Open
Letter to Doug Ducey – Governor-
“Failing to Admit Failure”
When
it comes to running a prison, it is incredibly unacceptable in culture and
nature to admit failure. Admitting failure has severe consequences construed to
be weaknesses in prison management styles and eventually a sign of weakness or
incompetence.
How does this effect the relationship between prison administrators
and the public? How does this impact the relationship the relationship with the
executive chain of command? What are the inevitable and consequences?
This
is the situation we are faced with again, today. The strength of our
relationship and trust in our prison management systems is seriously in doubt
and needs solid reassurances from the executive branch to show they are
addressing these weaknesses appropriately. They should be asking the tough
questions why mistakes were made and how are they being corrected.
The
problem with the Kingman prison complex is deep. There are strong indicators
there are continued inevitable failures within the management styles of both,
the prison contractor, Management Training Corporation and the Arizona Department
of Corrections. It is clear their relationship is not strong, not bonded and
certainly not on the same levels of concerns.
In
real-time, MTC failed to uphold the contract, again. The first time was a major
escape from the facility in 2010, where three convicted murderers escaped and
went on a crime spree killing two innocent people in New Mexico. The DOC
promised to fix this and promised to conduct tighter control over this prison.
It didn’t happen. There were other minor infractions in the past, but in order
to focus on the more serious matters, we accept those as a matter of record.
Because
of social media, the MTC organization and the DOC were unable to hide from
failures. The media hounded for more information that came almost twelve hours
later after the incident occurred. Even then, the press release was sketchy and
written with vague and ambiguous language softening the impact of the riot that
had occurred there on July 1st, and then another second major riot
on July 2nd.
A
second press release was more forth coming but still lacked sufficient details
to admit something went wrong. It focused more on the transfer of 700 inmates
to other prisons than on the problem itself. A solid ricochet of the incident
seriousness by focusing on the transfer of the high number of inmates rather
than the extensive, destructive and man-made caused damage indicating staffing
and supervisory issues were problematic.
Neither
MTC nor the DOC had the guts to reveal the truth of the event. Both went into a
defensive damage control mode and even Governor Doug Ducey engaged in this
deceptive scheme to delay information and keep the media and the public at an
arm’s length distance to buy them time to articulate the failures. If not for
local media, not associated with any major politically correct network, much of
the details would have remained hidden.
The
DOC, the governor and MTC were much better off admitting that something went
wrong. They should have addressed it in an authentic, open and transparent
manner and get it out there as soon as possible.
Instead
they took the cowardly route and delayed information making the public anxious
and stressed because this impacted families of staff or employees, the
community and the state as a whole wanting to know the truth.
Reconfiguring
the truth seems to be a habit by the DOC. They work hard to hide their failures
and their horrible failure points. They seem to be repetitive in nature and
results indicating a self-destructive mode causing failures by neglect more
than systemic in cause. Not only do these deceptive press releases draw
criticism, they draw suspicion and create serious trust issues for the
government that owns these problems. In fact, they increased their liabilities
exponentially by not sharing what could be shared without jeopardizing the
clean-up operations.
How
an agency fails is partly due to leadership or lack of leadership. It appears
that the current leadership of MTC and the DOC are more concerned with hiding
problems than solving problems. They spend an enormous amount of energy to
cover up or deceive the public, and suspect the governor as well, to hide their
failures.
Some
observations noted in this recent failure and those of the past reveals a
culture that accepts failures as successes. This means that the MTC/DOC domain
uses failures to mark their successes in garnering more funding for the
operational expenditures claiming the funds are needed to solve the problems.
Regardless, these self-inflicted problems are instrumental to their funding
requests to the legislature.
They
fail successfully as they pick up more funding at the expense of community
public safety and heavy handed physical assaults on their employees with
significant property damage associated with these riots and other failures
documented frequently. In fact, they have built an elastically cultural
attitude, a more lackadaisical types behaviors in the face of inevitable
failures.
They
have created a culture of sharing failures for their successes in gaining
support to fix the problem. Although the legislature has been railroaded,
deceived and mislead deliberately by creative writers and documented reports
with skewed outcomes, they are willing participants to give them more funding.
Instead
of sitting down and tackling the problem, this management team sits down and
conducts unrealistic assessments to manipulate more funding for future
inevitable failures which will occur because the problems are not really
solved. Assessments to fix the problems are rare. The best the DOC does is
rewrite or revise the policies and procedures or amend a contract wording
paragraph to instill more mandatory compliance tools. Tools which are rarely
implemented and double checked upon to see if they are valid or working.
Inevitable
failures have been a way of business for decades now, because it works. It
works because of liability issues, if nothing is done to help fix the problem.
The legislature, the governor and the public are extorted into a blackmail
scheme by the DOC to extort monies to fix problems which are in reality never
fixed.
The
governor needs to appoint a new director, a new culture and a new direction for
the DOC and its private prison contract responsibilities. Creating this culture
has to come from the top. It needs to set the stage for eliminating or reducing
failures and come forward with a solid corrective action plan. The first step
in this process is to admit, something is wrong.
The
second step is to reduce the risks associated with these failures. Executives
need to decide their words needs to be backed with action.
Lip
service should be eliminated and action should be demonstrated to show
confidence in the changes made. Admitting risks is commendable and a reasonable
act to take when fixing problems. Denial is counterproductive to fixing
problems.
Taking
risks and facing them is meaningful. It shows people you are sincere and
dedicated to fix the problems. Blaming and pointing fingers is unacceptable for
leadership who deflect their responsibilities to others when in fact, the ball
is in their court.
Refusing
to “stick out their necks” is cowardice and unprofessional thinking when
failures occur. They should be pro-active and act courageously to work hard
towards achieving success rather than failures.
The
DOC and MTC had failed to set defined limits or acceptable performance or
limits. Since their roles are ambiguously done, it opens the door to numerous
and various different types of risks and makes transparency more difficult as
admitting flaws or faults are politically career ending events. Keeping it more
hidden is more palatable to these executives and reduces their risk-taking
strategies keeping tight controls over the problems and hoping none are
disclosed.
The
DOC has no idea how to figure out to solve their failures. They cannot decide
what risks are engaged and which failures are results of such neglect. Their
“my sandbox” concept is deeply flawed as their rules of engagement of those
current team members are those ideas and standards of a culture that accepts
failures as successes.
The
DOC needs to set new limits and expectations – they need to clearly define the
rules, the standards and the expectations of their “sandbox” ideology and
communicate to the governor and the public new rules of engagement within the
sandbox perimeters.
By
agreeing to these new covenants, new cultural expectations and more
transparency, there will be more trust, greater confidence in problem solving
methods and improved security in knowing the risks and prevent constant and
inevitable failures which should not be acceptable but understood under these
new limits.
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