So Im gonna derail my own thread here, but how do you become a CO? Ive always wanted to do something in law enforcement
Hrm, well best thing would be to contact the prison and see if they have any openings, or if they're hiring. Most do hire uncertified people, and then send them to school to become certified. Now, I work for CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) which is a privately owned company that owns many prisons and jails throughout the U.S. But every state has its own state-run correctional facilities, and I'd imagine you'd just need to contact the facility, like I said. I don't know if the state will pay for your classes and all that, but they might.
I know CCA is going to be paying for my classes, plus I get paid while I'm in school and can work at the jail for overtime on the weekends, if I wanted to. For me, its going to be a 4 month long series of classes, and I start in May. I'm really excited, because at first I thought I'd have to wait until August to be able to to school. Once I get certified I get a nice pay increase (about $4 more per hour), the only thing is with CCA once I get certified, I pretty much have to work for them for atleast 2 years. It's in the contract. But that works out fine for me, that's about as long as I wanted to give this job a try anyway.
The main thing is, that I've found out, is that, at least here in Florida CCA employees get paid less than the CO's who work for the state. Our certified pay, is really close to their uncertified pay. But oh well, I can live with what I'm making right now and what I'll be making once I'm certified. So I'm not really complaining.
