It sounds like the plot of a short-lived 70s sitcom: two petite identical sisters, employed as prison guards on NYC's Rikers Island…wackiness ensues! But it's actually for real. 33-year-old Sukari Barnes and Tajiri Swindell are corrections officers, who, when they started 12 years ago, were "92 pounds soaking wet." Barnes and Swindell's mom, Joyce Gourdine, was also a CO and tells Mother Jones magazine, "It's a psychological thing. You have to psychologically rule. It's not a physical thing... You have to learn how to individualize people and deal with them mentally. Let them know you are not playing: 'You will move when I say move." And then you make a believer out of somebody if you have to.'" [Mother Jones]
It sounds like the plot of a short-lived 70s sitcom: two petite identical sisters, employed as prison guards on NYC's Rikers Island…wackiness ensues! But it's actually for real. 33-year-old Sukari Barnes and Tajiri Swindell are corrections officers, who, when they started 12 years ago, were "92 pounds soaking wet." Barnes and Swindell's mom, Joyce Gourdine, was also a CO and tells Mother Jones magazine, "It's a psychological thing. You have to psychologically rule. It's not a physical thing... You have to learn how to individualize people and deal with them mentally. Let them know you are not playing: 'You will move when I say move." And then you make a believer out of somebody if you have to.'" [Mother Jones]
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