Inmate Porters

[Zigga zig ah]

Who out there has an inmate porter program at their institution? We have this and it is an awesome thing to see these guys take on the responsibility of caring for others.

[Everline]

We have inmates who are "assigned" to other inmates who need help. For instance, helping other inmates who are wheelchair bound, blind or otherwise disabled. I'm not sure it's a formal program. But it is nice to see them helping each other out. They seem to take it quite seriously.

Tell me more about the program you have at your institution? Is there formal training? How does it work?

[Neats, BSN]

I have been the Healthcare manager in a state prison facility with inmate porters, be careful.

I liked to switch out the porters at least 4 times a year with no really pattern to the switch. These porters can get into a situation that can cause great harm to patients or to wreck havoc within the system and do some really nasty illegal things. By switching out porters you can reduce the possibility of an inmate doing harm and reduce the possibility of staff inmate issues.

We watch them like a hawk and they have very specific duties with clear boundaries. The ones trying to "get in" to do harm usually only last about a week. Had one porter who collected the old gloves to make "pruno" (fermented anything that eventually will turn to ETOH yes he actually made booze in those used gloves), he hid them everywhere a hole was it seems, they found 6 of them and I suspect there was more we never did find.

No formal training only a contract that they signed and we paid them well $.50 cents an hour. They could not exceed 10 hours week so this was a great supplement job.

I usually like the older guys be porters they just wanted something to do, although one older offender took apart inhalers stuffed them with pot and made them look like an inhaler that would be used...heck with the plastic cover we would not have known. I found out because we had a higher instance of asthma/breathing issues...got to appreciate their ingenuity.

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

Our Administrative Regulations specifically prohibit inmates from delivering or participating in medical care. The main reason is liability. If anything goes wrong, we don't want to be answering questions in court about why trained medical personnel were not delivering care or rendering assistance. When inmates are involved, there is also the possibility of caregivers extorting those who they are delivering care to. I agree with our policy for those reasons.

[Zigga zig ah]

We have a fairly rigorous training program that they go through which is basically a cna class. They work generally full time, and work in either our medical housing ( minimal assisting) or in our SNF. They get paid well and we have had good experiences with the program. The guys that are there have been there longer than me. I generally have 1-2 porters in my 10 room SNF and they are only allowed to care for guys that are housed in the SNF, no acutes. Nursing does the personal cares and the guys do tend to take their jobs seriously I believe. They get paid well and very rarely get in trouble. Any trouble even outside the job and they are gone.

[caliotter3]

It would be nice if the formally trained inmates could receive certification as CNAs. Although they would probably be prohibited from most employment on the outside, there is the chance that they could find something in the attendant category.