Proactive Policing vs. Reactive Policing in Corrections

Wasted Honor -

Carl R. ToersBijns is the author of the Wasted Honor Trilogy [Wasted Honor I,II and Gorilla Justice] and his newest book From the Womb to the Tomb, the Tony Lester Story, which is a reflection of his life and his experiences as a correctional officer and a correctional administrator retiring with the rank of deputy warden in the New Mexico and Arizona correctional systems.

Carl also wrote a book on his combat experience in the Kindle book titled - Combat Medic - Men with destiny - A red cross of Valor -

Carl is considered by many a rogue expert in the field of prison security systems since leaving the profession. Carl has been involved in the design of many pilot programs related to mental health treatment, security threat groups, suicide prevention, and maximum custody operational plans including double bunking max inmates and enhancing security for staff. He invites you to read his books so you can understand and grasp the cultural and political implications and influences of these prisons. He deals with the emotions, the stress and anxiety as well as the realities faced working inside a prison. He deals with the occupational risks while elaborating on the psychological impact of both prison worker and prisoner.

His most recent book, Gorilla Justice, is an un-edited raw fictional version of realistic prison experiences and events through the eyes of an anecdotal translation of the inmate’s plight and suffering while enduring the harsh and toxic prison environment including solitary confinement.

Carl has been interviewed by numerous news stations and newspapers in Phoenix regarding the escape from the Kingman prison and other high profile media cases related to wrongful deaths and suicides inside prisons. His insights have been solicited by the ACLU, Amnesty International, and various other legal firms representing solitary confinement cases in California and Arizona. He is currently working on the STG Step Down program at Pelican Bay and has offered his own experience insights with the Center of Constitutional Rights lawyers and interns to establish a core program at the SHU units. He has personally corresponded and written with SHU prisoners to assess the living conditions and how it impacts their long term placement inside these type of units that are similar to those in Arizona Florence Eyman special management unit where Carl was a unit deputy warden for almost two years before his promotion to Deputy Warden of Operations in Safford and Eyman.

He is a strong advocate for the mentally ill and is a board member of David's Hope Inc. a non-profit advocacy group in Phoenix and also serves as a senior advisor for Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council in Chino, California As a subject matter expert and corrections consultant, Carl has provided interviews and spoken on national and international radio talk shows e.g. BBC CBC Lou Show & TV shows as well as the Associated Press.

I use sarcasm, satire, parodies and other means to make you think!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Proactive Policing vs. Reactive Policing in Corrections

By Carl R. ToersBijns, former deputy warden, ASPC Eyman, Florence, AZ

In most cases, the Arizona Department of Corrections Officers and administrators have to react to a variety of critical incidents, situations and scenarios in an ad hoc manner due to lack of planning or preparation for such events. What we have when such events occur is total havoc of organizational resources misused and abused rather than efficiently or effectively deployed and able to manage the situation in a calm and orderly fashion.

Thus it is fair to say that there are minimal efforts made to avoid a proactive approach towards the prevention of criminal activities within the prisons and lack of effective measures implemented to prevent such criminal acts to occur. Although there are common approaches [best practices] available to deal with this issue, the ADOC chooses to manage by crisis as this is their main and only ideology to ineffectively manage crime, their prison’s security functionality, technology and the majority of their incarceration policies.

Rather than being proactive this current administration chooses to be reactive in nature and frequently fail the public’s trust in their efforts to aid both the public’s safety as well as the safety of those incarcerated and assigned to work inside of our state prisons today.

In Arizona some things remain constant since 2009. In policing there is no change. The Department of Corrections is not a focused group as it fails to learn from lessons in the past and continues to mishandle major flaws with little or no change in management styles. Only in those areas where there is a federal grants involved do they improve their services in order to gain access to this dangling carrot that provides them funding for essential services.

However, even in those federally funded programs there is room for improvement as it is merely set up to meet minimum standards and often weakly enforced to show nothing but the desired results on paper rather than making an intentional or practical change in operations or behaviors.

The PREA Act is one example as the ADOC continues to punish those who report sexual abuse or misconduct and allows the victimization of both lesbian and gay prisoners’ rights to be violated and ignored by staff. Not only is there a need for policy change but in a cultural change as well.

Another example of mismanagement is the manner the ADOC handles the severely mentally ill persons. It allows and condones a high number of suicides, self mutilations and death inside its prisons with no effective counter plan to intervene, reduce or prevent these events as it ignores the problem rather than handling it with today’s technology and methodology used by other states to create safer and more orderly therapeutic environments for those needing stability and programming for mental health treatment.

This agency has been unsuccessful particularly in learning and adapting to new correctional techniques and behaviors. Instead of focusing on a reduction in prison population, they plan for expansion of beds. Instead of hitting the bricks for prisons corrections, they ask for more prisons to be built.

Talking to people working inside these prisons, it is obvious that there is no priority in reducing spending and reducing the violence that is occurring on a daily basis by inmate gangs that are running open yards and charging taxes and other levies to those that are doing their time but have to either join a gang or pay to coexist on one of these yards. To refuse payment is a sentence for excessive physical punishment that often results in hospitalization or medical treatment for injuries often not reported for fear of relations.

Policies haven’t changed and it’s likely they won’t until the death count exceed those tolerable limits set by the directors in Phoenix as manageable and normal. In the meantime, drugs rule the yards and run amuck. Assaults are increasingly common and more severe as correctional officers risk being harmed or killed by those that enforce the gang rules inside our prisons.

This agency could be more successful if it adopted the guidelines of the S.A.R.A model that is considered to be a process that is workable and logical when applied to problem solving measures and it works. The main obstacle of this concept is the resistance by those who refuse to “buy in” on the concept and insist on doing it the old way of lessons learned and taking reactive measures to avoid dealing with it again but not taking into consideration other variances of other major problems that may occur.

The ADOC needs to implement a proverbial buy in order for it to work. Without this embracement of change policies will remain ineffective and antiquated in content and unable to provide guidance to those working the line and keeping the peace.

The bottom line is if you want the ADOC to be successful, the department has to implement this model in all their prisons and allow the process to exist, grow and expand to the levels it can reach if fully integrated into the policy making process that is lacking the right elements to fulfill effective policy making today.

The SARA Model

A commonly used problem-solving method is the SARA model (Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment). The SARA model contains the following elements:

Scanning: