The field of corrections received a lot of national attention in 2004, some of it positive and some of it not. Corrections issues such as prison rape and managing offenders with mental illness made a national presence.

Work began on the Prison Rape Elimination Act and the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act was signed into law. With money behind each, real improvements may be made in these areas.

But corrections practice was also put under the microscope in relation to the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib in Iraq in early 2004. Hand-picked corrections leaders spent weeks and months in Iraq in 2003 to help set up Iraq's prison system and bring it up to U.S. and International standards. When allegations surfaced that those same corrections leaders promoted abuse tactics in Iraq, many in the field were up in arms over those claims and spoke out.

The year also was full of new developments in technology, new research that brought to light best practices to solve some of the field's biggest dilemmas and it also brought loss, including the death of one noted HIV expert in corrections.

Below is a summary of The Corrections Connection's coverage of the field and news in 2004

Topics:

In the News
New Threats
Training/Staff
Jails
Emerging Technologies

In the News....

2004 began with a lengthy prison hostage standoff in Arizona that renewed discussions about the need for staff safety training.
Although the 15-day hostage situation ended peacefully through the negotiated surrender of the inmates and the release of a female officer, the situation served as a wake-up call for many to the need for tight security, better classification and training for staff.
"This is a very dangerous environment. You can look at the paper, watch the news and see horrendous violent acts against people and we bring them to one common place and bring them together. We try to tell staff that no matter how accustomed you get to being around them they are very, very dangerous," said Captain Chris Montenaro, Jail Commander for the Klamath County, Ore., County Jail.
Although hostage situations are relatively rare in corrections, the threat of those and other security break-downs has caused corrections agencies and officials to place a greater emphasis on preparing staff for the most unpleasant aspects of their jobs.
Montenaro has helped increase safety and security at the facility.
"I had a administrator tell me once that we [in corrections] often write most of our policies in blood. We have to go through a hardship first," he said. This is why Montenaro is so strict about security, even in the 144-bed Klamath County Jail.
The promotion of staff safety is a growing trend.

The war in Iraq was also on the lips of those in corrections not only because of the COs who left to fight in that country but also because of the news about abuse of Iraqi prisoners by military police and others at the Abu Ghraib prison in early 2004. As a result of the abuse, concerns arose about the backgrounds of those corrections team members who made recommendations about how Iraq should build and man its prisons.
Lane McCotter, a former head of corrections in Utah and Texas and a member of the team that was working for the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program in Iraq last spring and summer told The Corrections Connection that the team's mission was to rebuild and help the Iraqis operate their own prisons to support an emerging criminal justice system.
What made the team's work difficult was that the prisons had been looted, trashed and burned, documentation had been destroyed that would have indicated who ran the facilities and how they were operated, squatters had taken up residence in some facilities and, the regions in which they were working were considered highly dangerous.
The military police in charge of securing these correctional facilities also worked under difficult conditions - especially those at Abu Ghraib, which is where much of the alleged abuse of prisoners by the 800th Military Police Brigade took place.
"Everyone seems to be painted with the same brush. It destroys the good work of the people who have worked very hard to turn Iraq into a working nation," said Gary DeLand, corrections consultant and former corrections director for Utah, who was interviewed by CCNN earlier this year.
And, those corrections officials involved in helping to bring a more organized and modern prison system to Iraq are proud of their work.

2004 also brought setbacks. Correctional healthcare lost an HIV educator and leader this year when Dr. Stephen Tabet died unexpectedly this fall.
Tabet was able to live out his desire to educate others in the field by working as an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington, a physician at Harborview Medical Center's Madison Clinic in Seattle, an educator at the Northwest AIDS Education Training Center and a researcher at the HIV Vaccine Trials Network.  In addition, he was a former deputy editor of the Hepatitis Education Prison Project (HEPP) Report, which provides information about HIV and other infectious diseases to corrections healthcare professionals. 
According to Anne DeGroot, Co-Editor of the HEPP Report, Tabet was always available and accessible to his colleagues who had questions and he will be missed.
"He was a very hands-on person," said DeGroot, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Community Health at Brown University and a physician for Connecticut's Department of Corrections.  "He really cared passionately about the education of [healthcare] providers in corrections."

New Threats:

Since 9/11 the country has been increasingly wary of terrorist plots, and prisons and jails are included in the list of vulnerable targets. As a result corrections officials have begun to prepare against these kinds of acts and keep an eye on extreme religious groups as well.
While the vast majority of inmates practicing religion in prison do so in a peaceful and constructive way, there are groups of inmates with extreme views who hide behind religion in order to commit crimes and pass on their beliefs.
"Particularly in this post-9/11 environment, analysts recognize that the prison can be a breeding ground for all kinds of security risks under the guise of being a religion and that's what is so tough - it's the balancing act [between religious rights and security threats] that corrections officials have to tackle," said Brian Levin, Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
Corrections officials need to think carefully about how they respond to these threats, recognize inmates' right of religion and, at the same time, be cognizant of, and take action against, groups that represent a threat inside or outside the prison. If they don't, then inmates may prevail either by furthering their cause or getting official status in court.
Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League said extremist groups also pose some of the same problems in that they are involved in organized crime or other types of criminal activity.
Furthermore, extremists who are incarcerated want to recruit others there. One example, he said, is with the members of the Montana Freemen group who were jailed in the 90s. While in jail, Pitcavage said, they started teaching their extremist tactics to others.
According to published reports earlier this spring, the BOP has made changes since the review was initiated to better screen religious services providers. And, in testimony before the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security in October 2003, BOP Director Harley Lappin said that the agency has been sharing information with the FBI, National Joint Terrorism Task Force and other intelligence agencies regarding inmates with terrorist ties.
Efforts like these became more widespread in 2004.

An unfortunate result of the war on terror for corrections agencies was the trimming of corrections budgets. Often one of the casualties was funding for gang suppression.
Fighting gang activity on the street and inside prisons takes a joint effort among criminal justice agencies and, in recent years, this partnership has become increasingly difficult to maintain.
"[When] 9/11 happened gang units ceased to exist [in many areas] and now, with the budget crisis that everybody is facing in corrections, law enforcement, the whole nine yards -- there's no money for anyone to stay up on current trends and the gang members are saying 'It's party time. Let's get busy,'" said Lina Presley, Director of Operational Support Services for the Indiana Department of Correction and a board member of the National Major Gang Task Force.
Presley and others say that corrections, for the most part, is working hard to keep tabs on incoming and active security threat group members, but communication and assistance from the law enforcement community is sorely needed to do the job well.
Presley explained that, before 9/11, many communities, including rural ones, were making headway in breaking up gangs and "making it uncomfortable" for them to operate. But when resources needed to shift towards homeland security nationwide, gang prevention activities suffered in some communities.
Not only are gang units being disbanded or their focuses shifted, but there is little money to keep gang investigators trained on the latest information about street gangs and STGs, which is changing constantly.
Some communities, however, have been able to pull together prevention units despite the funding setbacks. In Arizona's Maricopa County, the sheriff has put together a jail intelligence unit that is comprised of 10 officers, two sergeants and a unit supervisor, who oversee gang identification and safety and security for the county's 8,000 inmates in five facilities.
Paco Marcell, supervisor of the unit, said that a very active and supported unit can help corrections and other law enforcement agencies keep an eye on gang trends on the street and as they float into the jail.
Efforts such as these could serve as models for other agencies in the coming year.

Agencies did step up their terrorism training this year to be part of a community-response to threats.
"More frequently we play a back-up role. We have the manpower, extraction devices and often we are called upon to establish a perimeter security or traffic control," said Martin Horn Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correciton.
Horn said that although the corrections emergency response team is not considered a first-responder unit, it is important to city officials that the members participate.
Karl Mercer, an instructor in terrorism preparedness, believes that corrections departments need to be as prepared as any other government agency for a terrorist attack.
"Everyone nowadays, whether the street officer or corrections officer, we all still have to be aware our life is never going to be the same again," said Mercer, who is also a former commander of the Bomb Squad for the Henrico County, Va.
In September this year, the third annual Mock Disaster helped train emergency response teams.
Steve Morrison, Executive Director of NLECTTC, which hosted the Mock Disaster, said past participants at the event include anyone who would be "remotely involved with a large scale incident response" including EMS, HazMat tams, the FBI, police, fire, medical examiners, health departments, search teams and others.
But Morrison believes that corrections agencies should also be involved in the training, which is offered to attendees for free.
"If an incident occurs and they have to evacuate a prison or if there is a chemical introduced to the HVAC system of a prison, they [the inmates] have to go somewhere," he said.

Training:

Corrections agencies in 2004 took on other types of training to meet the developing challenges they face.

Mental health problems plague many people who are incarcerated, but the expense of healthcare coupled with budget cutbacks has crippled many corrections departments when it comes to addressing the needs of mentally ill offenders.  Nevertheless, some departments are forging ahead.
The Illinois Department of Corrections has found a way to better serve this population without plunging into financial ruin; it has partnered with Argosy University to provide interns to the DOC to assess and treat inmates' mental health issues.  Thanks to this arrangement, offenders are receiving better mental health care and students are gaining hands-on experience in psychology.
Argosy students now work in the several correctional facilities doing their practicums, internships and post-doctoral residencies.  Ultimately, the DOC hopes that by adding additional, highly qualified manpower to its staff, it will be able to provide better mental health services to more of its inmates.  In fact, the department has already begun using students to administer personality and intelligence tests to some inmates during classification rather than relying only on intake interviews for that information.

Another training focus in corrections has been on leadership.
The NIC has focused in recent years on the leadership training of managers, supervisors and executives in prisons and jails in an effort to raise the level of performance in corrections and increase professionalism.
"It used to be if I ran a good prison or managed a good jail, then that was good enough [to be a leader]. But the senior level managers need to look at whether their values are right, how do I prove that, how do I make changes and collaborate with others and build political coalitions so we can be more effective," said Robert Brown, Chief of the National Institute of Corrections' Academy Division. "We're not just the entity that is out in the woods someplace -- out in the far flung part of the state."
Being effective as a modern leader also has bearing on personal sustainability in the field.
"Let there be one good riot or disturbance and the political nature is such that you can find yourself out of a job because you have failed to meet the public's expectations," Brown said.
Some agencies pay heed to this and lead accordingly and some agencies don't, but they all should as corrections increasingly mirrors the operations of American business - where outcome management and a quality product are top priority.
NIC has become a wealth of information on a variety of leadership topics and as part of that, leadership training for women has emerged.
And, it might seem natural considering the string of women being promoted to corrections' top positions in recent months, but for every one woman who makes it to the top, there are two that are left trapped under the glass ceiling. Women in corrections need a little push sometimes to get to the top, some say.
"It's probably one of the most difficult non-traditional careers to be involved with [as a woman]," said Evelyn Bush, Correctional Program Specialist at the National Institute of Corrections for the Executive Leadership Training for Women program. Bush, who was also a former Deputy Director in the Connecticut Department of Corrections speaks to the women who attend the NIC training from experience.
NIC has tried to address these issues in its training of executive and mid-level women managers and offer women in the field strategies for making advancement happen for themselves and other women in their organizations.

Corrections agencies also focused more on staff wellness this year and how to bring new and talented staff to the job.
Administrators and others who have developed stress and wellness programs for corrections workers note that the daily stress of life combined with aspects of corrections can make staff unhealthy mentally, physically and spiritually.
Getting staff in tune with their lives beyond the job can make them more effective on the job, they say.
"I stress that staff need to keep their lives in balance. Being a CO or a parole agent or probation officer is a wonderful job, [but] especially when they are starting out, it can be all consuming," said Michael Raneses, a parole unit supervisor for the California Department of Corrections and the founder of the California-based Corrections Staff Fellowship Ministries.
There is good reason to feel overwhelmed by a corrections job. Increasingly staff are feeling overworked as layoffs and prison closures occur, officers are often the only contacts for inmates, their families, attorneys and others and, like other public safety positions, officers put their lives on the line.
"The jobs are demanding to the point where a corrections worker can feel just plain 'worn out.' There will always be more offenders than staff, people do not like being told what to do... and there are physical risks," said Gary Cornelius, author of the book Stressed Out! Strategies for Living and Working with Stress in Corrections and Classification Supervisor for the Fairfax County, Va., Adult Detention Center.
But if these factors cannot be changed, then staff must work on other areas of stress. Job balance is just one recent focus for improving staff stress, but there are others.
In Oklahoma, for example, corrections administrators surveyed staff and learned that caring for elderly parents was weighing heavily on their minds, while other agencies have instituted anger management classes and new age stress reduction measures. These are great first steps to improving staff wellness.

Agencies also focused more on bringing new staff into the fold.
Corrections leaders say that corrections needs to be attractive to new recruits and some are trying to make it so. In Hillsborough County, Fla., for example, Jail Commander David Parrish has tried some new strategies to recruit officers including a proposal for a day care on site.
Beyond this dilemma, the shrinking potential candidate pool is another obstacle.
According to Leslie LeMaster, Correctional Program Specialist for the National Institute of Corrections, candidates for corrections positions are no longer knocking on the doors of jails and prisons.
"The workforce in general is smaller now. We are looking for a specific type of person  and it's harder than ever to find them," she said.
LeMaster said agencies that have been successful in finding good employees who want to stay in the field are those who have gone beyond the traditional "passive" candidate searches in newspapers. Instead they have partnered with community colleges and other institutions to find people who have a passion for the business.
Job fairs are another avenue for new recruits. With these plans in place, corrections seems to be well on its way to attracting new candidates.

Jails:

Jail leaders in 2004 banded together to resolve some of the dilemmas specific to their facilities. One are of improvement was in jail standards.
"We've seen in the last 30 years tremendous improvement across the board and we'll see better facilities and better training in the future, but it's a long haul," said Rod Miller, a consultant and founder of Community Resource Services, Inc., which has been working on jail standards issues for more than 30 years.
One recent change to the standards landscape is the American Correctional Association's approval of new Adult Local Detention Facility standards that will require jails to specifically measure their compliance and track their performance.
Miller, who helped work on and review these new standards, said the nation's best practices for jails are embodied in this latest version of the voluntary standards. In order to be accredited by the ACA, a facility must meet a certain percentage of these standards.
But, for many jails, the cost and staff time commitment involved in preparing for an audit is too high.
Knowing this, some states are working on their own accreditation procedures as a middle step to ACA accreditation, while some facilities create their policies and procedures using the ACA standards as a guide only. There are others that still meet only the minimum standards required of them.
Separately, the NIC has addressed jail standards from a different perspective. It has focused on training jail inspectors and developing a training curriculum for those inspectors to improve consistency of jail operations from that angle.
Either way, standards are appearing on the radar screens of state and local jurisdictions more frequently.

Legal issues have also emerged as a high priority for jail officials. While state correctional institutions typically fall under the control of a high-level state department with its own battery of attorneys, local jails do not always have the luxury of that kind of support. What that means for jail administrators is they need to pay attention to the legal landscape and make sure they create a professional atmosphere in their facilities.
"I think that it is always the sheriff or the commissioner of corrections that sets the tone for behavior. You push the supervision down. Your immediate superintendents are responsible to you. Everyone understands what is expected of them and what they need to do to report up," said Suffolk County, Mass., Sheriff Andrea Cabral.
Promoting a professional atmosphere is important for reducing inmate litigation of all kinds.
Even though corrections has seen a drop in frivolous lawsuits since the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act in 1996, which imposed lawsuit filing fees and required offenders to exhaust administrative remedies prior to filing, those cases that do come forward can have a profound effect on jails.
A survey by Harvard University Law School Assistant Professor Margo Schlanger shows that although jails are the recipients of far fewer lawsuits in comparison to prisons, they are burdened much more by those fewer lawsuits.
For example, large jails in the survey reported higher annual damages for lawsuits than prisons. Also, a higher percentage of large jails settle class actions rather than go all the way to trial and test their policy and procedure there - preferring to pay up front and negotiate rather than try their chances in court.
Jails are learning that by improving standards and professionalism they can reduce the lawsuits that are being filed.
In the wake of last year's Brad H. case in New York City, jails became the focus of new pre-release efforts.
"The emerging issue with jails is continuity of care both for inmates who arrive who may be on medications that are not on the jail formulary - such as hepatitis C -- or for other ailments that have to be addressed. Interrupting that care could be bad," said William Rold, a health care attorney and legal expert who serves on the National Commission on Correctional Health Care board.
The Rikers facility instituted a new pre-release plan for these offenders so that at release they would have connections to resources and medications. Other jails will have to follow developments like these closely.

Another emerging legal issue for all of corrections has been highlighted with the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act last fall. As a result, corrections officials will soon be required to put into place policies and procedures for handling allegations and investigations of rape as well as education programs.
Some correctional legal experts say that facilities and corrections departments should be ready for a new battery of litigation that may follow the implementation of these requirements.
According to Lynn Lund, a correctional consultant and expert in corrections law, agencies should think ahead about how they are going to handle allegations of prison rape.
"This new rape elimination act is going to be as big as anything corrections has had. We have to have a totally different mindset on this. We have to be proactive and think prevention. It is clear, the courts have ruled that an inmate has no legal capacity to consent to a sexual encounter," said Lund.
Corrections administrators need to educate themselves on the requirements they must follow in relaiton to prevention and documentation of prison rape if they are to stay out of the legal fray.

Emerging technologies:

In 2004 several newly developed technologies came to the forefront and may soon have a place in daily operations in corrections.

The annual Mock Prison Riot is a hotbed of new technologies for corrections officials to test.
"That's the best part about the riot, they can get modifications without having to buy it and test it. That helps everybody in the whole food chain because it helps the next guys as well," said Collins White, President of Defenshield, Inc.
Defenshield, is a stand-alone, ballistic-rated portable shield that stands between six and eight feet tall.
Jim Marr of Paradigm Tactical Products showed off the Frisker device, which is a hand worn metal detector that allows those who use it to still have their hands free to retain full dexterity. According to Marr, the Frisker can detect something as small as a staple behind someone's cheek or a handcuff key in someone's mouth.
He added that the product is best used when the officer has two, one strapped to each hand. It is powered by a nine-volt battery and indicates that it has found metal by vibrating in the wearer's hand.
Also in use at the Mock Riot was a bone conducting microphone headset developed by Sensory Devices. This microphone and speaker headset differs from a traditional microphone in that it detects the vibrations in a person's face when he or she speaks and converts the vibration into a signal in a hand-held radio. To pick up speech, special bone conduction speakers, which are also in contact with the head, decipher the signal.
IWT's voice translator technology was first developed with a focus on the military. In fact, the hands-free device, which translates English into other languages, is currently being used by forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now in its fourth generation, the translator was tested by tactical teams at the Mock Riot in a scenario where Arabic-speaking inmates had barricaded themselves into a part of the prison recreation yard after a fight. The tactical teams used the translator in combination with an acoustic device to amplify the team's message and directions for the inmates.
Torfino Enterprises showcased two technologies at the Mock Riot including its vibrating metal detector, Metal Tech 1400.
According to Nick Torfino, Vice President of the company, the detector's silent vibration notification gives tactical teams an advantage over the person they are scanning. But that is not the only feature of the product.
This device detects metal on all sides and requires only one finger to operate. Torfino explains that crevices such as under the arms are one area that can be easily searched utilizing this feature.
Torfino's infra-red flashlight, Ice Light, was also tested.
The hand-held Ice Light has 15 light-omitting diodes in the night vision spectrum. When wearing night vision goggles, team members can see an illuminated area where the Ice Light is deployed.
Clarifying Technologies also showed Mock Riot participants its wall-climbing robot, which uses a patented impeller to create negative pressure underneath the device and allows it to defy gravity.
The 7 inch x 10 inch robot has two sets of wheels that are independently driven and have a special rubber tread that helps to pull it up a wall, according to Connor.
Mounted on the robot is a color camera that is attached to the end of a boom. The robot can be driven so that it can hover in one place, employ the boom and pan the camera to look into a window or over a wall.

Corrections officials in the Northeast this year met to learn about other new technologies under development. At the annual NTPAC (Northeast Technology Product Assessment Committee) meeting they learned about developing technologies such as layered voice analysis.
Today, officials can interview subjects using layered voice analysis software and within minutes can learn if the interviewee is attempting to deceive, how much thought is happening as question is answered and when the truth is being told.
"The [LVA] software analyzes thoughts, shows stress, and inaccuracies. Truth is easy [to detect] but with deception, [the software] can tell you about why it is being made," said Richard Parton, CEO of V Worldwide, which is the distributor of the software developed by an Israeli company called Nemesysco.
The software uses mathematical algorithms to track and analyze vocal patterns and ultimately identifies states of stress, excitement, uncertainty and deception.
Also at NTPAC, officials learned about a new kind of walk-through metal detector.
Engineering Technology, Inc. (ETI) has a Walk-Through Metal Detector Test System that was designed specifically for corrections agencies, with support from Department of Defense's Technical Support Working Group.  The system is comprised of a thrust arm that is mounted horizontally on two vertical rails. The arm moves up and down and back and forth through the walls of a metal detector with a carrier block attached to it.  Test objects, which can vary by size and include items such as eyeglasses, keys, belt buckles, aluminum blades and steel guns, are embedded in that carrier block.  As the objects attached to the horizontal beam pass through the metal detector at various speeds, the equipment is tested for accuracy.

In a separate conference related to Community Corrections Technologies in Boston in 2004, officials also learned about advances being made in drug testing.
In Michigan parolees and probationers are under corrections supervision using remote alcohol testing by radio frequency. The product, known as SCRAM for Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor by AMS (Alcohol Monitoring Systems Inc.), is being testing in three sites nationwide to detect alcohol consumption by measuring ethanol as it migrates through the skin.
The technology requires no officer participation and works much like electronic monitoring where an offender has to "check in" at an assigned time to a modem that reads the blood alcohol concentration from the device.
As with an electronic monitoring bracelet, an offender with SCRAM wears a cuff-like device on his ankle 24 hours a day, seven days a week that has a sensor to measure the ethanol levels given off by perspiration from his skin. The measurements can be dictated by the monitoring agency on a predetermined schedule.
In Iowa, as probation caseloads were growing and resources were shrinking corrections officials created the Iowa Corrections Offender Network (ICON), which now links the DOC's prisons, residential facilities and field offices so they can trade data back and forth.
After deciding to use Microsoft Windows 2000 servers, with one active directory for centralized security, and Windows SQL Server 2000 databases, the DOC worked with the its vendor to determine what information needed to be included in ICON and how that information should flow through the system.  Together, their mission was to build an "integrated corrections management system that saves criminal justice staff time and state resources."