Corrections_Today_Winter_2025-2026_Vol.87_No.4

MANAGEMENT

Adobe Stock/Edited art: Lustre Art Group & naum

The turning point: From survival to strategy

You’re also the face of the system when something breaks. When an incident occurs, it’s your name in the report, your presence at the press conference, your decision under investigation. Accountability is essential — but it rarely accounts for the full picture of what led to the crisis. I remember a time when staff consciously refused to enter housing units because the conditions had become so unsafe. Detainees had transformed units into gang controlled zones, and staff safety was at an all-time low. These units became breeding grounds for unchecked criminal activity. The lack of presence, the loss of con trol — it ate at me day and night. I knew something had to change. So I stepped out of the office — with my command staff beside me — and we started walking the tiers ourselves. We took the housing units back by showing up, together, and making our presence known. Leader ship wasn’t just a role; it was a decision to walk into a dangerous space and start changing the culture one day at a time. Slowly, it worked. Frontline staff and supervisors began to feel safer. They re-entered the housing units with authority. Expectations were reset, accountability was reestablished and safety started to return — not just through policy, but through presence. Leadership leads from the front, especially in danger ous moments. That’s how you shift a culture — not just through memos or mandates, but by walking the walk.

For a long time, my focus was survival — keeping the facility stable, keeping people alive, managing the crisis in front of me. That was the job. And for a while, that felt like enough. If the jail was running, if incidents were down, if staff were showing up — I called it a win. But over time, I started to ask a different question: Is this really working? Yes, we could respond to a fight in seconds. Yes, we could tighten procedures and meet compliance bench marks. But when I looked closer, I saw that we were always reacting. The deeper issues — the trauma, the broken systems, the lack of opportunity, the mental health crises — were just circling underneath, waiting to rise again. The shift didn’t happen overnight. It came in pieces. In conversations with men who’d been locked up since their teens. In watching staff burn out from chronic stress. In seeing someone earn their GED and then be denied the chance to use it. It came when I realized that our systems weren’t just overworked — they were out dated. And sometimes, they were doing harm even when they were meant to protect. That’s when I stopped thinking only like a jail administrator and started thinking like a strategist. A reformer. Someone who wanted to break cycles, not just contain them.

Corrections Today | Winter 2025-2026

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