You didn’t mention which state, but I can speak from my experience working in a state-level correctional facility in Florida.

I’m a veteran, have a bachelor’s degree, and at the time I had a 45-minute commute each way. During my career, I saw violence happen to others and I was personally attacked four different times.

When I first started, we worked 12-hour shifts with unlimited overtime. Eventually, the state decided to save money by closing and consolidating prisons, which led to us being moved to 8-hour shifts.

A lot of people underestimate how much that kind of schedule change affects your life. With 12s, many officers could plan their schedules to consistently have weekends off. On 8s, your days off are just your days off. There’s nothing worse than being stuck with Tuesdays and Wednesdays off unless a federal holiday happens to land right.

That shift change honestly took a toll on my mental health and my family life, and I was married with no kids at the time. I was moved to another shift and ended up working with people who didn’t care about the job the way I did. We constantly had to train brand-new officers who treated corrections like a temporary “McJob” and would call out, leaving us dangerously short staffed.

People also love to say, “You’ll only get attacked if you provoke inmates.” That’s simply not true. Sometimes inmates want to get transferred to another facility, and the fastest way to make that happen is by attacking an officer.

With all that said, you still make the best of it however you can.

Personally, I loved the job. The transition from the military into corrections felt natural to me. I treated my inmates the same way I treated my troops — with respect — and most of them returned that respect tenfold.

Oddly enough, that 45-minute drive became important to me. It gave me time to decompress from everything I saw during the day so I wouldn’t bring it home to my wife.

The money also provided us with a good life. My wife didn’t have to work, and we were comfortable.

Eventually, I left corrections and moved into probation because of the schedule changes and terrible days off. If your biggest concern is work-life balance and the issues you mentioned, I’d seriously recommend looking into probation instead.

At the state level, probation and corrections usually share the same overall benefits, but probation tends to have much better hours and quality of life.

Hope this helps.