No matter what the misconduct—sexual harassment of inmates, use of excessive force, falsification of records, failure to complete mandated face-to-face observations of inmates, etc.—the persistent, and likely sincere, response of the jail’s administration will probably include some combination of the aforementioned comments. The overriding message is clear: We had no way of seeing this coming. There’s no way this could have been prevented. This really caught us by surprise. And oftentimes, the administration addresses the matter by firing the misbehaving officer.

This type of disciplinary response raises two very important red flags:

• Was it necessary for things to get to the point at which the misconduct was so egregious that the administration’s only option was termination? In other words, could this particular misconduct have been prevented?

• In firing the officer, did the administration really resolve the problem, or did it just rid itself of this particular officer? In other words, in its response to the misconduct, has the administration reduced the likelihood of its recurrence within the organization, or not?

These two red flag questions are best addressed within the conduct of two important organizational dynamics:

• The organization culture and its role in shaping officer conduct.

• The administration’s unavoidable role in establishing and maintaining the organization’s culture.

These two dynamics are often short-changed or heavily “intellectualized” in articles, textbooks, college courses, and

Organizational Culture

Now that we have discussed individual values and value systems, let’s reconsider these concepts within the context of an organization (e.g., a jail):

Just as individuals have value systems, so do the organizations within which those individuals spend time. In other words, in every organization there is a prevailing sense of what is right and what is wrong, what is allowed and what is not, what is okay and what is not within the organization.

That organizational value system governs the behavior of the organization’s members (e.g., children in a family, students in a school, correctional officers in a jail) as they confront the various situations and circumstances that occur within the organization.

In some organizations the organization’s prevailing values clearly and unequivocally communicated. In other organizations those values are conveyed in a manner that is vague and confusing—in some organizations so much to render them functionally non-existent. In the former type of organization staff (e.g., jail officers) clearly understand what is expected of them, while in the latter type they do not.

When I use the term “organizational values”, I am not referring to mission statements, polices in a manual, proclamations from the “higher-ups”, or any other similar formality. Rather, I mean the prevailing values of the organization as those values are understood by the organization’s members. For example, a jail may have in its operating manual an official policy, accompanied by an effective date and all kinds of authoritative signatures, that suicidal inmates are to be observed face-to-face at least every 15 minutes. If, however, this policy prescription is enforced on some shifts but not on others, chances are very good that the jail’s officers’ understanding of the organization’s values relating to this important facet of inmate supervision in no way resembles the institution’s official policy statement. Chances are very good that the jail’s officers will see this “requirement” as not really that important, especially on certain shifts; as something that should be done if there’s time; as a good idea. And to what should be to no one’s surprise, the jail’s officers will adjust their behavior (in this case, their supervision of suicidal inmates) accordingly. Many other examples, probably better than mine, can be drawn from different areas of jail operations.

In a jail, for example, the institution’s culture is not the same as the official polices and procedures, the standing post orders, or the policy pronouncements of the Sheriff or Jail Administrator. Rather, the jail’s culture is the staff’s understanding of what behaviors are commended, tolerated, ignored, or reprimanded day-today, 24/7.

In some organizations again, jails included, the organizational culture is clearly communicated, consistent with official policy, and helpful to staff in terms of defining acceptable behavior (job performance). In other organizations, however, the organizational culture is poorly communicated, inconsistent with official policy, and confusing or irrelevant to staff with respect to their on-the-job behavior.

The bulk of organizational behavior, including the job performance of jail officers, is shaped, for the better or for worse, by the organizational culture.

Needless to say, individual members of organizations have personally held values that govern the totality of their behavior. These value systems are installed and maintained by parents, teachers, pastors, and other authority figures in an individual’s life. Jail officers and civilian jail employees, as well as their workplace authority figures (e.g., sheriffs, jail administrators, shift commanders, dept. heads), are obviously included here.

When an individual is functioning within an organization of which he is a member, the values which comprise the organization’s culture become the most important and relevant values for that individual during those moments in time. Organizational culture becomes part of the individual’s value system, the most important part in fact, as he contends with the various issues, situations, and circumstances that present themselves within the confines of the organization. For the on-duty jail officer, for example, the values which make up the jail’s organizational culture are the most relevant and impactful values with respect to his behavior during those 8, 10, or 12 hours.

Keep in mind, as stated previously, that an organization’s culture is not the same as the organization’s official policy pronouncements. To repeat, the organizational culture is the members’ understanding of what behaviors are okay and not okay within the organization. A jail’s moment-in-time (the effective dates) policy statements, collected and displayed in a manual, are one thing. The jail’s organizational culture—officers’ understanding of what behavior is encouraged, commended, ignored, or reprimanded on a 24/7 basis—may be quite another.

Understandably, individuals usually behave in ways likely to elicit favorable responses from others (especially authority figures). Conversely, they usually do not behave in ways likely to elicit unfavorable responses (again, especially from authority figures).

In fact, the responses of superiors to the behaviors of their subordinates are, far and away, the primary elements of the organizational culture. Arguably, those responses, collectively, are the organizational culture. In calibrating their behavior, members of an organization are much more keenly aware of the type of response their behavior is likely to receive from their superiors than they are of official organizational policy. Organizational culture trumps official policy almost every time as the principal shaper of an officers’ behavior. To paraphrase a time-worn adage: Official policy, like talk, is cheap.

Organizational culture can firmly reinforce official polices or render them relatively ineffectual and meaningless. I offer the following observations regarding jail policies and procedures:

A jail’s official polices are meaningless and without purpose while they are sitting on bookshelves or inserted into 3-ring binders. They become relevant only when they are transmitted into the 24/7, non-stop milieu of the jail proper, into the “rubber hits the road” workplace of the jail’s officers.

In the hypothetical (yet typical) 5-pound multi-section jail policy manual not all of the polices are of equal importance. Generally, a relatively small number are particularly essential. Presumably, these relate directly to institutional security and safety (e.g., policies relating to the use of force, searches of inmates and cells, the taking of counts, the required frequency of inmate/cell safety checks, the screening of incoming inmates on suicide risk factors).

Oftentimes, the more official policies and related procedures jail officers are required to absorb, the less likely they are to routinely comply with those policies and procedures—including those that are essential. This non-compliance is frequently not intentional but rather the result of the sheer volume of official “do’s” and “don’ts” imposed upon them.

If compliance with the essential polices is to become a cornerstone of the jail’s organizational culture (again: the institutional value system, the prevailing sense of acceptable/unacceptable among the jail’s officers) the jail’s administration needs to highlight these essential polices for special, and ongoing attention.

Such attention should certainly be the recurrent “stuff” of pre-service, in-service, and roll call training. Officers should be told that, while they are to know where all polices are located and be able to refer to them as needs arise, they are expected to commit the essential policies to memory and be able to readily execute them without referring to a manual or binder. Some jails print their essential polices on pages which are a color other than white, while other facilities produce a smaller manual or binder containing only the essential polices—both good ideas.

Expectations and Feedback

So, how does the jail’s organizational culture determine the manner and extent to which the jail’s official polices influence officer behavior? And, how can a jail’s administration establish and maintain a policy-compatible organizational culture and a policy-compliant officer workforce?

As critical as the communication of essential officer job performance expectations are to the establishment and maintenance of a policy-compliant organizational culture, it is not the only contributor to that desired end. As I see it, the other indispensable contributor is the job performance-related feedback given by mid-level management staff.

By job-performance-related feedback I simply mean:

• Commending an officer for noteworthy acceptable performance of an essential duty (e.g., use of a proper level of physical force to restrain an inmate).

• Reprimanding an officer for noteworthy unacceptable performance of an essential duty (e.g., use of excessive physical force to restrain inmate).

In terms of the jail’s organizational culture, two very important things happen when job performance feedback is given:

• An officer is commended and will likely continue or is reprimanded and will discontinue the behavior being addressed.

• Other officers will become aware of the feedback that has been given and will likely manage their subsequent on-the-job behaviors in the same manner.

A few thoughts regarding jail officer job performance feedback:

• The provision of job performance feedback should be occurring continuously. It should be a highlighted task in the job description of every mid-level supervisor in the institution. As important as the annual performance evaluation is, it should basically serve as