Parole Officer
Hi kid--I remember you; you ratted out the taggers after all that graffiti from grad night last year, right? Still walking home the long way?
So, parole officer, huh? I think your path might be something like this:
You’ll take one of those criminal justice programs because they promise great jobs but really, it’s a scam. When you strike out job hunting afterwards, you’ll realize you shouldn’t make your college choices based on ads that pop up on facebook.
Then you’ll suck it up and get a degree in social work with some law courses thrown in. You’ll be accepted into a internship program job shadowing a 20-year veteran of the parole gig, and you’ll quickly volunteer to drive, since going from appointment to appointment in his 15 year old Jetta filled with the detritus of a pathetic, lonely life is an assault to too many of your senses.
Your mentor lives on coffee and cigarettes, and revels in sharing horror stories that make you shudder. By this time he’s lost any ideals he may have once had about the job and his goal is to put in the last six years before his pension while making as few waves as possible.
You swear to yourself you’ll never be like him. You steel yourself against the nervousness that comes from daily exposure to hardened criminals who see parole officers as snitches for the state, and wonder about taking karate lessons.
You graduate from the program; then look for work. The problem with your chosen profession is that it doesn’t pay enough to live in a larger city, and most small towns don’t have full time parole jobs. It means that you’ll either end up living in a crappy studio apartment in a sketchy part of the city, or commuting for 90 minutes each way to your home in the distant suburbs.
Starting out is even worse; you settle for the only work you can find--you go on call as a substitute parole officer. There is plenty of work, since you are replacing people who call in sick as often as they can get away with it. That will be fun--cold calling felons and never knowing which are the truly dangerous psychos.
There are a few scary moments, and your nose is broken once or twice, but you survive. Your lucky break comes when your former mentor is killed by friends of an irate con who was sent back to prison for parole violations, and you get the dead guy's job.
You throw yourself into your assignment with the best of intentions, but soon the constant frustration of trying to talk employers out of firing irresponsible, dysfunctional ex-cons wears you down. You dread checking your voicemail when every day there’s another call from an irate landlord wanting to know what you’re going to do about the latest outrage committed by one of your charges.
After five years you’re ready to quit when you meet Miranda. Up to this time, you hadn’t had much success dating--seems your crappy home and income didn’t impress, and your job-induced depression wasn’t attractive, either. Miranda, though, is something different. You’re struck by her simple beauty and charmed by her British accent. She’s so different from all the other cons you’ve worked with, and you can hardly believe this refined, delicate girl could be a criminal.
You remember to shave and wear a tie on days you’re meeting with her, and you work extra hard to find her a decent apartment; in fact, you get the manager of your building to let her have the suite above yours. She repays you by cooking you the occasional dinner, or dropping by with tea after you’ve had a bad day.
During one of these visits she tells you her life story, filling in the details not recorded in her file. Swept up in a romance with an older man shortly after she finished high school, she was already in love with him before she realized he was a con man. Soon she became his partner, and the two of them fleeced seniors of their savings across half the continent. When, after three years, they were caught, the twenty-four year old Miranda agreed to testify against her lover for a reduced sentence.
Somehow you rationalize crossing the line in your relationship with her, and feel no shame as you write her one great report after another. Her parole ends, and you give her a glowing reference that helps her land a job as a personal care attendant. It’s not the most pleasant work, but the job market for ex-cons isn’t very forgiving.
Her work schedule keeps her out many evenings, you tell yourself, and totally smitten, you don’t notice she’s pulling back. She seems grateful for your help, though, like when you arrange to fast track her application to have her criminal record expunged. Still, eventually you realize things aren’t right; you are hurt when she’s never answers your calls or messages, and you get angry when you see her bring home the attractive son of her personal care client.
You throw yourself back into your work and try to ignore your broken heart. Six months later, she calls you. You’re elated when she asks you out for a drink, and then admits to her affair with the wealthy young man you spotted her with. It’s over, she promises, and she wants to reconnect with you. You don’t think to question her motives, and she waits a couple of weeks before springing her special request.
She wants you to help free Neville, her old boyfriend. He’s facing a parole hearing and hasn’t been an ideal inmate. You're shocked at first, but she explains that she feels guilty because his sick father is dying alone back in England, and since she helped put Neville behind bars, she’d like to help make sure he’s there for his father’s final moments.
You’re still too in love to use good judgment, and you arrange to be on Neville’s parole review panel. You cross the line even further; you sneak into the office late one evening and remove all the negative reports from Neville’s file. It works like a charm, and he’s freed. The next night he joins you and Miranda for dinner--his “going away party”, she explains. You are uncomfortable, and you notice they seem to be looking at each other more often than you’d like. You end up drinking too much, and wake up the next morning in your apartment, alone.
You discover your wallet has been emptied of your credit cards, and your cell phone is missing. You convince the landlord to let you into Miranda’s apartment, only to discover she’s bolted. You do bit more investigating and find that Neville’s parents are both living happily in England, and he has not boarded any flights--at least not using his own name.
The next three months are miserable, but only a prologue to the real tragedy. Neville and Miranda are identified as the perpetrators of a scam that swindled several hundred thousand dollars from an Atlanta-based charity for terminally ill children. Authorities begin digging into their histories, and before long your collusion in Neville’s premature release is revealed.
Your conspiracy conviction results in a sentence of three years. Hopefully, your former clients won’t be waiting with scores to settle, and with luck, you’ll one day have a parole officer of your very own.
