Some officers are pretty uptight, but the majority of them are pretty relaxed, realizing that inmates at furlough are, as Officer Mercado told my parents in Tagalog, mabait (pronounced mah-bah-et). The direct translation is kind and virtuous, but I think the more accurate translation is mellow or not prone to cause trouble. Mercado is one of the cooler officers, and he has a certain affinity toward myself and my parents, and he stops to chat for a minute on Sundays whenever my parents come to visit.

Scruggs, Carter, Ms. Compton and even the chief supervising officer, Ms. Wingate, they're all pretty cool and laid back. Scruggs didn't even bother to check my backpack the other day and just waved me through when I told him he hadn't done so. Carter is this massive guy that looks like Brian Urlacher, a linebacker for the Chicago Bears, and shares Mr. Mercado's sentiment: the inmates here understand that it's easy, and they don't want to put themselves in a worse situation. Scruggs was on the intercom last night saying that there are still tickets left to the Halloween Dance, at $10 per person.

Other officers are real dicks, and seem to like to exert their authority. The main CSO III's (the top of the officer food chain, Hislop, Wise, Ms. Johnson, and Ms. Wingate, who has the most seniority) tend to be the biggest sticklers, though, again, Ms. Wingate is the exception, but this could be due to the fact that she has to have a certain sense of humor in order to thrive in such a male-dominated field (both in colleagues and inmates). That could be one reason why Ms. Johnson, the other female CSO III, is also relatively laidback with the inmates, but that could just be because she's on duty in the mornings, when all the inmates just want to get to work. They save their horseplay for the late afternoon.