On Behind Bars: Rookie Year tonight, baby-faced newbie correctional officer Fabian Abeyta gets seriously overwhelmed on his first day on the job.
At 18, Fabian is the youngest rookie CO on the show and readily admits that it’s going to be a struggle facing up to the inmates because he’s so young.
Add to that the fact that he looks even younger than his 18 years, still lives with his parents, and is just out of high school so has never really lived in the real world.
Is Fabian going to have it in him to hold his own against some of America’s toughest felons?
Watch the clip below as he says: “Here I am, working in a prison straight out of high school. A little boy like me with 64 convicted felons.
“They look at me as just a little kid, because I kind of am a little kid. I can’t let these guys run over me.”
Fabian’s older brother Derek is also a CO, and both his father and his step-mother also work at the same New Mexico prison — so he has a lot to live up to.
But the inmates already have it in for him, with one saying: “We’ve got to teach him like we get taught.”
Also on tonight’s episode of Behind Bars: Rookie year, all the newbies have to learn how to take the upper hand when dealing with inmates.
Meanwhile, Ariel expresses her fears about supervising an inmate on Death Row, while Lilly has difficulty holding her own among gang members.
Puerto also heads back into the jail for the first time following a brutal assault but it isn’t long before another inmate confronts him.
Behind Bars: Rookie Year airs Thursdays at 10/9c on A&E.