SAN ANTONIO – The Bexar County Jail is looking to hire more female jailers to accommodate an increase in the number of female inmates the jail has begun housing over the last year.
On Thursday, 560 women were behind bars there.
Sgt. Janette Torres, an administrative sergeant with the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, says the job is not for everyone.
"You have to make a conscious decision that this is where you want to be," Torres said.
She shares the risks of the job with potential employees to help them be better informed when making that decision.
"Am I going to be able to do this for the rest of my life?" Torres said as she recalled a physical confrontation with an inmate. "And nine years later, I'm here."
"The reality is when you supervise women, such as in their housing environments, where they live, they shower, you have to have a woman to make sure we don't have any cross contamination of any gender concerns," said Deputy Chief, Jail Administrator Raul S. Banasco.
Banasco and Torres agree that some people have the misconception men are better suited for the job.
"Everybody's trained the exact same way. Everybody has the same capability as the next person," said Torres. "You'd be surprised. A lot of people will be like ‘I'm ready. I'm ready to do that.'"
Torres believes one of the biggest challenges women jailers face can often be themselves.
"We put that on ourselves that we cannot handle this position because we are a female and that's because everybody else has told us that," she said. "Once we get that out of our minds and know that we are capable of doing this task that's been placed on us, everything else just comes into place."