First Week

The first week at the prison took some getting used to. The inmates pick up right away that you are a new person. They can tell if you have transferred from another facility or not. In my case, I had not. I was the new guy on the block. To make sure i get adequate training, NCI put me with a mentor for the first 10 days that i work. It equals out to be 120 hours of on the job training. Its nice to have that person there because it gives the inmates and myself the time to adjust to a new face or in my case, faces. The week went by pretty fast. I had to absorb a lot. We worked in each of the sections and sometimes switched mid shift so i could get used to moving around more. The control room is by far the hardest post that i have to work. Constantly opening and closing doors, answering phones and writing everything down all while keeping track of what is being said on the radio. It can be very stressful at times because for some reason the inmates are always in a hurry to go no where. They start yelling if you don't open the door fast enough. Sometimes it can turn in to a game. Out in the cell block is where i got my true test. Being in there with 120 guys can be very intimidating. They feed off of that if you let them know that you are intimidated by their size or number. You cant go in there acting like "Robo Cop" like so many of the c\o's say. If you do, they will tear you to pieces. I went in to this job with one simple attitude, do my job and leave at the end of the day. As long as i stick to that i know ill have no problems. The inmates know all the rules. Most if not all of them will know the rules better than i will for the better part of my first year.

When i first got in the block, several inmates walked up to me and told me point blank, "you f*$K with us and we will F*%k with you." But i have to say, i thanked them for their honesty haha. They weren't threatening me, they were informing me. These are men. They may be locked up for doing bad things but they still deserve some type of respect if as a c\o I expect to keep the peace. By the end of the first week i had met several inmates. Some were blunt, some were rude and other were laid back. You cant take anything they say personal. They are just like us in a way. They have their good days and their bad days. Some made it a point to come by the desk each day and ask me how i was liking it so far. It kinda their way of deciding whether i was gonna last or not. My first week in the end was pretty awesome. I was able to meet on a regular basis all the officers that i would be training around and i even learned a few names and faces of the inmates.

The Facility

To the left is the NCI Gatehouse.


NCI is located out in the country about 20 minutes from the nearest city. It was built back in the early 90's and has a rather odd layout compared to most modern day facilities. NCI is set up like a college campus. All the building are separate. The entire facility is surrounded by a double fence line with close to 12 sets of razor wire. Once you get into the guard house where you go through security, you are now, Locked Up. Through the gate are several buildings.

There are 4 main Units that hold the inmates. Each one had a specific group of inmates that it holds. Of course there is also the kitchen and medical building as well. One thing that is special about this prison is the enterprise plant. Some inmates are able to get jobs working there if their sentence is long enough. The type of specialized training costs so much, the state wants people who are planning on being there for a very long time so they don't have to keep spending money to retrain people. There are two plants in the facility. There is a print plant and a Optical plant. If you or anyone you know who lives in NC has medicare or medicaid and has glasses, there is a 99% chance the inmates at NCI made the lenses for your glasses. The print plant guys make all of the forms for the entire state of NC. These guys at the plants are the highest paid inmates at the camp. They can make around $1.40 an hour. There are plenty other jobs around the facility also that inmates can do. Most of the rest of the jobs are around $0.70 or $0.40 an hour. I guess it beats nothing at all.

The four Units are very different in what inmates they hold inside. Two of the units mainly hold the workers at the two plants. These guys make the most money and are the most valuable to they keep them away from the other more immature population. Another unit mainly houses the guys who are in school. By in school i mean they take classes every day at the facility in hopes of earning a special certification, GED or even a 2 year degree which they will hopefully be able to use once they get out. The final unit houses all the young guys. The ones who cant keep quiet, start fights and haven't learned how to act yet. This is why they keep them completely separate from all of the older guys.

Each Unit is set up basically the same way. There is a B block and a C block and a central control room. The control room is the most technical job in the Unit. Each of the 9 doors are controlled in this room and can only be opened one at a time. The inmates always seem to be in a hurry to go no where so they get mad if you wait too long to open the door. The control room also has control of where all of the inmates from that Unit go as well as having control of all the cell doors. Right now NCI is over crowded like most facilities in the US. Each block has 60 cells and 60 bunks. That is a lot of bunk beds in the middle of the floor when it was only meant to have 14.

The cells are nothing like you see in the movies. They don't have doors that are covered in bars. They all have a normal door on them that opens out. It doesn't have a door knob, just a handle to pull it open. Each night when lock down is called, the control room takes access off all the doors and when they shut, they can not be opened except by the control room of the key. This is to ensure inmates do not try to sneak in the cells at night to get their groove on or to fight another inmate.

Orientation Week

I had drove down from NY the day before training started. My sister is letting me stay with her until i decide to get a place. In return im helping her with things. She lives an hour and fifteen minutes away from the facility so after getting to her house on Sunday night around 8pm, I had to go straight to bed since i had to be there at 8am Monday morning.
The first day we didn't do a whole lot. Got our uniforms and watched a movie or two and talked about things we might see. Day 2 was the one that we were all worried about. See, just like in police departments, we had to get OC sprayed (pepper spray) to be allowed to work there and to be allowed to carry it and use it. They want you to understand what it is capable of so you wont just use it for no good reason. Well all day long they kept talking about it and building up the anxiety for those of us who had to get sprayed. After watching a few more movies and having a informative meeting with the superintendent and a few other big guys at the facility, it was the end of the day and time to get sprayed. Now for those of you that are like me, i thought pepper spray comes out as a mist. Well that's completely wrong. It comes out as a stream of liquid capable of shooting 12-15 feet which makes it way worse. To get sprayed we had to be outside so we would be able to wash it out immediately with the water hose. It was about 30 degrees that day and the water was just above freezing. To say it was cold was an understatement even for me, a guy who had lived through the winters in Buffalo for 5 years.
Anyway, we all get sprayed one at a time. In order to be sprayed, we had to walk straight towards the instructor with our eyes open and our hands behind our back not knowing when he was gonna spray. I am by no means a pansy, but i will willingly say, that was one of the most awful and painful things i have ever had to go through. The stuff they sell you in normal stores is nothing like the potency of this stuff. It was so strong it literally took my breath away to where i was gasping for air. After using baby shampoo and washing my face several times and flushing with the water hose for half an hour, I was finally able to keep my eyes open without having to hold them open with my fingers. After about an hour most of the burning had subsided and it wasn't quite as bad. I can only imagine what the inmates go through when they get OC sprayed and it takes them 20-30 minutes to be transported to SEG (segregation or solitary confinement). That's up to 30 minutes before they even get near water to wash that stuff out. Yet i have no sympathy cause they got themselves there in the first place.
After that, the rest of the week was a breeze. We watched several more movies and had tons of lectures. They showed us officers who had taken the wrong path and were caught doing things they should not have done. Several female officers were arrested and thrown in prison themselves for having a sexual relationship with a inmates. Other officers were caught trying to sneak in illegal drugs and contraband. I just cant wrap my head around why someone would throw away a career to do something for someone who has absolutely nothing to offer. It just makes no sense to me. But i know they are out there, the ones who always try to beat the system.
We also got to see several videos of weapons that the inmates make with the materials they have available to them. Its absolutely baffling to see what they can make with a couple sheets of paper, a pillow case and a couple batteries. I guess if all i could do was just sit there day after day, id think of things too. You may think prisoners are dumb. That's far from the truth. They can be very smart. All it took was the one dumb thing to get them caught.

Bout Me

My name is Kevin Burns. Im 24 years old I grew up in North Carolina. I moved away when i was 18 and worked on the road for the last 6 years checking utility poles for various power companies in states all over. While living in NY, I went to school for Criminal Justice and received my Associates degree. I had long wanted to be a police officer or highway patrol officer. The job I was on was a dead end job. We all have had at least one of them. Well i decided to do something about it and start my career in the field i was so fascinated with. I applied 3 months ago to the North Carolina Department of Corrections in hopes of starting my career as a Corrections Officer. You might ask why in Corrections and not police. Well for one, i was on a slightly short time frame. I wanted to have a new job by the start of the new year. I had taken the NY DOC test 2.5 years ago and hadn't heard a peep from them and they were notorious for taking aver a year before actually hiring someone. (I can thank the civil service system for that) . The second reason was, with so many states having money issues right now its hard to find any police departments that are hiring and want to pay for your training. Most places want you to have the Basic Law Enforcement Training prior to applying. So i ended up looking into the NCDOC and seen they were hiring and had paid training. I applied, took the test and was on my way. It took several months for things things to happen and several trips back and forth to NC from NY but i finally made it here and got started.