More than 30 years ago, Glenn Goord - like any recent college grad -- sent out his resume looking for a job that fit his qualifications. With a major in Psychology, he thought that the social services agencies would be calling - instead it was corrections.

Today, as Commissioner for the New York State Department of Correctional Services, Goord has made an impact in the correctional field as a leader in his state and nationally. His positive promotion of corrections and his hard work was rewarded last week at the American Correctional Association summer conference when he received the E.R. Cass Award at a ceremony in Baltimore.

Goord recently spoke with The Corrections Connection about his service to the field, leadership and what the award means to him.

Q: What brought you to corrections?

Goord: After I graduated college went to live in upstate N.Y. I have a BA in psychology and I applied to social agencies. The first place I got an offer from was Woodbourne Rehabilitation Center. It was a facility in those days that was unique because it was run by corrections but it was a drug treatment facility. Unlike a correctional facility with correctional goals, it was run by the Office of Drug Abuse Services and the corrections department. That's how I got into corrections.

Q: What is it that you appreciate most about corrections?

Goord: Every day is different. We are dealing with people; every day is a challenge to deal with the offenders. What I'm most proud of is we've been able to get staff to work together and make the system safer and make offenders better prepared to leave.

One of the challenges we have is the prison systems is very misunderstood in this country and we need to continue to educate the public about what we do and why we do it. The fact of the matter is the corrections system - from Abu Graib to Cuba -- the system is under close scrutiny by a lot of people and we need to educate then about what we do. If we're not proud of what we're doing, we shouldn't be doing it. If we're proud we're on the right track.

Q: What changes have you seen in corrections over the years?

Goord: In N.Y. when I look back, I started in 1973; the biggest difference has been our involvement with accreditation and the ACA. That involvement with this organization, with our success and ability to measure our success and make our places safer and treat our staff -- that has been our biggest accomplishment.

Everything is accredited in New York. It gave us a way to measure ourselves and, when you look at my career, that's one of my successes --  making sure the place gets accredited.
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We like to think we run a balanced system, but at the same time we have to have a focus on people going home from prisons and how we prepare an offender. The easy thing for people to talk about is who we put into prisons and how people get into prison [but] we don't put anybody to prison. If people question why so many people are there, it's a question that legislators and Congress should answer. We [corrections] follow laws.

We need to get away from those debates, then once they come to prison, we have to create environments that are safe. Over the last nine to 10 years inmate on inmate assaults and inmate on staff assaults are at an all-time low.

It's not always the system's fault [when offenders don't succeed.]. It's not like I make a Goodyear tire and I make a lousy tire. In some ways we don't make the offender responsible. If they leave to the street and we've done everything we can to help them and we fail, sometimes it's a people failure, not a systems failure.
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We have gotten very sophisticated in inmate programming. We do very thorough evaluations. You need drug treatment, you need sex offender treatment and I hold them accountable. I'm held accountable to give them an opportunity. If an offender says I don't want to have drug treatment, then we're going to take away good time and keep them in prison because they haven't followed our prescription for what we think they need to be successful. We're the experts to keeping them safe and giving them the opportunity to succeed in the community.

The problem is what gets a better sound bite? The governor believes the responsibility of government is to keep the public safe and we know there is a responsibility to keep employees and inmates safe and to prepare them for their eventual return to the community, but that doesn't get the sound bite. In New York what our governor does is he allows us to be balanced. New York is unique because the governor has been very tough on crime and the result in New York has been a dramatic drop in crime. Couple that with the balance -- we've done things with the Rockefeller drug reform [for example]. And, we've taken 8,000 beds off-line since I've been commissioner. But, if you're violent were not afraid to lock you up.

Q: What would you say is the high point of your career so far?

Goord: The highpoint for my system is the fact that we got all the facilities accredited and every day we are keeping up with our legacy of running safe correctional facilities. My employees have the right to come to work and be safe. Every day is a high point for me.

The E.R. Cass Award is nice but it's not necessarily about me, it's about the accomplishments of my employees. I'm just one of those employees; I can't do this myself.

Q: What is your leadership philosophy?

Goord: My leadership in the system is trying to keep things simple. We have a tendency to make things too complicated. And my style -- it wasn't always like this -- years ago if I wanted to tell people how to do something I'd write policy and procedure and I'd go through the alphabet and tell them how to do it. Now my style is this is how I want it to look in the end and allow our staff to work our goals. They tell me how they want to do this. I end up getting it where it should be and they end up with a process that says we had input and ownership in this.

My job is to set a tone, work with the governor to do our job and the resources we need to do our job and let people do their jobs. I don't believe anybody comes to work wanting to do a bad job; everybody wants to do a good job. Be clear about what you expect.

Lastly, when I got this job nine years ago, I think we needed to push responsibility down, not up. We have a tendency to push ownership up.

The accomplishments in the system belong to the employees. When things go good, you get credit and when things go bad, if you were responsible, I will defend your actions.

I really think everybody needs to be involved in this process. You need to make sure custody staff, counselors, men and women who work in the kitchen, work in the laundry, health and mental health, they all have a responsibility to make the system right. Theirs are pieces they own to make the system run well and any failure can contribute to a failure in the system.

Q: What does the future hold?

Goord: I'm not done yet. One of the things is it's so nice to hear things said about you but I'm not retiring and I'm not dead. So many people have said 'You earned this.' My employees deserve this and they earned this. There are still things on my list I want to do. There are a long list of things that control my ability to do my job. My governor is not running for re-election and we'll have a new governor in 2007. What that means is someone will judge me, and the system, on what we've done. If they like what we've done, we'll continue on.