# Prison guard hiring standards

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Prison guard hiring standards," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/prison-guard-hiring-standards/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of what it takes to become a federal prison guard — a GED or work towards one, and no felony convictions — and his supporting anecdote that prisoners themselves regularly had to conduct mail call because the officer assigned to it could not read.*

- **Qualifications per Kiriakou:** A GED (or working towards one) and no felony convictions
- **His illustration:** Prisoners doing mail call because the guard could not read
- **Staffing consequence he describes:** Officers working double shifts of sixteen hours
- **Where he places the best staff:** Minimum and low security, not maximum
- **Context of the remark:** Explaining why he believes Jeffrey Epstein's death was a suicide, not a murder

John Kiriakou's argument that [Jeffrey Epstein](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jeffrey-epstein) killed himself does not rest on forensics. It rests on a claim about who staffs American prisons.

## Two qualifications

To be a prison guard, he says, you only need two qualifications: you either have to have or be working on a GED, and you must have no felony convictions. He then supplies the detail he considers decisive — he cannot tell you how many times prisoners had to do mail call because the guard who was supposed to do mail call could not read. That, he says, is who we have guarding our prisons. [1] [2]

## Where the weakest staff end up

Asked whether this was true even of the institutions Epstein was held in, Kiriakou said especially the one he was in — because nobody wants to work in the violent prisons. If you have two ounces of brains, he said, you are going to be in the minimum security or the low security, not the maximum security Metropolitan Detention Center. [2] [3]

## The inference he draws

Kiriakou's position is that institutional incompetence explains what conspiracy is invoked to explain. He says he believed from the very beginning that Epstein killed himself, and that he believes it only because he has been in prison and knows that everybody in the prison industrial complex has his head up his ass. [1] He then walks a friend who was convinced of murder through the failures one at a time — the double shifts, the broken camera, the ignored [suicide watch protocol](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/suicide-watch-protocol) — before conceding, when asked directly whether the breakdown might have been intentional, only that this is a different question, and that it probably was. [4]

On the broken camera he offers a mundane explanation drawn from experience: all the cameras are broken, which is why people are always having sex in the chapel, or underneath the stairs on the way down to the mail room, or in the gym. Asked how he knows, he said that is what people do — you cannot control yourself for the six months you are there. [3] [5]

## See also

- [Suicide Watch Protocol](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/suicide-watch-protocol)
- [Jeffrey Epstein](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jeffrey-epstein)
- [Bureau of Prisons](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bureau-of-prisons)
- [Correctional officers at FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/loretto-correctional-officers)
- [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto)
- [Medical care in federal prison](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/prison-medical-care)
- [Prison phone monitoring](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/prison-phone-monitoring)

## Sources

1. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 37:30. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=2250s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/
2. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 38:03. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=2283s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/
3. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 38:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=2315s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/
4. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 40:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=2408s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/
5. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 39:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=2346s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/prison-guard-hiring-standards/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt