This week, Art Wallenstein made history.  The Director of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Correction and Rehabilitation became the first correctional administrator to receive the National Commission on Correctional Health Care's (NCCHC) Bernard P. Harrison Award of Merit.  The award, which was presented to him Monday morning at NCCHC's annual conference in New Orleans, is reserved for a person or group of people who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to improving health care in corrections.

With 30-years of experience in the corrections field, Wallenstein has worked in a state prison and the Bucks County, Pa., and King County, Wash., correctional systems.  As a warden in Bucks County, he pushed to improve the quality of county's correctional healthcare system and has applied that same energy towards bettering healthcare services in the correctional systems he has worked in since.

Recently, The Corrections Connection Network News talked with Wallenstein about how he became a correctional administrator and what he has accomplished throughout his career.  He also talked with CCNN about what it takes to survive in the corrections field.

Q: How did you find your way into the corrections profession?

Wallenstein: My background is alien to corrections.  I was studying international relations working for a masters degree at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1967.  I saw an announcement seeking to recruit some volunteers for the famous Eastern State Penitentiary - the first major prison built in the United States.  The recruiting was done by the Pennsylvania Prison Society - a Quaker project wholly focused on prison reform.  It was a period of significant social upheaval and I admit to being a child of the 1960s, which led me to this project.

I volunteered to teach a class in current events and was accepted by the Prison Society and Eastern State Penitentiary.  My initial effort lasted all throughout graduate school and concluded when Eastern State Penitentiary closed in late 1969 or early 1970. 

I was accepted for a fellowship at the international court of justice at The Hague, but instead worked at the prison my first summer in graduate school much to the surprise of my parents.  I passed the Foreign Service exam and then declined appointment to seek a career in corrections.

Q: Personally, why did you make that choice?

Wallenstein: The late 60s were a period of significant social upheaval in the United States - I had read about prison protests and, frankly, the education director at the prison, Erskind DeRamus was so good as a mentor to me he urged me to make this a career or at least to consider it.  I was headed for military service and had no intention of avoiding it and, after pursuing the Foreign Service from age 10, the focus of the 60s simply led me in a new direction.

My parents were incredibly depressed, not because prison work was beneath us (my parents had a significant social conscience and my father was an attorney), but simply because they knew of my love for international relations and all the work I had done in that area.

Q: Can you discuss your journey through the corrections field?

Wallenstein: After discharge from active duty in the early 70s, I accepted a position with the Pennsylvania Prison Society, but knew my role would be inside the system.  I was hired by the city of Philadelphia in [its] jail system and began to see the potential for a career.  Two wonderful mentors - deputy superintendent Edmund Lyons and lieutenant David Owens (now the director in Camden) urged me to consider a career and told me to get out of the front office [and] go back home to Illinois and look for the toughest job I could find.

I was hired at Stateville Prison in Joliet, Ill., and worked for the finest administrator I have found in this field - Warden David Brierton.  I remained at Stateville, was offered the warden's job at Joliet three years later and knew I was absolutely not ready [to work] with long term prisoners and an almost 100 percent minority population.  [It] was not where I felt comfortable as a young administrator - working with an almost exclusively long-term, minority, inner-city population that would have to wait decades for reentry.  I wasn't too good for this work - I was simply not comfortable.  I applied for a job in county corrections in early 1977 and was hired as Director of Corrections in Bucks County, Pa., and had 13 wonderful years [there] until 1990. 

I was married in 1985 and my wife and I decided to seek a job in the pacific northwest to hike, backpack and climb and also follow in the footsteps of her great uncle - Grant Humes - who moved form upstate New York to the Olympic Peninsula in search of gold at the end of the 19th century.  I was fortunate to be hired in King County, Wash., (in Seattle and the surrounding area - 1.8 million residents) and had 9.3 wonderful years [there].  A desire that our children have closer access to their relatives brought us back to the east coast and Montgomery County, Md., in late 1999. 

I have been blessed to work in wonderful environments every step of my career and to be at the right place at the right time when the field was changing dramatically and new perspectives were sought.  The mid-1970s were the period of the most significant change in American corrections since the Quakers opened Eastern State Penitentiary in the early 19th century.  Court intervention and the advent of federal intervention in literally every aspect of correctional operations caused many administrators to retire quickly and opened the door for folks like me who are willing to learn, work in the trenches, and work around the clock.  Without Edmund Lyons in Philadelphia, I never would have pursued a full-time career and Dave Brierton pushed me from being a clinical supervisor into being a deputy warden at Stateville in the middle of this turbulent period in American corrections.  I adored it - there was no Fair Labor Standards Act - we worked overtime because we wanted to learn and took every opportunity to get involved.  So it was clear the world of corrections was changing as a function of judicial intervention.

When opportunity comes in corrections and your desire is strong, you take it.  And I assume that's true in any field.  Yet, I violated my own rule when I declined the warden's job at Joliet, so I clearly felt unprepared and not ready to be a warden of a supermax in Illinois long before there was such a concept.  It was at Stateville that I met now professor Jim Jacobs - a brilliant professor of law at New York University and author of the finest sociological portrait of an American prison ever written - entitled Stateville.  He was part of my decision process to push forward in this field and we remain colleagues to this day.

My current position is Chief Administrative Officer - Director of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Correction and Rehabilitation.  It is the same job in general scope and function that I have done for 27 years as an appointed director working without any civil service protection and working through seven different changes in political leadership since 1977.  I am responsible for the overall administration of a super-county correctional system in the largest jurisdiction in Maryland - (918,000 residents [according to the] 2003 census update).

Q: What are some of the major issues you deal with as director?

Wallenstein: I have two major operational and policy areas before me.  Seeking to help in the creation of a community based mental health system to diminish the egregious use of incarceration for chronically mentally ill, non-violent offenders.  This requires both institutional program development to respond to this population at the same time we are seeking linkages throughout the entire community and its government structures to refocus this travesty that impacts corrections all over this country.  That is the major issue that is driving me more than anything.

Q: What do you like best about your job?

Wallenstein: Number one [is] working with an incredibly good staff - our staff are second to none - all our facilities (jails and community corrections [centers]) have received ACA accreditation and NCCHC healthcare accreditation.  Employee contact is essential for the modern manager and, while it is still a learning process for [us] old-timers, I am not brain dead and I intend to keep pushing it.

Number two [is] developing community linkages with the external environment is an aspect of corrections that has historically been very poorly developed and little mentoring was provided.  I found I truly enjoyed engaging any and all structures in the community to include elected officials, neighborhood groups, advocacy organizations, a vastly changing media, the faith community, hundreds of not-for-profit organizations seeking entry into the correctional system, the fascinating world of labor relations and unions and any other community-based entity that moves.  Corrections cannot whine about a lack of public respect - we need to get busy and build it ourselves.

Q: What does the Bernard P. Harrison Award of Merit mean to you?

Wallenstein: This award means everything to me.  In 1976, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Estelle v. Gamble and forever changed the direction of healthcare in corrections.  I became a warden in 1977 in Bucks County, Pa., and a public health nurse called me to her office with a newsletter about correctional healthcare standards being developed through the American Medical Association.  We had a good jail, but the medical area needed significant improvement and the community health nurse and I and a county commissioner, G. Roger Bowers, who agreed with us, engaged our first accreditation and I began my professional friendship with Jaye Anno who was a senior manager and national advocate for quality correctional healthcare that has continued for over 30 years.  The AMA project moved to become NCCHC and every facility I have worked at has achieved and re-achieved national certification.  Clearly, I became a true believer, but you must remember the context - no standards and no direction and many miserable practices until the courts nailed the field and created the "deliberate indifference" standard that with some nuances still drives correctional healthcare to this day.  The Supreme Court has become infinitely more conservative and many practices in corrections are no longer the focus of successful legal intervention, but that element with the strongest background and the clear case law continues to be correctional health care. 

This award means more to me than any other I might receive in this field.  And when I learned about it, I made it clear I was going to New Orleans to accept it and was promised 10 minutes to speak by the NCCHC president Ed Harrison. 

Q: What advice do you have for people entering the corrections field?

Wallenstein: What is essential is a combination of three elements:

[First], take any assignment that comes along and push for new opportunities, even if your co-workers do not see it as cool. 

Number two - complete your education - there are hundreds of criminal justice degree programs in America.  And now several are web-based.  Use your overtime money for tuition, not a super-expensive lifestyle and push your labor union to demand educational benefits for you.

[Number] three is very simple.  Adopt a healthy lifestyle - use wonderful new wellness programs and employee assistance opportunities if any help is needed.  Never overuse overtime opportunities.  Develop a lifestyle that you can afford from your base salary and build non-correctional relationships in your community.