CAIRO — Janice Lashley’s father headed “The Goon Squad” at Raiford State Prison, home of Florida’s electric chair. Squad members broke up riots and dealt with difficult convicts.

Her father never told stories about his work, but he did say the last thing in the world he wanted was for his only daughter to work in a state prison.

Lashley honored her father’s wishes. She does not work at a state prison, but she is the Georgia Jail Association 2005 Officer of the Year.

A certified detention officer at the Grady County Jail, Lashley is the facility’s clerk/recorder for State and Superior courts. She also handles bonding, is certified by Georgia and national crime information centers and serves as a jailer.

She was the first woman volunteer deputy with the Grady County Sheriff’s Office posse. Lashley is certified in oleoresin capsicum (pepper spray) and in the Intoxilyzer 5000.

Her boss, Grady County Sheriff Harry Young, tricked Lashley into going to Jekyll Island, site of the Georgia Jail Association event where she would be honored. Lashley thought Young was taking her there for training.

She was chosen from among more than 100 officers.

“She went up against the biggest agencies in Georgia,” the sheriff explained.

A Grady jail employee for nine years, Lashley, 49, has worked for three sheriffs.

Young said she has been instrumental in the jail-personnel transition since he took office Jan. 1.

“She does things without our having to ask her,” Young said. “She works well with others. That gets things done.”

The sheriff recalled when Lashley realized a sex offender wanted in Florida was in her jail and contacted Florida authorities.

“This guy was getting ready to bond out,” Young said. “He’d have been gone.”

Lashley grew up in Green Cove Springs, Fla. Her mother is retired from a retirement facility. She has two brothers, one of whom is a corrections officer in Gainesville, Fla.

Lashley’s husband of three decades, Franklin, is employed by the Georgia Department of Transportation. The couple has three sons and four granddaughters.

Lashley was district manager for Sunshine Jr. Foods for 15 years. When the convenience-store chain went out of business, she was out of a job.

At 40, she applied for a jailer position — “and that’s where I’ve been,” Lashley said, describing her early days at the Grady County Jail.

Interested in why people do bad things, she always knew she wanted to work in corrections.

“Most of them do it because they want to,” Lashley explained. “Lots of them tell me it is an adrenaline rush.”

People get into drugs, cannot get out and wind up in jail, she said. She feels sorry for some inmates.

“Sorry enough to let them out of here? No,” Lashley added.

“I feel sorry for the ladies who can’t get off drugs and who burglarize places, and they have children,” Lashley said.

Drug addicts’ children hurt the most, she explained.

“I found out that while they’re doing it they’re not thinking of anybody but themselves,” Lashley said.

She has disdain for murderers and child molesters, but “no one’s guilty until it’s proven in a court of law that they’re guilty.”

She sees a lot of repeat offenders. She also runs into former inmates on the outside. “They stop and speak,” Lashley said. “You ask them how they’re doing. That’s all you can do.”

Does she take her concerns about inmates home at the end of the day? “No!” she answered emphatically.

Lashley has no career dreams she did not fulfill. She is doing what she always wanted to do.

Her father has had a change of heart about the career choice he did not want for his little girl.

“Now he’s proud of me,” Lashley explained.



Senior reporter Patti Dozier can be reached at (229) 226-2400, ext. 220.