A criminal goes out and commits a crime. He/she get caught by the Police. They get taken to Jail. 90% of the time, a Jail staff member books them into custody. They either sit in jail until they post their bond or go to Court. If the crime is heinous enough, the inmate gets sentenced to Prison, where they are kept in custody by Correctional Officers until their sentence is complete or overturned. All of that is Law Enforcement. I'm by no means trying to get Correctional Officers to be even remotely classified as Police Officers. They are two separate professions that entail many of the same yet many different sets of skills.
Just because we are last in that chain, doesn't make us any less important. I currently work for a Police Department in the Jail and almost one year ago, we lost a Police Officer because a thug shot and murdered him. The Officers life was irreplaceable and very, very important. Earlier this month, Delaware Corrections lost a CO in the line of duty due to a riot where the inmates took him (and other CO's) hostage. His life was also irreplaceable and just as important. That leads me to my petition:
Police are sent through rigorous physical training and classroom courses. They have standards of hiring that require one to be in at least moderate shape, be reputable, have some form of college (I know there's very small agencies that MAY be lax on this), good credit, etc. And I think that's terrific. I don't want anyone sworn to protect my family and me to be the opposite of any of those. But there are some Dept of Corrections that merely want a warm body that MAY can count with a calculator, and some that care enough to train their CO's enough that the State labels them as Peace Officers.
For CO's in all states to be classified as Law Enforcement professionals (not as Police Officers) there needs to be a Government regulated "Minimum Standards of Hiring". No matter if its NJDOC or Washington State DOC or Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the standards need to be the same. The Academies need to be the same.
I mean, Police Academies are pretty much the same (sure there may be minor differences) so why shouldn't DOC Academies? We deal with the same criminal element, just we (hopefully) wont be shot by any incarcerated inmate.
