“I hope someone stops me.” Save this ¶

But over the past decade, almost 500 children that investigators already had checked on died in their parents’ care.

a police car pulled behind and followed, lights off.

— the power and pettiness of the defendants, combined with the harmlessness of their victim —

the prosecutor decided he had enough. He had their DNA on the pot pipe and painkillers planted in their victim’s car. He had motive and opportunity. He had incriminating smartphone pings. He had convicted killers on less.

“She mentioned that both she and her husband are attorneys.”

“For the record, my son is very intelligent, mature and athletic and has successfully participated in many ACE classes. He is receiving good grades and has earned many awards this year. He is not mentally or physically slow by any standard.”

wore their elite educations on their license plates: Stanford and UCLA Law School for him, Berkeley Law for her. Experts in corporate and securities law, they had met at a Palo Alto law firm.

Smile, Peters had learned. Be polite.

Around campus, she was the mom everyone knew. She had a natural rapport with children. She could double them over with her impression of Applejack, the plucky country gal from the “My Little Pony” TV series. She would wait with them until their parents came to pick them up from the after-school program, but she couldn’t bring herself to enforce the dollar-a-minute late fines.

“I became afraid of spontaneity and surprises,” she said. “I just wanted to be safe.” In Irvine, she found a master-planned city where bars and liquor stores, pawnshops and homeless shelters had been methodically purged, where neighborhoods were regulated by noise ordinances, lawn-length requirements and mailbox-uniformity rules.

When we pick up Corner Store the next day, he tells me he hasn’t seen the Mississippi yet. He used to fish in it, growing up. We head to the river. After we sit and talk awhile, he stops scoping out everyone who passes by, and he stares out at the glistening surface. A tugboat chugs past. He walks down to the bank, scoops up some water, brings it to his nose, and breathes in deep.

Later, I recount to a sergeant how one of the inmates was poking the knife into the other guy’s neck. “Did you learn something from that?” he asks me. “Not really.” The inmate could have slit the other guy’s throat if he wanted to, he says. But he didn’t. “Both of ’em scared. That’s the reason for having’ them shanks in the first place, ‘cuz they are scared.”

I do favors for others—I let a cop killer outside when it’s not yard time because he seems to have influence over some of the inmates. Guys like him and Corner Store teach me how to win inmates’ respect. They teach me how to make it in here.

Research shows that corrections officers experience above-average rates of job-related stress and burnout. Thirty-four percent of prison guards suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a study by a nonprofit that researches “corrections fatigue.” That’s a higher rate than reported by soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. COs commit suicide two and a half times more often than the population at large. They also have shorter life spans. A recent study of Florida prison guards and law enforcement officers found that they die 12 years earlier than the general population; one suggested cause was job-related stress.

She is familiar with many of the correspondents from reading about the intimate details of their lives.

There are so many letters from children—little hands outlined, little stockings glued to the inside of cards—that we rip out and throw in the trash.

“I play games just like they play games. I test my staff to test their loyalty. I report to the warden about what I see. It’s a game, but it’s also a part of the bid’ness.”