been done, Luther believes COs have higher divorce rates than the general population and anecdotal evidence backs him up. After a nearly two-hour drive home, says Luther, "When I get out of the car for the most part, the day's behind me."

Still, he worries about the dangers of "taking the problems and frustrations home to your marriage" and notes, "The job can make you callous."

He refers to "Ethan Brand," Nathaniel Hawthorne's story of a man in search of the unforgivable sin. After 20 years of pondering and provoking sin, Ethan Brand's heart was hardened - and that was the unforgivable sin. The story, Luther says, is "a reminder of what a CO can become. We see hangings, men slashed, extortion, the animal brutality and hate of a man locked up. It reminds me to look in the mirror and remember who I am and why I do what I do."

By Alison S. Lebwohl (AFSCME Public Employee Magazine July/August 1998)

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