Corrections_Today_September_October_2021_Vol.83_No.5

T he term “Quality” can be quite nebulous. the concept has changed over my career. At one point, I led a significant part of a large organizations “quality” section. When providing training on quality and as a means to immediately engage the group, I always began by asking the participants to define the term “Quality.” “Expensive” or “well made” or “better than competitors” were common refrains. I answered my own question in a pretty simple way. I held out a pen, usually taken from the desk of one of the participants and held up another pen taken from my pocket. The one from my pocket cost about $50 and the ones taken from a desk were usually pens bought in bulk by the facility and cost pennies. I asked the group which pen was of higher quality. Invariably, they would select the one that came from my pocket. I then explained to the group I had signed thousands of checks equaling hun- dreds of thousands of dollars in value with the $50 pen from my pocket. I would then ask them if I had signed the same checks with the institutional pen would the checks have been worth less. Invariably the response would be no. The moral of my story was “quality” is what the cus- tomer says it is. I see the topic of “Quality” as broken down into three separate groups. Each group has its own set of activities and the environment in total is one feedback loop. The first group is Quality Assurance (QA). QA is completely different from the second group Quality Control (QC). The third group is Analysis, Action Planning and Valida- tion. (See Figure 1) The term “Quality” means different things to different people. My understanding and use of

What is quality assurance? Outcomes of the QA process include guidelines that define what the product should be and what you can and cannot do (or should or should not do) to achieve those outcomes and the expectations of the customer. In correc- tions, those guidelines generally include statutes, policy and procedures, manuals and instructions, post order and contracts. Quality assurance is prospectively defining the environment and the tools needed to produce the desired product. Training is a QA activity. Determining quality control QC is a different set of activities designed to determine if the objectives of QA have been achieved. Compliance is one activity of the QC process. The focus of compli- ance is to determine if the higher risk exposure required actions actually took place (e.g., statutory, regulatory, policy, contract etc.). Compliance efforts include audit- ing specific required activities as a risk management and mitigation tool and the identification of critical functions. Critical functions can be defined as functions that if they aren’t done correctly, there are negative downstream impacts. For example, when the release planning process breaks down, the system may find an increasing num - ber of inmates incarcerated beyond their potential early release date. Metrics monitoring is another form of QC. Metrics monitoring (commonly referred to as dashboards or report cards) is the monitoring of the outcome of critical func- tions involving a single action (or better yet a group of

Figure 1

Quality Activity Groups

Quality Assurance Activities

Quality Control Activities

Analysis, Action Planning and Validation Activities

Statutes, Regulations

Compliance Auditing

Why did this happen?

Policies, Procedures

Metrics Monitoring of critical functions

Who is going to do what by when?

Contracts

Re-sample QC Activities

Photo illustration opposite page: Checkmark: istock/marchmeena29; Jail cell: istock/tiero

Corrections Today September/October 2021 — 33