Lock Down: A Career in Corrections Comes to an End

After 35 years of service with the Minnesota Department of Corrections, Stillwater native Jessica Symmes will retire today after serving five years as the warden of the Oak Park Heights maximum-security prison.

At 5-feet tall, Symmes will lock down a career working in state prisons that started by filling a maternity leave in the clerical department at Stillwater Prison in 1975, and grew into work as a corrections officer, caseworker, supervisor, administrator and ultimately the warden of the state’s only maximum-security prison.

A Career in Corrections

Symmes, 56, graduated from in 1973 and went on to the University of Minnesota to attend the College of Dental Hygiene.

“I hated it,” Symmes said of her schooling at the U of M. “It just wasn’t good for me.”

So she headed home to the St. Croix River Valley.

Her father was a corrections officer at Stillwater prison at the time. He came home from work one day and told his daughter there was a temporary position open in clerical support at the prison.

“He sent me down there to get a job,” Symmes said. “Basically, he was tired of having me around the house.”

Symmes worked her way up the ranks from temporary employment to secretary of the associate warden. After working with the clerical staff for eight years, Symmes applied for—and was turned down—an office supervisor job. That’s when she decided to complete the Oak Park Heights training academy to become a corrections officer.

Her job was to observe and monitor the inmate population, work in the cell blocks, make sure inmate programming was being administered and walk the security rounds, among other things.

“I’ve worked in just about every area of this prison as a corrections officer,” Symmes said. “I’ve worked the midnight shift, second watch and the third watch.”

In addition to the short commute to work (she harbors a hatred of driving), Symmes was drawn to Oak Park Heights because it is a smaller facility that’s “pretty well staffed.”

“I call this the intensive-care unit of the Department of Corrections—and because of that it is more highly staffed and easier to manage offenders in terms of unit size and staffing ratios,” Symmes said. “After weighing that, I decided it would be a safe place to work—we have our days—but for the most part it’s a safe place to work and a safe place for inmates to live.”

Challenges

Throughout her career as a corrections officer Symmes admits that her gender and petite size were challenges she had to over come. But her biggest challenge was overcoming the difference between Stillwater and Oak Park Heights prisons.

“The difference between Stillwater and Oak Park Heights is like night and day,” Symmes said.

Stillwater is a traditional “telephone pole” architecture that is similar to correctional facilities across the country, she said. “Oak Park Heights at the time always bragged that it was state-of-the-art because it had all these cameras, electronics and intercoms. I suffered from culture shock.”

Instead of being greeted by a person at the prison doors, correctional officers at Oak Park Heights talked into intercoms.

“That wasn’t too friendly at first,” Symmes said. “But after a while you get to recognize voices really well and then it became much more friendly.”

The Path to Prison Warden

After working nearly every job as a corrections officer, Symmes went back to school at Metro State to finish her coursework and become a prison caseworker. In that role, she was similar to a social worker in the outside community and also helped inmates with programming while incarcerated and planning for post-release.

After being a caseworker for a number of years, Symmes was promoted to Lieutenant, which got her back in uniform and supervising other correctional officers.

Symmes then bounced around in a variety of prison administration roles before becoming the warden at Oak Park Heights prison in 2006.

“I’ve had a lot of growth steps along the way,” Symmes said.

Symmes plans to spend the early part of her retirement on what she is calling “a sabbatical” to recharge her batteries. Symmes has a few trips to Europe planned and will spend time with her six grandchildren.

“Fifty-six is a little young to retire forever, so maybe there’s another career for me at some point,” Symmes said. “I’m just not sure what that is.”

Looking back over her 35 years in corrections work, Symmes said it “just seems like a flash.”

“I have good memories and I’m leaving in a good place,” she said. “And I’m happy about that.” 

Q&A with Jessica Symmes:

Stillwater Patch: What were some of the challenges you faced as a corrections officer when it came to your gender and your size?

Jessica Symmes: All of that played into it. With respect to gender, when I started that was just the beginning of when women were working in the living units at both Stillwater and Oak Park Heights. Female officers were not permitted to do physical pat-down searches on offenders until about a year-and-a-half after I started. That was a source of contention for the male officers, too. Because we were getting paid the same, but not doing the same job—because we didn’t have to do a search, which is not a pleasant job. Once it occurred that we could do pat-searches, it leveled off the playing field.

And my size … That of course is a challenge, but the biggest challenges for me was the difference between Stillwater and Oak Park Heights, which is like night and day.

Stillwater Patch: When you tell people you were a corrections officer at a prison and are the warden at Oak Park Heights prison, what is their reaction?

Symmes: It’s always disbelief, followed by the question: You’re only 5-feet tall, how can you do that job? Others are: Don’t the inmates give you a hard time? And, aren’t you afraid?

Stillwater Patch: What have you learned by doing all of these different roles within the prison system?

Symmes: One of the things you learn going into uniform that is a little different from being a secretary is how to talk to offenders. That’s a key component in being successful in corrections. You can’t talk at offenders and you can’t talk about them. You really need to talk with them and once you do that you develop some credibility—and part of that credibility is when you say you are going to do something, you follow-up and try to be fair.

Stillwater Patch: What are some of the things you are most proud of looking back at your career?

Symmes: One of the things we’ve (the other longtime prison employees) learned is developing a program is hard. When Oak Park was first opened there was a lot of work that went into getting the program up and running, but keeping it running at that level has been just as hard, and I think, often undervalued.

I was here early on and learned the culture—and we were able, to some extent to maintain that. That culture is treating offenders fairly. Treating them like people, and to the extent we can, maintaining a positive program. There is a tendency for people to say these are bad people, they don’t deserve anything—and maybe they don’t, but the programming helps make this a safer place for us and it helps us keep them safe when we give them positive things to do. And it might, it just might, have an impact on how they behave when they get out of prison, because many of them do.

So even though our program, because of budget reasons, has been diminished from the early days—as has our staffing—we still have been able to maintain a good program for offenders at this security level, which doesn’t happen at many facilities throughout the nation.

Stillwater Patch: Why do you believe these inmate programs are important?

Symmes: It’s important because the guy that gets out might be my neighbor, he might be your neighbor, so it is important not to send him out worse than he came in. For those who won’t get out, it makes them a better citizen of their community, whether that’s Stillwater prison, or Rush City or Lino Lakes. If they can become better citizens, it’s better for everyone’s overall safety.

Stillwater Patch: What will you miss most about your career?

Symmes: The people who work here and the stories. At least once a week, I say ‘You can’t make this stuff up.’ Because you just can’t make it up. I will miss that.

Stillwater Patch: After 35 years of working in prisons, what’s one thing that still surprises you?

Symmes: In addition to the stories I eluded to the one thing that surprises me is that prisons run as well as they do. There is the potential—because there is far fewer of us than them—and yet everyday when the bell rings 400 offenders walk very quietly into their rooms and shut the door. There might be something happening, maybe a fight, but we break it up and the offenders go back to their rooms.

 I think that is all built on trust, again, for us to do what we say we are going to do.