IT’S AN INSIDE JOB, KID

Moffe’s memoir wrestles with life, addiction, and working in corrections.

The author grew up in Elmira, New York and joined the United States Navy after high school. He soon decided the armed forces were not for him and received an honorable discharge. But what to do next? In 1981, he became a corrections officer in New York state. Corrections turned out to be an occupation fraught with conflict, from fellow officers who “spend so much time around inmates they begin to act like them” to the hostility of the inmates themselves. Moffe worked in various prisons throughout New York—all had their problems. As a colleague pointed out, “Prisons have a way of altering everybody’s behavior. We work in a place where no one wants to be, not the inmates, not the staff.” Throughout this period he struggled with a crippling dependency on drugs and alcohol. His marriage unraveled, and he describes many instances in which he could have easily died. The memoir ends on a more positive note, as he leaves the East Coast to pursue ranch work, an acting career, and sobriety. At around 200 pages, the book covers a lot of ground. While many memoirs discuss struggles with addiction, not many do so in the context of a career in corrections. The details of prison work are striking, detailing the unwritten rules for COs on their interactions with prisoners and others. In one memorable sequence, the author describes seeing (and sitting in) the electric chair that put the Rosenbergs to death in 1953. Later portions can breeze by without much explanation; Moffe’s ranching experiences remain vague. He describes one job as being “too much work for an inexperienced ranch hand”; aside from the number of animals involved, the reader is not really told why. Still, despite this (and the text’s brevity), there is plenty of compelling material here.

A revealing account of a tough occupation and one man’s personal struggles within it.