USA: hazing, humiliation, terror — working while female in federal prison

Inmates expose themselves and threaten rape. Male guards let them do it. Women who complain are ‘pretty much blackballed.

Makeup, earrings and perfume are off limits. So are smiles.

Even the swing of a ponytail can attract unwanted attention, so women slick their hair back into a style known as the “bureau bun” — as in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

They wear oversized uniforms to hide the faint outlines of their undergarments, or cover themselves from neck to thigh with baggy black windbreakers known as “trash bags,” even on hot summer days on the concrete yards.

For women who work in federal prisons, where they are vastly outnumbered by male colleagues and male inmates, concealing every trace of their femininity is both necessary and, ultimately, futile. “They never even see what you are wearing,” said Octavia Brown, a supervisor in Victorville, Calif., of the inmates she oversees. “They see straight through it.”

Some inmates do not stop at stares. They also grope, threaten and expose themselves. But what is worse, according to testimony, court documents, and interviews with female prison workers, male colleagues can and do encourage such behavior, undermining the authority of female officers and jeopardizing their safety. Other male employees join in the harassment themselves.

And while women who report harassment face retaliation, professional sabotage and even termination, a New York Times examination found, the careers of many harassers and those who protect them flourish.

When an inmate thrust his penis against Jessica Hodak, at the time a secretary in California, and threatened to rape her, she wanted to discipline him. But her manager pressured her to let it go, she said in a lawsuit. When an inmate groped a guard named Melinda Jenkins, she was ordered to play down the episode, according to a pending complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. When she refused, the complaint says, managers made her submit to an unwanted medical examination that involved exposing her breasts to a colleague.

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