This is part two of two about improving the public perception of corrections. Last week, part one focused on jails.

In the media, corrections is oftentimes portrayed as an arena for gang fights, riots, assaults and escapes. For facilities nationwide, promoting a positive image of the industry can be a battle. As media outlets scramble to fill headlines, public information officers struggle to present the truth without encouraging sensational stories.

“I really hate sweeps week on television,” says Leo LaLonde, Michigan Department of Corrections Public Information Officer. “Prisons are really sexy during sweeps week. Everyone in the media wants to get into our facility and the number of requests we get increases pretty dramatically.”

The press, for example, had no problem calling LaLonde when the television show “Prison Break” debuted on Fox. When he had a story about life-term offenders making teddy bears for traumatized children, though, none of three major Detroit newspapers gave him the time of day.

“I couldn't give that story away. One reporter told me that I had so much bad stuff to report that he didn't need to write about the good stuff,” LaLonde remembers.

State legislators, wardens and officials also face the grim reality of the industry's bad reputation.

“We do not have a good image of prisons in our communities today,” says Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard. “The public has a lack of understanding about corrections and what we've done over the years. I think many of our prisons around the country are doing much better and are much safer today than they have been in the past despite the fact that we've had a dramatic increase in our prison populations.”

Many officials think corrections has a bad public image because of what occurs behind the scenes. Beard believes that a combination of insufficient data, poor research and sensational television are all factors in the public's poor perception.

“The out of sight, out of mind mentality is one problem that we face in corrections. When we don't educate the public about prisons, we allow them to rely on stories and anecdotal reports. It's also a problem because we cannot counteract those anecdotes with good data. Right now, we're not on the same page nationwide,” Beard says.

Reporting of assault data is one example. Some states measure them per incident, while others measure assaults by the number of people involved.

“If you have five officers involved in one incident with an inmate, some states count it as one assault,” explains Beard. “Others will count it as five assaults because five officers were involved. It makes it very difficult to make national comparisons or to even come to a conclusion about assaults in prisons. You will see wide discrepancies on a state-by-state basis in these numbers.”

As officials begin to create standardized systems for data, corrections will be able to better educate the public and curtail negative impressions.

 “It is critically important that we educate the public on what happens in our prisons,” says Beard. “It's difficult to do, but we need the public to understand that the best way to handle crime is not necessarily to lock everyone up. We're seeing increases in mentally ill and drug offenders in the last 25 years. Around the country, our prisons are becoming more and more overcrowded because we're incarcerating these people rather than giving them treatment even though research tells us that confinement alone will not solve the problem.”

Beard cites that Pennsylvania has seen a 49 percent increase in offenders who are incarcerated for property and drug offenses. Although these people have broken the law, many corrections officials believe diverting them to treatment programs instead of prison will reduce inmate population, improve chances of rehabilitation, and reduce instances of violence behind bars.

“If you put less serious offenders in with serious offenders, it's very possible to just make them worse. This is also a resource issue; we're locking up more and more people and it makes it hard for the government to allocate funds to corrections. Really, we need the public to understand the system that we have, to understand what incarceration is really like,” Beard says.

Beard's focus on the big picture is complimented by those trying to improve corrections public relations locally. In Kansas, one PIO learned that positive interaction with the media can work in her favor.

“I've come to understand that we have to find a way to relate corrections to the public,” says KSDOC PIO Francis Breyne. “As a corrections agency, it's incumbent upon us to establish relationships with the media before we experience emergency situations. If the only time we communicate with media agencies is during a crisis situation, that's the only time the public hears about us and that's when their negative stereotypes develop.”

For Wyoming DOC PIO Melinda Brazzale, honesty with the press is the best policy.

“Our philosophy is that the more we tell the public, the better. We learned very on that it didn't benefit us to refuse information to the press. In Wyoming, we try to stick to the facts. If you think a reporter is distorting a story, you can confront them because they should not build a sensational story out of more than what happened,” she says.

PIOs nationwide have taken extra steps to reduce corrections' sensational nature by referring to riots as “disturbances.” According to Brazzale, word usage is critical to lessening a story's shock value.

“I think every business has special words that they use. The industry has decided that words like ‘disturbance' are better than ‘riot' because a riot seems to indicate that everything went out of control. But we have such well-trained staff that often we can stop a situation before it does, so it's not really a riot,” she explains.

“It is difficult to educate the public but that doesn't mean it can't be done,” Beard says optimistically. “Right now, there is a mentality that people want to hear about escapes and dramatic incidents. Nobody wants to watch a television program about a bunch of inmates sitting around in group therapy or studying for their GED. The shock-value is what sells, so we have to push the positive agenda of corrections so people can understand what we're all about.”

Bottom Line:

As a PIO, officer or state official, persistent public education about corrections can make a difference. A pro-active and straight-up approach with the media can soften the industry's negative stereotype.