Organizing for an emerging crisis inside Arizona prisons
Arizona prisons are
becoming more complicated and more difficult to operate because of
mismanagement styles creating numerous structural flaws, human resource
barriers for growth and staff development, internal cultural biases, flawed
personnel processes and broken down communication lines that has stretched the
agency to a near breaking point in the near future.
Critics have been
assailing the agency with publicized management flaws that will eventually
strain the current administration and cause a unique conflict between truth and
myths as well as friends and foe within the organization as tension builds and
operations structures continue to fail those in leadership positions and who
serve at will for the state’s governor.
This article is written to help guide the
agency back to a logical and rational position of visionary thinking and
strategic planning that is lacking today. For evidence, look at today’s dismal
level of performance, excessive lawsuits and negative media exposure revealing
the fundamental systematic failures occurring around the clock illustrating the
difficulties of managing a sinking ship.
These cumulative degrees of complexity
consists of overcrowding, heavy influx of mentally ill persons, delayed and
extensive medical care burdens that includes an aging prison population with
increased disabilities, an increase in gang violence and young violent
offenders, a reduction in inmate jobs and dwindling budgets for physical plant
upkeep of dilapidated buildings in dire need of remodeling, construction and
waste water expansion plans.
Few believe the Arizona Department of
Corrections is prepared to handle such a crisis and no emergency legislative
plans have been implemented to ask for more funding to maintain a staffing
level and operational standard designed to keep the public safe from
incarcerated offenders throughout the state.
Today, no one inside the agency does not
believe in the need for changing the scale of operation and redesigning their
scope of business orders in order to address these challenging issues as well
as costs, adequately trained people and risks associated with the mixture of
control and support for operating the prisons sound and according to
established national correctional standards statewide.
However, since no one is working on a
blueprint to preserve the agency’s effectiveness and operational level, there
must be an influx of new or fresh ideas coming into the organization soon in
order to find and retain productive and sound structures within as the
populations become more diverse and more complex to handle on a daily basis.
This hesitation to address upcoming issues has
delayed the deployment of skilled and knowledgeable people within the
organization into those areas needing critical support for sustained
performance expectations and management accountability.
The administration needs to rethink their
boundaries and centralize activities that are similar to other systems
nationwide. Shifting resources to handle upcoming problems will eliminate
crisis intervention and allow sound growth of better practices through
pre-planning and anticipating agency needs.
These new boundaries should include: adult
prison and physical plant operations, medical and mental healthcare,
contractual oversight with focus on creating teams that will work on content
and delivery of the appropriate resources required to handle these challenges
that lay ahead. Much emphasis should be the inclusion of local managers to
allow climatic and cultural influences to be included in the resolution or
problem-solving techniques. Multiple teams should be formed with permission to
adapt any geographical needs identified through a legitimate assessment
process.
A team should be designed to handle those
services, and tasks of every different prison complex throughout the state and
assign a team leader to handle each functional areas: operations, supply,
legal, communications, human resource management, prison bed population
management, and allow these team members
to identify and create a list of tasks to consolidate and refine current
operations to support these new challenges coming up within a short period of
time as the clock keeps ticking away at the inevitable crisis. In addition,
these team leaders should focus on redundant or potentially redundant
duplication of elements that can save money in the long run through efficient
management of our fiscal resources.
These team leader assessments should create a
new model that has evolved around anticipated needs and problems. Instead of
having people in Central Office work on this task, you should take the work
where the team leader is located and work from that location with the eventual
integration of all team leaders coming together with their plans and models to
resolve the crisis ahead. From these assessments there should be a globally
integrated model that would evolve into a new structural way of thinking inside
the agency.
Such a concept would re-design the current
culture and formulate a new cultural transformation that accurately reflects on
real needs and real resolutions with ownership to the change and a new way
employees can adapt to the ways of working out a crisis as a team rather than a
few individuals.
Team leaders should be provided with new ideas
how to perform these assessments and parameters should:
- Don’t
standardize more than is necessary. Allow geographical adaptations to
occur to fit the needs of each complex. Identify areas problematic e.g.
inmate risk assessment tools and job classification matrixes that include
positions, wages, educational or vocational impacts etc.
- Fit
the technology to the process, not vice versa – consider technology
upgrades to meet the future needs of the agency in full circle fashion.
- Prefer
standard principles to detailed rules, customs and practices already
sanctioned and endorsed by national accreditation institutions.
- Listen
to all the voices from all areas concerned – allow better team contributions,
communication and processes to develop trust and confidence of those
processes identified and recommended.
- Implement
new processes from the top with adequate consultation prior to the change.
Allow change to occur if it benefits the new process identified.
Central office should consider downsizing and
develop new strategies shed traditional roles and provide local controls to
those prison complexes throughout the state.
This leaves the upper echelon to focus on
organizational values, strategy development, and managing the business in line
with established values, expectations and performance standards.
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