Skalduggery

Why this new iteration of the Skalduggery blog? Why, after ignoring the original at Blogger for so long, would I decide to try again? Kind of a complicated question, but the short answer is because I want to try again. It is a little more complicated than that, but essentially, it is simply something I want to accomplish. A short history, though not entirely explanatory, does at least provide a little background and a very little explanation.

I’ll start at about the time I dropped out of high school: I spent some time as a life guard, a surfer, a ditch digger, a sailor for some twenty years (and thanks to the Navy, a perpetual college student), a security specialist, a night audit clerk, a porn-shop retail clerk, a Certified Nurse’s Assistant (CNA), I framed houses, worked as a programmer, a draftsman, and now… a Corrections Officer. Why work corrections? Two reasons:

First, I went back to college for a master in the administration of justice and security systems. Though I wasn’t sure I could afford the pay cut, a layoff helped me make the decision to afford the pay cut. Yup, I got caught in that great old housing bubble. Fortunately, I already had a job lined up when I was laid off… Corrections Officer.

Second, a book entitled Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover latched hold of my imagination. While working on my masters one of my professors recommended the book as a worthwhile read, and as a result, I chose corrections over other areas in our criminal justice system.

That’s the short version, and as I complete my posts, the rest will become clear. You see, there are sections of Conover’s book that I believe are dead on, and other areas that I believe could use a little more… clarity? So then, parts of Skalduggery will be aimed at my current job, its relation to some of Conover’s descriptions, current news in criminal justice, and of course, some perspectives other than Conover’s or my own.

As always, I reserve the right to muse on whatever sparkly thing catches my interest, but since it’s my site rather than Blogger’s, I’ll have at least a little more control… once I catch up to technology and figure out how to manage this hosted site – I’m not too proud, so I may be hiring some inexpensive help!

See you soon.