Prison aide is honored for her work

There was a time in Philadelphia when women couldn't work in men's prisons. Squeamish policy-makers citing privacy and security concerns worried that women would be too weak to ensure order and too flustered to patrol prisons where strip searches and wall-less living quarters were routine.

But then the feds, citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ordered Philly prisons in 1985 to end that gender discrimination and allow women to work in men's prisons.

Dawn Middleton-Bryant was among that first wave of women to work in a men's prison in Philadelphia, when she became a correctional officer in July 1985.

Now a captain at the House of Corrections, she oversees a staff of 70 and 1,500 inmates. She's one of more than 20 city correctional officers being recognized this week - national Correctional Employee Week - for her dedication to her profession.

Middleton-Bryant is being honored for her extracurricular efforts - such as revising an inmate handbook, creating an employee training manual, launching special events and fundraising for prison charities - as well as her everyday efforts, Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla said.

While prison is the last place most people would want to go, Middleton-Bryant relishes her job, shuddering as she remembers one of her previous workplaces - sewing and mending in a laundry.

"It was hot, it was horrible, and factory work was not for me," the 58-year-old Fox Chase woman said with a laugh.

While the steamy work conditions haven't changed - the 82-year-old House of Corrections is not air-conditioned - her appreciation for her job has.

Higher pay first lured her to the clink. After her laundry job, she worked in a shelter for battered women, work that was personally fulfilling but not profitable, she said.

When she started 24 years ago, she was one of just 132 women correctional officers in a workforce of 1,153, according to prisons records.

"Some of the men didn't speak to me, some filed grievances against me," she remembered. "The nice ones were gentlemen, but they didn't see us as peers, didn't think we could carry the weight."

Time proved them wrong.

Now, half the corrections staff are female, prisons spokesman Bob Eskind said. Middleton-Bryant has worked at all six of the city's prisons and now is top boss at the House of Corrections during her 3-to-11 p.m. shift. *