Thread by @hahnscratch

I just learned that a prison guard who I worked alongside for 3 years while incarcerated committed suicide. Despite the complicated guard-prisoner dynamic, this information has shaken me. Nothing is promised and everyone is hiding something.

This man repeatedly tried to get me to snitch on other prisoners until I finally put the kibosh on that. He also caught me masturbating in the shower - more embarrassing for him than me. He was the only guard who ever bought me food when we had to make trips outside the prison.

As is often the case with suicide, I search my memory for signs that something was wrong. He struck me as awkward - someone perpetually uncomfortable with where he was, the skin he was in.

I sometimes thought that he didn’t really want to be a prison guard - that he’d grudgingly become one after a back injury forced him out of his original career in the construction trades.

I think the prison guard who doesn’t want to be a prison guard is more common than we think. In many ways, being a prison guard is dehumanizing in a reciprocal fashion to the dehumanizing element for those imprisoned. One can’t house humans for many years & not get tainted by it.

I cannot help but think that actually being a prison guard is what contributed to his suicide. There has to be cognitive dissonance for those with good hearts who work in the prison system in the capacity as jailers. And I did see moments in which his good heart was displayed.

Of course, all of this is speculation. I don’t know why this prison guard killed himself. Whatever his reasons, today I shall think of him and all of his complexity, all of his humanity.

Part of the dehumanizing process for guards is learning to think that prisoners don’t view guards as human. Thus, the dehumanization process of prisoners is justified in terms of survival and reciprocity.

I once had a different guard tell me that he was worried when we made “runs” outside the prison together because if something happened to him, medically, there wouldn’t be anyone to help him. He said this with me in the car.

I said I would do everything in my power to help him, that his badge didn’t remove his humanity. He seemed skeptical. “Would you, really, Hahn?” he asked. “Of course I would, I’m not an asshole,” I replied. And that’s when he realized that we’d really been talking about him.