California Prison Guard: a better career move than a Harvard degree

Where you see the injustice of caging humans over a plant, CCPOA sees job security

There is an old saying that says, “When you’re in a gold rush, it’s a good time to be in the pick and shovel business.” Well, when you’re in a police state, it’s a good time to be in prisoner guarding business.

(Wall Street Journal) The job might not sound glamorous, but a brochure from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it “has been called ‘the greatest entry-level job in California’—and for good reason. Our officers earn a great salary, and a retirement package you just can’t find in private industry. We even pay you to attend our academy.” That’s right—instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy.

Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.

As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he’s not even the highest paid.

Most Harvard grads only get three weeks of vacation each year, even after working for 20 years—and they’re often too busy to take a long trip. Prison guards, on the other hand, get seven weeks of vacation, five of them paid. If they’re too busy racking up overtime to use their vacation days, they can cash the days in when they retire. There’s no cap on how many vacation days they can cash in! Eighty officers last year cashed in over $100,000 at retirement.

The cherry on top is the defined-benefit pension. Unlike most Harvard grads working in the private sector, prison guards don’t have to delay retirement if their 401(k)s take a hit. Prison guards can retire at the age of 55 and earn 85% of their final year’s salary for the rest of their lives. They also continue to receive medical benefits.

How much do you think those guys and gals want to vote for reforms that would lead to less people in prison?  The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) donated $2 million to Gov. Brown’s campaign who then repaid them last month by approving the deal that allows them to cash in unlimited vacation days when they retire.  What a deal!  You get five paid and two unpaid weeks of vacation.  Save up some of those weeks when you were only paid $45K and cash them in when you’re making $85K (yes, Gov. Brown’s deal allows them to cash out vacation days at current pay rates, not what they were worth when they accrued.)

We don’t have the entry-level living wage jobs anymore that a regular Joe can work without much education or skill, yet still provide a middle class lifestyle for his family.  So we’ll let them all become poor and desperate until some of them take advantage of the only paying job they can find – selling drugs – and some others turn to theft.  Then we can build prisons to lock all of them up, hire some of the rest of them to be guards at attractive middle class wages, and provide poverty-level service jobs to maintain the prisons!

Another added benefit?  Many of those people we’re locking up are poor minorities from cities who would be likely to vote for more progressive drug policies and candidates that espouse them.  When they are locked up they cannot vote.  Furthermore, their absence from urban districts reduces their census when it comes to apportioning funds and representation and their presence in prisons in rural districts increases the population for these typically conservative districts that (naturally) support building more prisons and locking people up.