If there was a maximum security prison out in space or on another planet, what type of guard would they recruit to work it?

If it were Star Trek, the commute would take seconds.

But if you want to get a clue, look at what oil rig workers get. Or Merchant Marines. Not US Navy though, as military people get paid less in a month than civilians with comparable jobs get in a week.

We already have jobs that isolate people when for months at a time. It’s not like married sailors can take their family with them on deployment, and separated is separated; three thousand miles is the same as three million miles.

If the Enterprise D is any indication, they would probably be allowed to bring their families with them, who would likely be housed in a separate nearby station.
They would have cozy crew quarters, replicators and holodecks, probably even a park.
The prison where they housed Locarno Paris, at least judging from where he and Janeway strolled along, was not exactly stark, but lush with greenery.
And also, the Federation, internally, does not use money.

There would be no need for guards as maximum security prisons are too easily automated. The prison would be mostly self-contained with monitoring and control based on Earth. There would be no family visits other than over the internet and the facility would remain in complete isolation until repairs are required or the dead are taken out. 2,000 of these orbital penitentiaries are required each housing 3,000 inmates.

@Hypocrisy_Central “We don’t have orbiting maximum security prisons or those on other planets like Lunar Max in MIB 3,...”, at least that we know about.

There wouldn’t be any guards on the planet, the guards would be in orbit prohibiting escape.

Have to make a correction.
The prison depicted in ST Voyager, where Tom Paris was incarcerated was not in space, but in New Zealand.
In any case, judging by the Guantanamo Concentration Camp, a future spaceborne prison would be more like Rura Penthe (ST:VI), than New Zealand.

Robot

Why would you need guards there?

Highly trained cats. If anyone escaped, the cats would scratch them and the escapee would have to hurry back to the medical ward for treatment! If there was a lack of atmosphere, the cats would only have to puncture the escapee’s environmental suit with their claws. (Sneaky little kitties!)

Space-based prisons wouldn’t need human guards if they were built without escape pods. That way, once the supply vessels (which could easily be fully automated, to eliminate the possibility of astronauts getting overpowered by the inmates) left, there would be no means of escape.

@zenvelo There wouldn’t be any guards on the planet, the guards would be in orbit prohibiting escape.
That might actually be worse than being on the planet. Unless it is a very roomy spacecraft or station it would seem to get awfully claustrophobic to me. Then there is the whole no gravity thing. On a space station it would be even less space for the guard’s family.

@flutherother There would be no need for guards as maximum security prisons are too easily automated. The prison would be mostly self-contained with monitoring and control based on Earth.
That means what; the prison will be practically sentient? There is no way humans could monitor every facet of the facility. The inmates would have to be hardwired into the grid so if any is ill, get in distress, somehow shanked by another inmate (even though by design I would suspect they would be in total isolation from anyone), have a heart attack, etc. What if an inmate manages to flood their cell, no one would know until it was too late and a sensor goes off alerting the fact? If it is far out, how much of a lag the signal will have from what the facility reads and when it actually gets to the eyes on Earth?

“That might actually be worse than being on the planet. Unless it is a very roomy spacecraft or station it would seem to get awfully claustrophobic to me”

You could never do my old job then.

@Hypocrisy_Central Prisoners would live out their sentences in isolation much as they do in ‘secure housing units’ in the US penal system today. If a prisoner was genuinely ill (and there would be ways of detecting if he/she was faking it) they would be shipped out to the orbital prison facility where they would be diagnosed and receive treatment from human doctors before completing their sentence.

@Hypocrisy_Central The inmates would have to be hardwired into the grid so if any is ill, get in distress, somehow shanked by another inmate (even though by design I would suspect they would be in total isolation from anyone), have a heart attack, etc. What if an inmate manages to flood their cell, no one would know until it was too late and a sensor goes off alerting the fact?

If you are going to send prisoners off to another planet, is their safety really your concern? Do you care? This isn’t a resort they are going to, it’s a penal colony. And just as being shipped off to Australia was a pretty bleak existence, so would being shipped off to another planet.

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

@zenvelo Fun fact; England sent a lot of prisoners here as well. Yes, we were a penal colony just like Australia! Pretty bleak existence, eh?

@flutherother If a prisoner was genuinely ill (and there would be ways of detecting if he/she was faking it) they would be shipped out to the orbital prison facility where they would be diagnosed and receive treatment from human doctors before completing their sentence.
What are the doctors going to do in the days, weeks, or months no one needs them? If they have to be there with the guards both groups are serving a de facto sentence with the prisoners.

@zenvelo If you are going to send prisoners off to another planet, is their safety really your concern? Do you care?
If I cared or not is of co consideration, the society that sends them it will. They would not want to seem heartless or barbaric as the charges they send to that lunar gulag. The same way they do not want to see the pragmatic truth that if you have someone spending a life sentence you give them the chance to enter the gladiator arena and if they win ex number of battles they can have their sentence commuted, all while providing pay-per-view with content to keep the program going and pay the salaries.