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DIXON – Nedra Chandler is very clear on one point: She is not your friend.
Although the Dixon Correctional Center warden admits her bark is worse than her bite, she said a stern governance and a constant awareness of professional boundaries is required for her job.
"This is not the place where you become complacent," Chandler said of the medium-security facility. "Don't get me wrong, you never, ever forget where you work, whether you're male or female."
Certainly, Chandler seems duty-bound – loyal to family and employer alike, and committed to fulfilling the obligations those roles entail.
Other times, though, she seems to assume a matronly role as inmates flock to her like chicks to a mother hen.
Ultimately, she is human: She has doubts about some of her own decisions, she worries about losing her self-identity, and she questions the system of which she is a product.
The worker
Chandler, 48, began her career at the prison 23 years ago – just 2 years after its conversion from the Dixon Developmental Center – but not because she wanted to.
The East Moline native had left her home and family to pick up a bachelor's degree in accounting a few years beforehand – but not because she wanted to.
She realized during her junior year of college, she said, that she didn't want to be an accountant.
"But I was already committed."
She made it that far without relying on student loans, and her family couldn't afford to put her through the additional years that a switch in majors would cost.
So she completed the program, then spent some time "trying to find" herself and to figure out what career she might enjoy.
"It took a little longer than I thought," she said. "So my mama gave me an ultimatum. She said, 'Fill out this application.' So I filled out the app."
Chandler began her career as a corrections officer – a guard, basically – but quickly rose through the ranks. It was while working as a counselor that she got her epiphany, she said.
"I thought, 'Hey, this just ain't a job anymore,'" Chandler said. "'Maybe I'll make this my career.'"
From there, she went on to counseling supervisor, and then on to the assistant warden of programs in 2000. She was acting warden for a year, and was appointed warden in 2005.
The switch from counselor to administrator was a "very, very difficult transformation," Chandler said. She went from working directly with the prison's 2,100-plus all-male population to "being a policymaker."
"I didn't like being chained to a desk," she said. "I like being out and about in the trenches but ... you know, I do my job. Whatever they ask me to do. Some things I embrace, other things I just tolerate."
Chandler said she found balance between the hands-on work she loved and the office duties she was bound to by combining the two. She began working 10-, 11-, 15-hour days so she could finish paperwork and still tour the grounds, to "hear it with my own ears," and see "things with clear eyes."
Sergio Molina, the executive assistant to the director of the DOC, also began his career at Dixon's prison. He and Chandler were hired within a few months of each other, he said, and he watched her rise through the system.
It was Chandler's intimate knowledge of the facility, and of its prisoners, he said, that caught DOC administrators' attention.
"Nedra has a very good rapport with people," Molina said. "We saw that very early on. That's what impressed us about her: She knows her facility and the issues there."
The mother
The goal, Chandler said, is to allow inmates to make the most of their time in incarceration. It's a fine line she walks between enforcer and provider.
She doesn't want to be a mother to inmates, she said, but "sometimes, yeah, it feels like" they view her as one. Inmates surround her as she walks the prison grounds, asking her permission to make phone calls, to receive visitors, to work coveted assignments.
It's the young inmates, she said – the 18-, 19-, 20-year olds – and those in the psychiatric unit who most often seek her guidance.
"They're looking for validation, recognition, praise," she said. "Sometimes, the way I interact with them could be viewed by some as if I'm pretending I'm their foster mom."
Never married and with no children of her own, Chandler has fostered 15 children in as many years.
She wants the same things for prisoners that she wants for her foster kids: She encourages them to stay in school and to test beyond a sixth-grade education level; she worries about the state of the aging roofs over their heads; when the soles of their shoes wear through, she's the one who ensures they are replaced.
Some similarity between her work life and personal life is inevitable, she said. There can be no separation between "Warden Chandler" and "Nedra."
"I can't be two different people," Chandler said. "I am who I am when I walk in the gate. When I walk out the gate, I'm the same person. If I try to start putting on facades, I'm going to get lost."
The product of the system
There are 2,162 rapists, murderers, thieves and the criminally insane – along with a "whole gamut" of other criminals – at Dixon Correctional Center. There are 357 security staff members, Molina said. That's a guard-to-inmate ratio of about 1:6.
Chandler's total staff count is 478. While the inmate population has experienced an "explosion" during her time at the prison, noncritical staff positions – those excluding guards – have been left unfilled, she said.
That is Chandler's greatest frustration.
"I want my staffing levels to be where they need to be, based on our assessment," she said. "But my assessment is never going to be the same as what someone else's assessment is."
She has a magic number in mind, though, just in case anyone asks.
"My magic number is 620 [employees], but that's not realistic," Chandler said. "I don't have the magic wand. But I'm forever hopeful that our positions ... will be filled."
Falling staff-to-inmate ratios have come into question, particularly after the May 2006 kidnap and rape of a psychologist in the prison's maximum-security psychiatric ward. Chandler was walking the grounds when police reported that inmate John Spires had dragged the woman into a janitor's closet, where he held her for more than 25 hours.
"It was kind of surreal for a moment," Chandler said. "You never think things like that happen. Then it was just strictly doing what I'm employed to do. I didn't have much time to be thinking about – you know, I was just trying to get through it."
Afterward, though, she was left with doubts.
"You think about 'What if,' 'If only,'" she said. "But, you know, everybody does that – you second-guess yourself. And then you start thinking about 'What can I do better?'"
The disdain for administrative work and her difference of opinion with the DOC about the vacant staff positions have affected the way Chandler views her job.
Sometimes, she said, "it seems like I'm beating my head against the proverbial wall." Most days, though, she likes her job.
"I'd say 97 percent of the time, I'm content," Chandler said. "But there's just that 3 percent that I wonder. ... There's days when I wonder, 'What'd I do?' Sometimes, you just think, 'When's it going to end?' It's just too much."
Chandler hopes to end her career back where she started: as a supervisor of counselors. It's the best position she's ever held, she said – she didn't have to work long hours to complete stacks of paperwork; it allowed her to have a personal life.
"I didn't have too much stress," she said. "As a warden, I've developed high blood pressure. It's related to the stress. At least, that's what my doctor says."
Warden's duties
■ As warden of Dixon Correctional Center, Nedra Chandler divides her time between administrative duties and touring the prison grounds.
■ She visits housing units, climbs security towers, checks in with staff, and talks to inmates about topics ranging from work assignments to lunch menus.
■ As an administrator, she reviews time sheets and policies, transfer requests and budgets, correspondence and inmate disciplinary plans.