As the 19 students in Washburn University's newly developed jails course toured county correctional facilities in Kansas and Missouri this past April, many of them began to realize, for the first time, the career opportunities that jails present.

Getting these graduate and undergraduate students into the facilities to witness the daily grind of jail operations was a good way to acquaint the future corrections professionals with how corrections works at the local level, said course professor Ken Kerle, Managing Editor of American Jails magazine.

According to Kerle, jails are too often overlooked in criminal justice curriculums nationwide.  This new Washburn University course, which is dedicated entirely to jails, takes a step towards shining a light on the local correctional facilities, which sometimes live too deep in the shadows of the nation's prisons, he said.

"People who go to college and universities and get criminal justice, criminology or social science degrees ought to understand [jails] and not get into a situation where they come out of the [academic] institution and have a very poor knowledge of the [correctional] institution in their own back yard, which is their local jail," said Kerle.

Kerle teaches the new jails course along with Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice Ted Heim.  Together, Kerle and Heim designed the course to take place over two weekends, to minimize travel for Kerle, who lives on the east coast, and to make the class accessible for non-traditional students who work full-time jobs during the week or have families.

The course debuted during the first and third weekends of April at Kansas City Community College in Kansas, where Washburn offers a few courses each semester.  Students included graduates and non-graduates, criminal justice majors and non-majors, and distance learners, who were taking courses online, but signed up to take the jails course in person in Kansas City.

"It was a convenient way for some students to pick up a course and not interfere with their [other] work," said Heim.

During the two weekends, the compact course covered a multitude of issues pertaining to jails, including the distinction between prisons and jails, mentally ill offenders, jail regionalization, direct supervision, design alternatives, audits and inspections.

The professors used Kerle's book, Exploring Jail Operations, as a guide for course content.

"We pretty much followed the table of contents of the book, but we took kind-of an issues approach," said Heim.  "We tried to highlight some of the recent developments on controversial issues."

According to Kerle, who has over 30 years of experience researching, teaching and writing about jails, this text was published last year to highlight jail issues that may have been overlooked elsewhere.

"The truth is the majority of these academic texts rarely do anything on jails; they just kind-of ignore it.  I wrote this book, specifically, because a lot of these academic texts don't [focus] on what I feel is important for jails," said Kerle.  "[You] never see anything on jail inspection [or] jail training as far as that goes."

Kerle's book has three chapters dedicated to policies and procedures, inspections and training.  He said training is especially important to ensure that the people who work in jails in this country are prepared for situations they will face on the job.

"You can't expect to have a professionally-run jail system if you are not going to give [staff] the training," said Kerle. 

Kerle added that professionalizing jails through training and standards also helps to attract quality people to work there.  Currently, most jails only require their employees to have high school diplomas, making jail jobs less enticing to college graduates, who want work that is challenging and will open up additional opportunities for them, he said.

Kerle hopes that criminal justice students will start to recognize and consider those growing professional opportunities in the local corrections field after learning about how training and standards are currently evolving for jails.

Beyond covering professionalism in jails, Washburn's jails course also focuses on expanding career opportunities for women in jails.

"There is a tremendous future for women, particularly those who would like to be jail administrators," said Kerle.  "I think women are going to continue to play a more important role in this."

Kerle added that all criminal justice students, both male and female, should be introduced to jails while they are in school.  Too few colleges and universities have courses, which achieve that goal, however, he said.

"They're just not out there," said Kerle. 

According to Kerle, Washburn's course proved to be a success and he would like to see more schools offer a similar class for aspiring corrections professionals.

"This one at Washburn was just a pleasant surprise," Kerle said.  "Hopefully, [Washburn] will [offer the course] again.  This is what I would like to see happen in every state."

Resources:

Heim ted.heim@washburn.edu

Kerle 301-790-3930, ext: 22