In corrections, being professionally predictable can be your greatest ally to mitigate liability but can also be your worst enemy when it comes to executing the tactical. With that said, you may be asking yourself, “What is professional predictability?” It is the defining steps, the procedure, correctional staff must take, within their prescribed role and function, that aid in their efforts to meet and execute the requirements of a needed and essential policy.

Expectations and Policy

Now, since policies are developed within the context of the agency’s past failures and successes, correctional staff, especially jail and prison management, must always keep in mind that there is a level of expectation that must be met to successfully meet the overall end result, or policy. Expectation, in a perfect world, is a word of value that is centered around trust in the belief of consistent and needed action. In this case, the needed action would be the requirements (procedure) that move us towards the end results of a policy that must be implemented.

Needless to say, corrections is not a perfect world. Situations don’t always provide staff with optimal conditions in which procedures can perfectly be applied as suggested or required to meet the end result (policy). On another note, let’s not forget the manipulators, in this case, manipulative inmates, who, through an understanding of what is required, what is expected (professional predictability), find ways to misuse the procedures required to benefit their selfish wants for personal gains.

This can sometimes create a major conflict between liability and effective tactical execution. Retired Sergeant Russ Hamilton has seen this conflict present itself many times in the course of his 30-year career. “Administration, when presented with situations that expose their department to liability, tends to favor the cookie cutter approach. Policies and procedures, along with training and proof of practice, are their go-to repertoire. The problems caused by the practical application be damned!”

Consistent expectations within the application, or procedural execution (tactical) of a policy, without any area of discretion, or situational adjustment by experienced staff, can slowly erode the effectiveness of what the policy is meant to achieve. Basically, professional predictability, however beneficial in its efforts to alleviate liability, may render correctional staff helpless in dealing with the manipulation of policies solely based on good intent. It truly becomes a game of persistence (inmate) versus exhaustive effort (overwhelmed staff) in which, nine times out of ten persistence will triumph.

Weaponized PREA as an Example of Professional Predictability

A quick example of professional predictability being both an ally (alleviating liability) and an enemy (tactical) is the weaponizing of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA.) The Prison Rape Elimination Act was unanimously passed by congress in 2003. The act was the culmination of a collaborative effort between human rights, faith based, and prison rape advocacy groups. The goal of PREA is to eradicate prisoner rape in all types of correctional facilities in the country. The collaboration noted above was created in good intent and what was passed has good intent, but with that said, the missing component to the above is the needed filter that all policies of good intent must pass through before being applied into a world that would look to misuse it. In this case, the missing component is the experienced correctional staff who are burdened with the application of a policy that has now been weaponized by many inmates to garner a sense of illicit control in many of the daily and needed operations of our prisons and jails (manipulating housing, manipulating placement of staff, manipulating permissible items, manipulating gender expression for selfish gains, etc.)

Again, in a perfect world, liability would have been noted in the need of the policy, but the procedure, the how, should have been developed by those with experience in their effort to mitigate any misuse. Sadly, those who express the need for the policy, which was founded solely on good intent, have also developed the procedures without any influence from those who have the experience to filter and navigate the discretionary actions needed in case of misuse.

Joe Pomponio, Retired Lieutenant from Texas Department of Criminal Justice believes when it comes to application, when it comes to the procedure of how a policy must be executed, experienced staff must be involved in its birth. “They are the problem solvers who have to deal with the problems in real time. And, in corrections, as the problems evolve, placing limits on our staff’s efforts to resolve will eventually lead to utter chaos.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, developers of policies and procedures should note that professional predictability, in an effort to alleviate liability, should focus its strength on the overall result of the needed policy. Let the consistent expectation of what is required fall heavily into the outcome of the overall goal of what needs to be ultimately accomplished. When it comes to the procedural, the application, experienced staff should be allowed some level of discretion to meet the overall needs of the constant and ever-changing situations they are presented.