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| Eliminating concerns |
| By Sarah Etter, News Reporter |
| Published: 05/07/2007 |
The Estimate of Adversarial Sequence Interruption Model (EASI) might sound like a complex scientific procedure, but it is actually the protocol developed by Sandia National Laboratories to test the effectiveness of security around nuclear plant facilities. SNL used EASI to ensure terrorists couldn't sneak into the facilities and detonate bombs.While SNL was attempting to keep terrorists out, corrections officials realized that EASI could be used in reverse to secure corrections perimeters and keep offenders in. EASI standards soon became known as vulnerability assessments for corrections folks. “We basically took SNL's process and created vulnerability assessments from that,” explains J.T. O'Brien, a seasoned corrections veteran who works with corrections consulting firm, Creative Corrections. “We worked with SNL, and we received funding from the National Institute of Justice to review facility and perimeter safety.” O'Brien works as part of a five-person team of corrections security experts who travel to prisons and jails conducting thorough assessments and recommending improvements. Corrections.com spoke to O'Brien from his Las Vegas office to find out the biggest weaknesses in corrections and the best way to handle them. Corrections.com: What happens during a typical vulnerability assessment? O'Brien: Before we even show up at a facility, we review the policies and procedures on the books. That's an important part of this. But we don't just look at what you have in writing. We also monitor staffs to make sure they are completing those tasks. Then we slip into an inmate's mindset. Everyone knows inmates are pretty creative when it comes to trying to escape. If we identify a weakness, like a hole in a fence or a security breach, we physically carry out an escape scenario in training and see if we can beat their systems. We evaluate every part of facility functions to see where a particular agency is at risk. Once we've finished these components, we make a list of weaknesses. We like to call them concerns. If you address each concern, and we do quite a bit of that while we are on-site, you enhance the overall security of your facility by fixing numerous glitches in electronics, staff training or procedures. CC: How long does the assessment usually take? O'Brien: We spend four 12-hour days at a facility so we can assess morning, day, and evening shifts. You really need to see how the institution functions at every minute. Everyone knows how a prison runs during the day. But everyone also knows the majority of escapes are at night. A regular security audit is done during the day and you fail to see bad practices which occur on evenings and mornings. CC: What are some of the common weaknesses you see? O'Brien: We find the most problems in security procedures and policies. The policy might be written really well, but either usually there is a breakdown in the supervision of staff performance. When that happens, you aren't ensuring employees are doing what you've asked. Many times, staff finds an easier way to do something. If they have to walk around a fence to check a system, they will always want to find another way than what is in the writing. For instance, instead of doing a three-tap test to make sure fence security is working, staff will just shake the fence. But the three-tap test duplicates cutting the fence. Shaking the fence is another part of the system and the three-tap test is designed to make sure that if an inmate gets a set of cutters and is snipping your wire, the noise from those snips alarms the fence. The fence system might work perfectly, or the procedures are perfect. Yet, nobody observes staff testing on a daily basis, so bad habits turn into routine behavior which turns into vulnerabilities. CC: How do corrections officials react to the assessments? O'Brien: People that run prisons are very vulnerable to information about their facility. They tend to be secretive and they really don't want people to know everything that goes on. That is one difficulty. But my hat is off to those who open their doors to this type of evaluation because it shows many weaknesses. Usually, it's a list of 80 to 120 concerns about your operation. It's tough for these professionals to open themselves up to be essentially embarrassed. You know how your security is. You see it every day. Day in, day out, you take care of business. When an outside group comes in and finds fault with that, it's a problem. It is a humbling experience. Most professionals are tentative about this. But in the end, we're doing this for public safety. That's our goal, just as much as it is your goal as a warden or official. |
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