Correctional officers struggle with suffocating 'prison smell' and more
A correctional officer looks toward the outer wall of Anyang Prison in Gyeonggi Province, July 15. All indoor and outdoor sewage covers at the prison have been locked with chains to prevent inmates from escaping. Built in 1963, Anyang Prison has suffered from aging facilities and overcrowding, housing more than 2,000 inmates with an occupancy rate of 134 percent. Korea Times photo by Jang Ryeon-seong
Understaffed, aged detention centers reeling from rise in number of inmates
Every time senior officers finished their shifts, they would take a shower and rub skin lotion into their hair.
“What is that about? Did a nightclub open nearby? Are they getting ready to go there?”
The same thing happened the next day, and the day after that. Leave work, shower, apply skin lotion to their hair. The behavior was repeated, and there was a certain order to it. It was almost like a ritual.
Curious, this reporter asked them. The answer was brief.
“Don’t you know? They’re getting rid of the prison smell.”
Some correctional officers wash themselves two or three times and launder their uniforms. Each in their own way, they struggle to remove the scent of prison from their bodies.
“You won’t understand unless you’ve felt it. You really won’t.”
The officer calmly recalled how older colleagues considered applying skin lotion a ritual — a way of shedding the prison smell after a day inside.
A member of the Correctional Rapid Patrol Team (CRPT) is seen through a thermal imaging camera at Anyang Prison in Gyeonggi Province, July 15. The higher the temperature, the more red the image appears. Korea Times photo by Jang Ryeon-seong
Tracking prison smell: Sweat
“Are you afraid of inmates? Not at all.”
On June 20, just before the start of the rainy season, I headed to Incheon Detention Center, a place that does not even appear on map searches. For two days and three nights, I stayed alongside correctional officers and followed the “prison smell” they tried to wash away after work.
“What does the prison smell mean to you?”
Kim Kyung-woo (alias), a team leader at Incheon Detention Center, has worked as a correctional officer for 20 years. His uniform does not carry a name tag. He belongs to the Crisis Response Patrol Team (CRPT), which handles emergency situations inside the detention center.
Tall and powerfully built, Kim commands attention when he appears. Even inmates who were resisting often become quiet in his presence.
The CRPT is known inside the detention center as the “crows.” Wearing black protective gear, they are deployed when situations such as riots or assaults become too difficult for regular officers to handle.
Even Kim shows signs of exhaustion at the end of the day. By the afternoon, his black uniform is soaked with sweat.
For him, the “prison smell” is the smell of sweat.
When the team responded to a crisis, several members were already struggling with an inmate identified as Park An-moon (alias). Park was 175 centimeters tall and weighed 105 kilograms, with a heavily built physique.
“Dammit, seriously! What did I even do?”
“Relax your strength!”
“I said relax!”
A correctional officer looks out a window at Anyang Prison in Gyeonggi Province, July 15. Korea Times photo by Jang Ryeon-seong
Park was wearing a yellow name tag, indicating he had a background as a former organized crime member. He had been questioned over a conflict with another inmate, but repeatedly refused correctional officers’ instructions during the process and made threats.
“XXX, just kill me. Please!”
Six or seven CRPT members tried to restrain him and put on a metal protective device with a chain-like structure. But Park, overwhelmed by emotion, resisted with all his strength.
After struggling and groaning, Park suddenly loosened his legs and tried to collapse onto the floor. Team Leader Kim and the other officers grabbed his arms and legs one by one and lifted him back up.
“Don’t get worked up!”
“Stop it!”
The more intense the physical struggle became, the more agitated Park grew.
While inmates sometimes fight as if their lives depend on it, correctional officers have no choice but to respond according to established procedures. Because of this imbalance, officers are often the ones who end up injured.
Recently, several team members were bitten by inmates badly enough to have flesh torn from their bodies, while others suffered twisted knees after being kicked.
After a 20-minute struggle, Park was placed in a solitary cell.
“Just hold on a little longer. We promised we wouldn’t do this again.”
Team Leader Kim spoke to him in a calm voice. Only then did Kim and his team members wipe the sweat dripping from their foreheads.
One team member explained: “CRPT officers often have to carry out intense security operations. Sometimes inmates stare closely at our name tags, remember our names and later use them to threaten us or file complaints. That’s why we remove our name tags while on duty.” The CRPT team responds to incidents like this as often as 15 times a day.
Even after just one or two deployments, officers have to repeatedly climb up and down several floors, and sweat quickly runs down their backs.
Less than five minutes after Park was transferred to his cell, another radio call came in.
As Team Leader Choi hurried away, he asked: “But have you seen the officers who work in the inmate housing units? They have it even harder.”
Shoes belonging to inmates fill a shoe rack at the entrance of a shared cell at Anyang Prison in Gyeonggi Province, July 15. Korea Times photo by Jang Ryeon-seong
Tracking prison smell: Daily life
Incheon Detention Center has 12 floors. Each floor’s housing unit, built in a square shape, is generally divided into L-shaped sections for management.
When the gray steel door opens and officers enter a housing unit, green metal doors line the walls, with inmate rooms beyond them. Although there are windows inside, they are attached near the ceiling, allowing little sunlight to enter. That is why the units remain dim regardless of the outside weather.
When I entered the sixth-floor housing unit, where about 120 inmates were held, the smell of food, laundry, human waste, mold and disinfectants mixed together in the L-shaped corridor, stinging the nose.
Inside the housing unit, daily life was as crowded as the smells. In the indoor exercise area, about a dozen inmates were doing bodyweight workouts, while inmates assigned to assist correctional officers with cleaning, meal distribution and delivering supplies were selecting inmates scheduled to leave the facility for court appearances or other proceedings.
Newly arrived inmates entered the housing unit carrying their belongings, while those scheduled for visits waited in line in front of the steel doors. Inmates moved slowly through the cramped space, following tangled paths like a spider web.
In the middle of it all, senior officer Jung Hoon-gu stood alone.
He processed more than 100 written complaints submitted by inmates while constantly moving back and forth through the unair-conditioned space. If he went to one area, the opposite side was left unattended. To prevent such gaps in supervision, Jung checked inmates’ physical conditions even while walking and ordered those lying in their rooms to stand up.
For daytime officers like Jung, the “prison smell” is the smell of the daily lives of about 120 inmates.
Personal belongings of inmates are piled up along a hallway outside shared cells at Jinju Prison in South Gyeongsang Province, July 14. Due to overcrowding, a lack of space inside the facility has forced inmates to store their belongings in hallways. Only one psychiatrist is stationed among all correctional facilities nationwide, and the specialist is assigned to Jinju Prison. Korea Times photo by Jang Ryeon-seong
“Officer Jung! I’m telling you, I can’t go in there because that guy is the reason I got caught!”
A heavily built inmate stopped Jung, who was already busy with his duties. The newly arrived inmate was refusing to enter his assigned room, claiming that an accomplice involved in his case was already there.
With limited space available, disputes over room assignments are reportedly common.
“OK. So he’s mentioned in the indictment as well?”
After sending the inmate to the main office, Jung leaned against the acrylic partition of the officers’ work station and let out a sigh. In his hand were dozens of complaint reports that still needed to be processed.
But the break time allowed to Jung was less than one minute.
Lunch distribution had begun, and inmates started shouting:
“The portions are too small.”
“I need counseling.”
“Please let me go to the outside hospital.”
“If an emergency happens at a time like this, the entire housing unit comes to a standstill.”
Jung shook his head.
A paper outlining rules and regulations is posted at the entrance to an investigation and disciplinary cell at Anyang Prison in Gyeonggi Province, July 15. Korea Times photo by Jang Ryeon-seong
Tracking prison smell: Body odor and blood
Inmates usually fall asleep around 8:40 p.m. The lights are turned off all at once. A faint glow leaks out from the only illuminated place — the bathroom. Correctional officers make rounds every hour.
Before the night shift begins, officers receive briefings on unusual incidents from the daytime shift.
“Park An-moon is being held in the interrogation room following a disturbance. Keep a close eye on him.”
“One solitary cell was flooded during the day. It has been left open temporarily to dry the inside.”
When night falls, the damp body odor that was masked during the day begins to rise.
When officers press their faces close to the steel doors to check conditions inside shared rooms, the moisture-filled air carrying the inhales and exhales of more than 10 people rushes toward them.
Incheon Detention Center’s occupancy rate stands at 145.4 percent as of June 30. Shared rooms measuring 16 square meters accommodate 12 to 16 inmates. The space allocated per person is just over 1 square meter.
To find a place to sleep, inmates have to arrange their legs in a zigzag pattern. Some create boundaries with cardboard boxes and sleep sitting up with their heads leaning against the wall. Others, unable to endure the cramped conditions, spend the night writing letters or reading books.
Overcrowding also affects correctional officers.
As the number of inmates increases, the areas and people each officer must monitor also grow, inevitably creating greater gaps in supervision.
According to the Ministry of Justice’s correctional statistics, the occupancy rate of correctional facilities rose from 106 percent in 2021 to 125.8 percent last year (126.4 percent as of June this year). During the same period, correctional incidents increased by about 29 percent, from 1,278 cases to 1,652 cases.
The problem becomes even more serious in summer.
“Fights and complaints increase especially during the summer,” said Lee Hyun-woo, a senior officer. “Because shared rooms become so difficult to endure, some inmates intentionally cause problems so they can be moved to solitary confinement.”
In fact, whenever Lee makes his rounds, inmates frequently shout:
“It’s too hot.”
“Move me to another room.”
By around 1 a.m., the housing units finally begin to settle down. But officers cannot let their guard down.
During the night shift, the smell they worry about most is the smell of blood.
A prisoner whose ear is bleeding and says he cannot hear properly. A foreign inmate says blood comes from his throat whenever he coughs. Responding to such situations is part of the night shift officers’ duties.
The most tense moments are cases involving self-harm or suicide attempts.
Most incidents occur in bathrooms. Officers making hourly rounds first count every inmate and check the bathrooms inside the rooms.
When inmates install screens in front of bathrooms to block out the light leaking from inside, officers must order them to remove them.
When they witness death, the memory is not easily erased.
One correctional officer recalled: “I noticed there was no response, so I lifted the person up. Their face was already blue, and they had passed away. That scene still doesn’t leave my mind.”
Some officers blame themselves, repeatedly wondering whether they provided sufficient first aid.
Another officer recalled a case in which an inmate died by hanging in a housing unit on a lower floor.
“I needed to understand exactly what happened, so I asked the colleague who performed emergency measures to recreate the scene,” he said. “I think it must have been extremely difficult to ask someone who was already in shock to show me that situation again.”
Fortunately, the two nights and three days spent inside the housing unit passed without incident.
On days like these, correctional officers say that regardless of whether they stayed awake all night with their own eyes, they feel relieved by one fact: “Today, we did not see death or blood.”
A member of the Correctional Rapid Patrol Team (CRPT) patrols inside Anyang Prison in Gyeonggi Province, July 15. \Korea Times photo by Jang Ryeon-seong
Why they try to erase the smell
The housing units are at their quietest just before sunrise, at the boundary between night and day. It is the time when even inmates who spent the night tossing and turning manage to catch a brief moment of sleep.
The “prison smell” — a mixture of sweat, the smells of daily life, body odor and blood — is also subdued as it is carried away by the early morning air.
Of course, when inmates begin waking up around 6:10 a.m. to the sound of a cheerful morning song, the prison smell awakens with them once again.
Correctional officers finish their shifts and leave work with the prison smell clinging to them. Then they wash off in the shower room and do their laundry.
The officer who had introduced the reporter to this strange ritual of former senior colleagues smiled and asked after the experience was over:
“You must have really felt it, right? The prison smell?”
The reporter silently nodded.
The “prison smell” is not exactly an unpleasant odor.
It is closer to the traces left behind by those who endure overcrowding, staff shortages, constant tension, violence and death.
It is a smell that those who work behind high walls — sometimes even removing their name tags for their own safety — cannot easily wash away even after leaving work.
Other names for the prison smell may be “responsibility” and “endurance.”
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.