Doing Time Eight Hours a Day: Memoirs of a Correctional Officer

Correctional officers face danger every time they go to work, and the public rarely appreciates the job that they do. Author James R. Palmer worked many years at the Kentucky Department of Corrections, spending seven of them with the solitary confinement unit. In this memoir, he looks back at his career and shares what it’s really like working in prison.

For example, inmates aren’t afraid to use sharp objects to hurt officers, who—just like the inmates—often find themselves behind locked do...