Washington Female guards have long worked in state's prisons After 35 years, gender has become mostly an afterthought inside

By Jonathan Martin The Seattle Times ABERDEEN, Wash. (AP) -- Beneath curdled gray clouds, Keri Towle's blue uniform is a speck of color in a sea of prison-issue khaki. The male inmates of Stafford Creek Corrections Center hurry along the prison's concrete paths toward jobs, doctors, the gym or the library. Towle, a corrections officer, suddenly stops a thickly built inmate named Harold Rath. "Mr. Rath, can you step aside?" she asks. Rath turns around, showing on the back of his shaved head a saucer-sized tattoo of a woodpecker toting two guns inside the words, "Grays Harbor's Most Wanted." Towle is outnumbered several hundred to one at the moment. Rath easily outweighs her 130 pounds. And Towle starts patting him down for contraband. The death of corrections officer Jayme Biendl at the Monroe Reformatory on Jan. 29 has raised debate among many about the vulnerability of women working among male inmates. Having a lone, slight woman doing hands-on work behind bars might seem like a jarring risk -- to Towle, to the prison and to taxpayers' exposure to liability. But in the 35 years since women broke into the ranks at Washington's male prisons, gender has become mostly an afterthought inside. Of the 3,708 officers in the state's prisons, 592 -- 15 percent -- are women. They have filled every job, from officer to superintendent. Several female officers interviewed for this story said they don't feel targeted by inmates because of their gender. Female corrections officers once were excluded for their lack of size and strength. But female officers are hurt less often than men, according to studies. They are seen as better communicators, often defusing machismo tension before it erupts. Corrections remains a dangerous job, as illustrated by Biendl's death, the first of an officer in 32 years. Last year, Department of Corrections officers spent 8,900 days -- more than 24 years in total -- on paid disability leave because of assaults or on-the-job physical injury, according to the Department of Labor and Industries. At Monroe, one female employee on the custodial staff was on leave for several months after an alleged sexual assault that remains under investigation. Towle, a slim, blond 26-year-old with the walk and demeanor of an ex-jock, has not suffered an injury since being hired three years ago. She long ago learned to ignore hoots and catcalls from inmates fresh off the "chain bus" from other prisons. "Those are the guys who haven't gotten to know me," she said. As she finishes with Rath and moves on to another pat-down, Rath turns around. Female officers say inmates sometimes treat them protectively, and Biendl's death has rattled Rath, a longtime felon now serving time for car theft and gun possession. Referring to the prime suspect, a repeat rapist and lifer named Byron Scherf, Rath said, "That dude needs to be slung from a tree. You don't treat the females that way." The gender integration of Washington's correctional-officer work force started in 1972, when government agencies fell under the Civil Rights Act's ban on sex discrimination. At the time, women worked as "matrons" in the women's prison, but they didn't patrol male facilities. Nancy Frazier and two other women were the first, hired in 1976 at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Frazier said male officers greeted her with hostility and left her the most unsavory jobs, including conducting head counts alone, without radio or backup, in an inmate-run motorcycle shop the prison allowed at the time. "I'd walk into the lunchroom, sit down at a table, and (male officers) just fled," said Frazier, 71. The 1970s-era penitentiary was rife with violence. Three officers were killed that decade, the last on-the-job fatalities until Biendl's death. But prison administration issued a policy requiring all officers to patrol in pairs, except for the women, Frazier said. The prison "actually put out a memo that the women walked alone," said Frazier, who went on to a 30-year career at the prison. Dick Morgan, who worked with Frazier and later became the state's director of prisons, said the trio helped change the male-dominated culture. "They showed, pound for pound, they were up for anything a man was," he said. Marie Griffin, an Arizona State University criminology professor, said research shows stressful relations with co-workers is the biggest difference between male and female officers. "Women often can have issues working in that kind of male-dominated job," said Griffin. Gender-discrimination lawsuits flared around the country. Because of a 1990 lawsuit, male officers at the state's women's prison at Purdy have limited ability to pat down female inmates. For Frazier, the reasons women make good corrections officers is intuitive. "What do women excel at? Managing people and kids, which is what some of these (inmates) are. It's just a bigger house, more kids." After the random pat-downs, Towle strides to a cellblock, where she conducts random searches. Towle is a self-described tomboy who wears pea-size diamonds in her ears, thanks to her husband, a jeweler. She said she picked corrections because she wanted a career, and she picked a male prison because "I connect better with guys." She carries only keys, a radio, handcuffs and blue plastic gloves. Washington's prisons have mostly done away with weapons inside the perimeter, believing they are more a risk than an asset. Washington also ended a physical-fitness test for new applicants in 2008, but it requires a six-week training course that teaches physical and verbal control techniques. Those policies put a premium on verbal and behavioral training taught at the DOC's academy by Mindy Svoboda. She served on the in-house SWAT team during eight years at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, but she says the public misunderstands the value of soft skills in managing behavior. "Women sometimes don't present the same domination struggle that male-on-male communications or struggles present," said Svoboda. The focus on Biendl's gender and 5-foot-2 stature "saddens me because there's so much more than size that makes someone effective." At the Stafford Creek prison, Towle is searching a two-man cell, looking for contraband. There's no "pruno," the homemade prison wine she often finds. But amid the two TVs, boxes of papers, an inhaler, books, a tray of rice, soy sauce and dry jalapenos, Towle finds a pornographic picture and a broken metal cross. In prison, where inmates routinely outnumber staff, strict adherence to rules -- even small ones -- is a key to control. After a debate with another officer about rules on porn, the picture is returned because it does not show penetration. As for the cross, inmates legally can have religious symbols, but not ones that have been altered. This ornate cross is broken in two pieces. She pockets the cross and later asks her boss for guidance. Before she leaves the cell, she does a quick cleanup. As a female officer, she said she feels no duty to be extra tough or motherly. "I try to put everything back where I find it as a courtesy," she said. "I don't want them to take my kindness as a favor." Published: Tue, Feb 8, 2011