(Radio Iowa) – A woman who started her career as corrections officer and worked her way up through the ranks is the new warden at the state’s maximum security prison. Janie Mendez has been in the top job at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison for around one month. Mendez says moving through the correctional system helped prepare her for this job.
“I think going to the different facilities and getting exposed to the different custody levels, the different population, and working in those different capacities really kind of kept my professional growth moving,” she says. She started as a corrections officer at the Oakdale Classification Center in 2003, spent 15 years at the Mount Pleasant prison, then moved to Fort Madison as a counselor and continued advancing there. Mendez says her time as a counselor gave her a good view of the prisoners she worked with.
“Being a counselor for 15 years, you know, I really got to dive in to some of the elements of working closely with the population on their, you know, their history, their life circumstances, which led them to coming to prison. And so it’s, You know, everybody has their upbringings. Everybody has their path in life,” she says. Mendez says she’s definitely a big supporter of working with the inmates who are going to eventually get out and trying to point them in a better direction.
“They’re going to be in somebody’s neighborhood at some point. And so being able to contribute to any kind of personal growth for them to not re-offend or create victims or you know, just do anything else that hurts someone else or even themselves,” Mendez says. She says they try to help by providing them with some tools to better equip themselves when they complete their sentence.
“Because. a lot of times their life circumstances, they weren’t exposed to those positive influences to keep them in a good way,” Mendez says. “And so if we can give them some of those things to put them on a better path, then that’s a success.” Mendez says working with the different issues that have popped up has kept her intrigued in the 23 years she’s been in the corrections field.
