Work Force Project Takes First Step of
“Virtual Journey”

By Lia Gormsen

On May 12, ACA hosted its first webinar, “We Can Go to War, but Can We Go to Work?” Ed Barlow, president of Creating the Future Inc., moderated the event, which focused on philosophical and practical elements concerning whether 18- to 21-year-olds should work as correctional officers — and, if so, when and how best to prepare them for the job.

More than 100 participants dialed in to hear speakers’ presentations over the phone and logged on to see corresponding PowerPoint presentations online. Audience members participated by typing questions into the Web site’s chat function for all participants to see. ACA’s Center for the Work Force of the Future put the webinar together, beginning a “virtual journey” to enhance the services that the work force center provides to ACA members.

When 18-year-olds are properly trained, Gary Johnson, regional vice president of The GEO Group Inc., is all for hiring them. Five percent of GEO’s correctional officers are under 21, and Johnson knows plenty of successful corrections professionals who began their careers as COs before turning 21. Johnson himself joined the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at 18. One reason for the successes of this older generation, he said, might be that in the 1970s, people who joined corrections already had family or friends in the field and, therefore, a basic understanding of what the job required. “They were familiar with the culture of corrections,” he said. Compared with 30 years ago, the professional standards are much greater for correctional officers, and Johnson finds that people entering the field now are not as prepared. A proliferation of drugs and violence in correctional facilities, along with more dangerous gang cultures, means that today’s officers have very different job expectations. Accordingly, Johnson argued, better training and preparation is necessary to ready teenagers for work in the field. Along with initial preparation, a path to professional development to retain young people is necessary. This kind of professional development, Barlow added, could begin with courses in secondary schools that set students on correctional career paths.

“Why are we, as correctional administrators, proactively addressing work force issues?” asked the next speaker, J. David Donahue, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Correction. For one, Donahue said, the sheer growth of the prison population mandates that agencies are proactive in managing their work forces. He also noted that many older prisons were built in rural communities that are now becoming urbanized. More correctional facilities are competing with businesses for employees, making it imperative for agencies to focus on staff development to retain talented workers. Indiana has several initiatives in place to usher in new employees and increase the chances they will stay with the agency beyond their first few years. Some of these include: technological advances such as the use of PDAs (personal digital assistants) and Web-based training; a pre-hire orientation program; a one-year mentorship program for 18- and 19-year-olds; and an “outside in” program in which 18- and 19-year-olds are hired in administrative capacities and eventually move on to security positions. 

Tim Albin, chief deputy of the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office in Oklahoma, offered numerous ways the Tulsa County Jail recruits young people. It has a partnership with Tulsa’s Boys Scouts Explorer program that exposes boys and girls to the jail as young adults. Also, Albin explained, the agency has good contacts with area high school coaches, with whom it works to recruit athletes who may be interested in college but did not earn athletic scholarships. The agency reimburses employees attending college up to $1,000 a semester, an incentive that draws a large number of motivated people to the agency. When the agency hires someone just out of high school, that person is paired with a mentor who begins to advise the new hire on career path options. “We try to identify: Do you want to be a supervisor? Do you want to be a certified officer? …Where are you interested in going? We try to tap into those wants and desires and use those as motivation to get them where they are going,” Albin explained. Mentors frame correctional officer work as a jumping off point to a number of great career options in criminal justice.

As far as whether 18 years is an age at which people are ready to undertake a correctional officer role, Albin firmly believes yes. He has not found 18- and 19-year-olds’ judgment to be any better or worse than his older employees’. When the younger cohort does run into trouble, it is usually outside of the facility, he finds. In addition, Albin uses his younger employees’ knowledge to the advantage of the agency, picking their brains on the latest technology. “I challenge them all the time to send me letters and information on better, faster, smarter ways to do things.” And, he was happy to report that he often gets suggestions that the agency is able to implement. One interesting phenomenon that Albin has observed among young employees is that many of them were raised in nontraditional families, with an incarcerated parent, for example, or a mother who worked multiple jobs. That could mean that the child grew up with more freedoms, which, Albin has found, can make conforming to the rigid correctional environment a tough transition. Overall, though, Tulsa County has had much success hiring 18-year-olds. Albin finds that they have positive attitudes and are eager to jump into the job — though the eagerness can border on impatience when they don’t feel they are getting enough job responsibility, what Albin called the “I want it now” attitude.

Cindy Miller, program/project coordinator at the University of North Texas, addressed higher education’s role in working with high schools to recruit young people. She focused on the career cluster courses that prepare high school students for correctional service. After her presentation, Barlow noted that if corrections courses do not have a significant presence in high schools, the profession will not be able to position itself as a career option for young people.

The final presenter, Kevin Jacobson, a criminal justice instructor at Burleson High School, is working with the National Partnership for Careers in Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security to develop an effective corrections curriculum for his students. He believes that the last two years of high school is the time to weed out those students not mature enough to work in a correctional environment. He employs job shadowing as part of the corrections career cluster at Burleson, so students get a taste for what the job will entail early on in their training. Jacobson is currently working with ACA to establish a provisional correctional officer certification exam that will measure students’ preparedness for the job upon graduation. Like the other presenters, Jacobson believes 18-year-olds are capable, with proper training, to be successful COs.

Barlow concluded the webinar with three strategies he believes should be employed now to maximize corrections’ labor pool. First, he said that agencies must extend the productive work life of the soon-to-retire correctional officer by several years. Second, turnover must be reduced with more effective prescreening of applicants and better mentoring that includes advice on career path options. Finally, Barlow believes that the U.S. education system must do a better job of preparing 18-year-olds for careers by rethinking the high school education system. He points to the European system that has built up career cluster programs that prepare students not attending college for a profession once they graduate.

Lia Gormsen is assistant editor of On the Line.

Unrestricted educational support for the webinar was provided by The GEO Group Inc.

Click for Executive Director's Corner