A feminine touch in Phila. jails

Shelly Long is a 44-year-old mortgage broker from Northeast Philadelphia who has tired of battling a depressed housing market. She's hoping to start a new career that's a bit more stable - as a Philadelphia prison guard.

Amanda Biviens, a single mother of 4-year-old twins, has the same idea. She's tired of working two near-minimum wage jobs to pay her bills, often not knowing if she'll be able to cover her children's medical expenses. "I want a job that has benefits and better pay," said Biviens, 22.

If hired, they would be part of a quietly growing trend in the Philadelphia prison system: Women now account for 49 percent of correctional officers and supervisors - guarding more than 9,000 inmates who are 90 percent male. In contrast, just 11 percent of city correctional officers were women in 1985.

That was the last year that Philadelphia prison officials hired women to guard only female inmates. A Justice Department consent decree issued at the time required the city to start allowing women to compete for the same jobs, and work in the same facilities, as men.

Women guards now are a familiar sight in all the city's prisons, male and female. They perform the same duties as male guards. The only concession to gender is a rule that inmate strip searches be conducted by guards of the same sex.

The high number of female correctional officers is not unique to Philadelphia. In Baltimore, for instance, 62 percent of the prison guards are women. Yet, in state-run prisons in Pennsylvania there are just 895 female correctional officers out of a staff of 10,247.

Tom Beauclair, deputy director of the National Institute of Corrections, a Justice Department agency, attributed the disparity to geography and economics. "Oftentimes, if a prison is located in a place where there aren't a lot of jobs but there are a lot of women that are single and in many cases raising children on their own, they don't have a lot of other opportunities."

In most cases, the job requirements are minimal. In Philadelphia, guards must be at least 20 years old with a high school education, or the equivalent. They must also pass written and medical exams, and a criminal-history check.

For many women, the job represents stability and good benefits. Just ask Deputy Warden Patricia Powers.

Powers was a single mother raising three children when she began working as a correctional officer at Holmesburg Prison 15 years ago. "It was a job with job security. That's why I took it," said Powers, who is now 43. "I stayed because it was rewarding."

The starting salary is $32,816, which is lower than that for a city police officer or deputy sheriff. But additional income flows from working extra hours, some mandatory, some voluntary.

According to an Inquirer analysis of last year's city payroll, of 1,620 correctional officers (not supervisors), 313 earned at least $25,000 in overtime; of those, 25 officers made $50,000 or more in overtime.

To be sure, though, it's hardly a job for everyone. For one thing, there are dangers.

During her 15 years, Powers said she has been hospitalized three times. She has stitches on the back of her head after getting hit with a metal folding chair; a finger was stitched after her hand was slammed in a prison gate; and she tore cartilage in her right knee chasing an inmate who hit an officer.

The city does not track on-the-job injuries by gender. But city Risk Manager Barry Scott said in his experience, female guards do not suffer more injuries than male guards. "We haven't heard about any differential."

Still, women must endure additional challenges, including harassment from male colleagues who sometimes doubt their ability to handle the job.

Then there are the male inmates.

"They see the women as easy prey. They will flatter you, they'll listen to everything you say and use it against you," said Powers, who noted that at 5-feet-4 and 120 pounds, she poses little physical threat to most of the inmates.

She also said some female correctional officers are susceptible to the pleadings of male inmates. Some develop personal relationships with inmates, illegally giving them cell phones, cigarettes and drugs.

"It is very intimidating," Powers continued. "But if you stay with it long enough and you are bright enough, you learn to use words a lot, and that can get you out of a lot of stuff."

In fact, there's some belief that women are in many ways more suited to the job.

"People have found over the years that women in a male prison have profoundly had a calming effect," said Beauclair of the National Institute of Corrections. "Men act differently when women are around, it's just a fact of life."

Deputy Warden Marcella Moore, who has worked in the Philadelphia Prison System for nearly 25 years, said: "Early on I learned a lot of the guys, although they were here for whatever the crime, they still had respect for women. They are not as ready to go physically at a woman as a man."

The inmates, she said, have "nothing to do but watch you, and if they know they can play you, they will. . . . I constantly say, 'Take your hands out of your pants, pull your pants up, pull your shirt up.' But the more straightforward and professional you are, the less problems you tend to have."

Moore also said the inmates tend to confide in female guards, both personal issues and snitching on other inmates.

Lorenzo North, president of Local 159 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, representing correctional officers, said: "My experience is they do the same job as the men, and I don't see a disadvantage."

Short-staffed right now, City Prison Commissioner Louis Giorla wants to hire 185 correctional officers in the next year.

Long and Biviens hope to be among them.

Both were among 450 people who attended a recent "open house" at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Northeast Philadelphia for potential job applicants.

"You don't really want to be here," said Biviens as she walked past a prison gym and law library for inmates during the open-house tour. "But I'm tired of struggling so much. You can make so much money here."