Well, that's a mouthful! But it really does all fit together in a fascinating way behind the walls of a prison. Natural introverts experience the prison neighborhood in certain ways that natural extroverts do not...and vice versa. And these experiences are present no matter which uniform folks are wearing.
So, how does an understanding of these personality traits impact our beliefs about Static vs. Dynamic security models? Join Sabrina for a lot of big words that make an awful lot of practical sense when you explore them for a moment through the lens of a prison neighborhood.
http://prisoncare.org/community.html
Learn more about PrisonCare, Inc. and DONATE to our work
You can also view this episode on YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg1zYh48GV5KRMrz_FikIRcndtiWBqZbD
Time Markers:
(0:57) Wired Differently
(4:30) Incarcerated Introverts
(7:43) Incarcerated Extroverts
(11:37) Switching Uniforms… Extroverted and Introverted COs on the job
(14:34) The Static US Model
(16:29) Dynamic Security is Possible
(20:06) Taking Advantage
(22:50) Sympathetic COs
(25:42) Sympathetic Residents
(28:44) A Shared Neighborhood with Shared Goals
(33:32) Moving Forward
Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT: We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version) Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Well, that's a mouthful! But it really does all fit together in a fascinating way behind the walls of a prison. Natural introverts experience the prison neighborhood in certain ways that natural extroverts do not...and vice versa. And these experiences are present no matter which uniform folks are wearing.
So, how does an understanding of these personality traits impact our beliefs about Static vs. Dynamic security models? Join Sabrina for a lot of big words that make an awful lot of practical sense when you explore them for a moment through the lens of a prison neighborhood.
http://prisoncare.org/community.html
Learn more about PrisonCare, Inc. and DONATE to our work
You can also view this episode on YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg1zYh48GV5KRMrz_FikIRcndtiWBqZbD
Time Markers:
(0:57) Wired Differently
(4:30) Incarcerated Introverts
(7:43) Incarcerated Extroverts
(11:37) Switching Uniforms… Extroverted and Introverted COs on the job
(14:34) The Static US Model
(16:29) Dynamic Security is Possible
(20:06) Taking Advantage
(22:50) Sympathetic COs
(25:42) Sympathetic Residents
(28:44) A Shared Neighborhood with Shared Goals
(33:32) Moving Forward
Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT: We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version) Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Welcome to the PrisonCare Podcast!
I’m Sabrina Justison, founder of PrisonCare.org, equipping compassionate people to support the often-invisible people groups who make up a prison neighborhood - the inmate residents, correctional officers, staff, administration, and the families of all of these folks.
Join me for this week’s episode, and be encouraged to think, care, and respond as we explore the challenges facing prison neighborhoods everywhere.
Let’s support positive prison culture from the outside, because EVERYone on the inside matters.
http://prisoncare.org/community.html
Learn more about PrisonCare, Inc. and donate to our work
Time Markers:
(0:57) Wired Differently
(4:30) Incarcerated Introverts
(7:43) Incarcerated Extroverts
(11:37) Switching Uniforms… Extroverted and Introverted COs on the job
(14:34) The Static US Model
(16:29) Dynamic Security is Possible
(20:06) Taking Advantage
(22:50) Sympathetic COs
(25:42) Sympathetic Residents
(28:44) A Shared Neighborhood with Shared Goals
(33:32) Moving Forward
Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version)
Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
============
Well, hello friends. Sabrina here and today, we are going to talk about introverts and extroverts in prison.
(0:57)
So a lot of us have done some sort of Personality inventory, something like that. And maybe you’re ENFP on Myers-Briggs, or maybe you're a 4 on the Enneagram with a 5 wing, I don't know. There's lots of different ways to sort of analyze how we're wired but one of the most basic things that we can notice about ourselves is whether we are bent toward introversion or extroversion.
Now, sometimes there's a misunderstanding about this just in basic terminology, so introverts are not necessarily shy. They're not necessarily quiet. Extroverts are not necessarily loud and they're not necessarily the life of the party. What it really refers to when we talk about an introvert or an extrovert is where do you draw your power from? How does your tank get filled up for whatever it is that you need to do in the course of a day?
So for an introvert, their tank gets refilled by going inside. Going inside themselves; time alone, time with their own thoughts, time reading, time listening to music, time walking in nature. In solo pursuits where they get the chance to sort of shut the world out a bit and go inside. And when they do that, their battery gets recharged, okay? Their tank gets filled up, whatever metaphor you want to use.
Extroverts, on the other hand, if they spend a lot of time alone, find themselves becoming depleted and they need time in collaboration with others, in celebration with others, in working side-by-side or linking arms and working together on something. But they need to be with other people to fill their tank back up or to recharge their battery.
It's a very wonderful thing that there are both kinds of people in the world because that, that back-and-forth of introversion and extraversion is what keeps things so interesting in communities.
Well, a prison is a neighborhood, right? This is something that we come back to again and again on the PrisonCare podcast. It’s one of our fundamental distinctives. It makes us a little different than the other reform advocacy, ministry, agencies that I've been able to find is that we really think it's important to view a prison as a neighborhood.
It's an uneasy neighborhood. It is made up of people who would not necessarily choose to be living in close proximity to one another. And that means all of the incarcerated individuals who are actually living there, as they serve their prison sentences, they're not getting to choose who they're living with. They're not getting to choose who they're living next door to. This is not a neighborhood that they picked to move into, right?
But then even beyond that, you also then have the staff. Staff don’t literally live in the prison, but pretty close to it. They work such long hours. They spend so much time there. And they are intimately involved in all of the daily life activities of the incarcerated individuals. So it really ends up feeling like doing life together in close proximity but without any of the ease and comfort of this being your community of choice. Nobody living in a prison neighborhood gets to choose exactly where they're living or who they're living close to.
(4:30)
Alright, so let's bring our introverts and our extroverts into the discussion of the prison neighborhood. Let's imagine first of all, what it's like to be an introvert and to be incarcerated. Now there are some things that would sound like maybe that's going to be a good thing for an introvert. For example, you are not having to be with family and the demands of family all the time, right? You don't have your kids tugging on you all the time. You are separated from that. You have more time away from draining relationships. You can choose to be involved in very few relationships inside your prison neighborhood. You can keep very much to yourself. In fact, that is a survival strategy that a lot of incarcerated people choose to employ especially in the early days, months, whatever of their prison sentence, right? They keep very much to themselves and that is a way to avoid unhealthy, perhaps straight-up dangerous connections to other people, okay? So you don't have all of those demanding family relationships tugging on you. You also don't have necessarily a job and if you do have a job, you don't have to interact with colleagues in the workplace in the same way that you would on the outside, okay?
So in a job on the outside, you're looking to move up, you're looking to get good performance reviews and so you want to be seen as a team player… all that stuff. So you have to work those relationships a lot and it can be very draining for introverts. When you are in prison that demand is not on you as much. So, there are ways in which introverts find some good places to refill their tanks inside the razor wire in a different way than they would outside. But balancing that out and probably in most cases overcompensating and so tipping the scales in a negative direction, is the fact that you are never alone never alone. Neverrrrr alone. You are sometimes physically isolated from other people especially if you have the unfortunate situation where you end up in the SHU, AdSeg, isolation, solitary… whatever you want to call it. Even there, you are on camera all the time. Guards can look in all the time. You are never actually by yourself. Never. And that's a hard thing for introverts. To feel like you are always somewhat on display even when you're keeping to yourself is really draining. So it's tough for introverts. They never truly get completely away and inside a private space where they can recharge their battery.
(7:43)
Okay, now extroverts, let's do it the other way. For incarcerated people who are extroverts. Hey, you've got people around all the time, so you can always be engaging in some kind of relational activity. Right?
That's true. But you did not choose these people. These are people that you have been forced to coexist with and many of them are toxic. Or at least toxic sometimes. Anyone who is in prison is living under incredibly stressful conditions. They are not there by their own choice so there's probably resentment. For many people there is fear and sometimes fear can be even more of a problem when it is being covered up and hidden. And there are a lot of people who are afraid in prison but who are pretending like they're not. And it is not is not an easy thing to have a genuine point of connection with another individual. So there's lots of group atmosphere… environment. There's people everywhere. You could reach out and touch someone just about any place that you are. But that doesn't mean that you're interacting with them in the ways that are recharging for extroverts. Additionally, you have unresolved stuff in your life when you're in prison. You are either thinking about what got you there, you're dealing with regret, you're dealing with a sense of injustice if you believe that you were unfairly convicted, you're trying to figure out the future, trying to figure out when you're actually going to return to society, whether you're still going to have a family when you get there, whether you're going to be able to get employment when you have to check the box on every application… all of those things.
And then you're trying to deal with the present. And the present is a constant tightrope act where you're trying to decide who to trust enough to let in a little bit and to have relationship with and who to keep at arm's length because they're just going to bring you down or get you into trouble. And the idea of being genuine and vulnerable and letting people share a life with you, not a good idea when you're in prison. You have to be discerning all the time. So that takes a lot of energy, takes a lot of energy and you’re having to do this internal work on your own. You typically don't have people that you trust enough to externally process those things with them, right? …To talk about what got you here.
Now, there are beautiful friendships that occur inside a prison. It does happen. And it's not, you know, I actually had a penpal just recently write to me and say, “I'm really sorry to hear that your son is incarcerated. And I've been down two times before and you know, just let him know there's no such thing as a friend in prison.” And I thought… well, I don't think that's true. And he actually went on to sort of backpedal that a little bit later in the letter and he said actually, okay, sometimes you can find somebody who’s… but a lot of people who seem like they're going to be your friend are just looking to use you. And that is very unfortunate so being vulnerable enough to actually be able to let somebody into a relationship with you and to help you do some of that internal work… Try to make sense of your life; How you got here? What you're going to do with it now? And where you're going? Those are things that extroverts are typically going to want to do in community. They're going to want to do that in relationship with other people but it has to be trustworthy people. And that's hard to come by in prison.
So it's tough for introverts and it's tough for extroverts who are incarcerated.
(11:37)
Now, let's switch uniforms. Let's talk about the staff. If you're an introvert and you are correctional officer, you can't get away from people. You can't just take a break. Sometimes, you can't even go to the bathroom because there's not enough staff coverage and your shift, it just gets held over for four hours and you just have to deal. You just have to deal. There are so many human beings for whom you must provide custody, care, and control that you cannot get a moment to yourself. That's tough for an introvert. You are going to leave the facility at the end of your shift, drained from the simple number of humans that surrounded you all day long and you're going to need to try to refill that tank or recharge that battery before you go in through the Sally gate the next day. It is… Yeah, it's tough to be an introvert and to be a correctional officer.
How about the extroverts? This is where extroverts probably have a little bit of a leg up over the introverts. If you get a charge out of being around a whole bunch of people, you've got that. Now, these are not people you've chosen, so that's the downside. But there is a sense of control that an officer has that an incarcerated resident does not have. So, the extroverted inmate is not experiencing the crowd in quite the same way that the extroverted CEO might be. If you like taking charge, if you like leadership, if you like the responsibility that comes with overseeing things, then okay there can be… there can be some good, some good interaction for an extroverted CO.
However, again, you have this thing of what is the quality of your relationship with the people that are around you? Now, if staff are able to work in pairs or oh my goodness wouldn't be amazing… work in teams where you had colleagues around you. That would probably be a wonderful thing for extroverts. But that is rarely the case. Staffing shortages are the norm in so many facilities and so much of the time a CO is working by themselves on the tier with a whole bunch of residents and they do not have the team feel with a colleague. At least not for much of their day.
However, extroverts who are wearing the CO uniform have to be extremely careful about keeping appropriate boundaries between themselves and the residents that they are overseeing.
(14:34)
Healthy report, dynamic security… That’s not really a thing in the US correction system. Let me explain what I mean by that. There are two basic schools of thought when it comes to how you keep control within a prison neighborhood and the US model… the one that we've been employing here for over 100 years it is essentially static security. It stays the same all the time. Okay. The staff are the staff. They stay in this category. The doors are locked. They stay that way. The inmates are over here. They wear their uniforms. They interact with one another and they stay in their category. Everybody has to stay in their own lane. And the thought has been that that's the way to provide security. That's the way to prevent violence or at least keep it at a minimum. That's the way to keep inmates in line… basically, right? And unfortunately we have found that it doesn't work very well. And I say unfortunately because I mean I believe it's always good to learn things. So hey, it's fortunate that we found that it doesn't work that way because now we can do it differently, right? Except that bringing about change is very difficult and we have known for quite some time that static security does not really work but we haven't changed it yet. That's why it's unfortunate.
Okay, so in other parts of the world in particular, people talk about the Norway model or the Nordic model. They're also using it with great success in Germany, in various Scandinavian countries, and in some other areas of Western Europe. There is a new model that has been in place for the last 20 or more years and it is referred to as Dynamic security.
(16:29)
So static and dynamic, right? Static stays the same all the time. Dynamic is changing. Doesn’t necessarily mean like Dynamo like wow, you know, but just change. Okay, changing. So the idea behind Dynamic security, is that the only way to really maintain the control in a facility and maintain care for the residents, is for there to be variety for there to be flow and change within the relationship between the Corrections Officers and the residents. You can't just have one size fits all that you slap on the situation and you say, that's what our security looks like. That's how we're going to keep this facility safe. Instead the officers have to be in enough relationship with… appropriate relationship with the residents that they come to know them and can tell what's really going on. They can recognize context. They know someone as an individual enough that they recognize when something's off. It doesn't take a suicide attempt before they realize that this person is suicidal because they have already seen that they're struggling. They have already talked with them. They have already asked them what kind of Mental Health Resources maybe they're in need of. It comes down to individual interaction and relationship and that allows for the implementation of security to change… to be dynamic.
So what you do on one day is not the same thing that you do on another day even with the same person. And what you do today with this person is not the same as what you do with that person because you are recognizing the full context. You’re recognizing how nuanced human beings and their behavior really are. And you are responding to what you're observing. And that's dynamic security.
Okay, so Dynamic security cannot happen in a facility where you have one officer and 120 people in a pod… just can't happen. One person cannot be in relationship with 120 people. One person is doing good to just keep a lid on explosive potential mess for that many people. The ratios are completely impossible in the US. In these Dynamic security models you typically have two to one. Maybe two residents to one officer. In some cases one to one. It's mind-boggling when you think about the Staffing shortage in the US and then you try to imagine changing the ratios to where we have almost as many staffers in a facility as we do incarcerated individuals.
Like mind blown, right? But it can be done because 25 or 30 years ago it was not the way it is. now in Norway. And 25 or 30 years ago, they looked at where they were, they said, “how did we get here? And this is not working. Our recidivism rate is through the roof. People are getting paroled they’re reoffending, they're coming right back in.” Sounds a lot like the US right now, right? 25 or 30 years ago the corrections policymakers in Norway said, “Hmm, how did we get here? Do we like where we are? No. Do we want to stay here? No. Do we want to keep going even further into this hole? No. What are we going to change?"
And the primary change that they made was implementing Dynamic security.
(20:06)
Okay, introverts and extroverts. Static security and Dynamic security. In the US prisons that operate on a static security model and where the ratio of staff to inmates is what it is. Right? Very very few staffers in relation to the number of incarcerated individuals that they are responsible for. Having appropriate interaction between one type of uniform and the other is almost impossible. It’s not impossible but it's almost impossible. It calls for so much discernment on the part of Corrections staff. They have to constantly be evaluating whether or not they're being manipulated.
The sad truth is that there are still… no matter how hard we try to improve things, there are still going to be people in prison who are going to work every person who comes across their path and try to take from them and try to take advantage of them, try to use them, try to hurt them in order to get a leg up in their own power. It is unfortunate but it is true. And so, one of the main things that Correctional staff have to expend mental energy on all day long every day is discerning whether or not, they're being lied to or manipulated.
Is someone really sick or are they pretending to be sick so that they can get something that they want? Is someone really in danger or are they just pretending to be in danger so that they can get moved away from a celly that they just don't like and moved in with somebody else that they're friends with? Is someone actually friends with someone else and they're sharing their resources and supplies from commissary with this friend because the friend doesn't have any money on their books or is this person being extorted and they're being required to hand over their resources and their supplies from commissary? And if they don't hand them over they're going to be hurt. There are so many situations all shift long where an officer is having to discern what's actually going on in front of me. And there are so many human beings in front of you that it is kind of overwhelming to discern. So instead you just go to, “Okay, nobody does anything and I'm just going to make the rule the same for everybody all the time. Everything is a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all and the fact that that's not how humans are… that's too bad because that's just what we're going to have to do.”
(22:50)
For a dynamic security model you have the opportunity to establish healthy relationship, to establish rapport between staff and residents. You have the opportunity to see someone in the other uniform as an individual; to see them with strengths and weaknesses, to see them with history and a present and a future. Context, right? Context for human life and when you connect from one human life to another human life, some really incredible things can happen for introverts and for extroverts. Okay? For example, you can acknowledge each other's suffering even while things have to be what they are.
So when there is healthy rapport and when there's Dynamic Security in a facility and a CO sees an introverted resident who has just lost a loved one, they’ve just gotten the word that someone in their family has passed away and they're grieving… they can recognize, okay that person… I know that person that person is an introvert. That person needs some serious space and time to just be left alone or maybe with one other person who's real friend, who they trust. But they need to be a little bit protected from all the melee all the Mayhem around, right? And so I'm going to help make that happen, right? I'm going to run a little interference. I'm going to allow some quiet space. Maybe. I don't understand the details of how it works, but I have had Corrections staff tell me that there are ways to cut somebody little bit, a little bit of quiet, a little bit of privacy, a little bit of time to gather themselves and to work through grief.
At the same time, a CO can see an extroverted resident… can know that that person just missed their kids’ high school, graduation and can allow for a little bit of celebration on the part of that Resident and some of their friends because they're trying to recreate that Graduation party that they didn't get to go, to that graduation ceremony that they didn't get to cheer at. They need their people around them because they're so painfully aware of how they're not with their people on the outside right now. There's room for introverts and extroverts. There's appropriate healthy ways for staff to relate to Residents when you could have some Dynamic Security in place, when you can see that other person as an individual and when you can recognize their introversion or extroversion.
(25:42)
Flipping around. For residents who are looking at staff, if they are just seeing uniforms, that's all they're seeing they’re seeing. They’re seeing representatives of the institution that is holding them down and that is denying their humanity and so they're just not even people, they’re uniforms, right? Hey Cop. Hey CO. That's all they are. They're not a person.
Now, what happens when you have a situation where a CO is going through stuff, whether it's on the outside or whether it's at work? There’s been a violent incident that they have narrowly escaped. There has been a suicide and they've been the one to discover the victim. Something rough happening on the job because it's a regular thing for really rough things to happen on the job for COs. Or there’s stuff going on at home. You know the divorce rate for correctional officers is sky high.
So there's often trouble at home. There’s certainly sleep deprivation from all the mandatory overtime and from long commutes and all that kind of stuff. So there could be stuff going on on the outside too that's just got to CO in a rough place for a day. When residents know a staffer well enough to have observed whether this person is an extrovert or an introvert… Is this somebody who seems to really draw their healthy good energy from people or someone who gets quieter and more withdrawn when they're dealing with something. Residents could be sensitive to that. Residents can run interference.
This has happened many times in J’s facility. This has happened times that I know about so I know it's happening lots of other times too where a CO has clearly been not okay and this has been someone who doesn't want anyone even somebody that they've come to kind of trust because that person has earned some degree of trust, you know, saying, “Hey man, I'm sorry you're having a rough day. I can just see it, you know, hang in there.” Like they don't want to hear anything. They just want to not be bothered. And you can have residents who choose to take the high road, to take some responsibility for personal leadership, just in a lay capacity, right? And to just help the residents around them make good choices… to not pile on that person, to not ask stuff that could wait. They’ll say, “Hey man, leave him alone. Leave him alone for today. Ask tomorrow. He’s having a day. Look at him. You can see it. He's having a day. Just wait. Let it go till tomorrow. Doesn’t have to happen right now, right?” That's Humanity. That's Humanity. Recognizing the people around us, recognizing whether they seem to draw their energy from other people or whether they draw their energy from pulling back and getting inside themselves a little bit. That's a way to be compassionate with one another. That's a way to work together toward common goals.
(28:44)
There are shared goals within a prison neighborhood. There are. Everyone who has to exist in the prison neighborhood wants to know that they're safe. Nobody wants to be living in danger. That's just not fun, right? Even for the people who want to cause the trouble, they don't want to be in danger themselves. Everybody wants their needs met. They want basic provision.
There are a lot of things that are actually shared goals among staff and residents. And one of those things is to be respected for what you need, when you're depleted. Right? And if you can be known, if you can be seen and respected as an introvert or seen and respected as an extrovert, maybe you need that extra phone call, you know? Maybe you let somebody have your turn in the line and say, “No, it's okay. It’s okay, you go first. I know you're like dying to get that call in there because it's your wife's birthday.” Whatever? Right. When we when you know that you have been seen as an individual and when somebody knows you well enough to know whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, you can be a little bit safer.
You can be a little more filled with grace toward others because grace has been given to you and it doesn't matter which uniform you're wearing.
Prison is a tough place for introverts. Prison is a tough place for extroverts. But introverts and extroverts wearing both kinds of uniforms can learn to develop healthy rapport, mutual respect, and compassion for one another. That's what so much of PrisonCare is about friends. It's about compassion, right? It's about compassionate people on the outside becoming equipped to support positive prison culture. It's about compassionate people on the inside who are serving prison sentences, learning to grow in character themselves so that they are able to extend friendship and mentorship to other residents.
And so they are able to extend respect and grace and patience to staff who are overworked and under resourced. It's about staff being appreciated for what they do, being respected for what they do, and being told that the burden that you're carrying, we see it and we know that our society is requiring you to carry it and we are recognizing that it is too heavy and that this is an unsustainable system and we're working to change that because we see what it's doing to you. We see that it's killing you and that's not okay. And we want to help you. We want to make it different. We want to move to a ratio that looks more like one officer to two residents than it does one officer to 120 residents.
By the way, that ratio that I'm throwing out there, that’s not what you're going to actually find when you do the research, okay? Because when they show ratios, they're typically looking at like all of the staff on a given shift as compared to all of the residents. But a lot of those staffers are not on the tier at any given time. So you often have a single CO who is standing at the door and checking people for compliance on their way out to yard. And there may be 150 people who come through there and that one CO is responsible for all of that.
Now, does that mean that that's the actual ratio for the facility overall for that shift, of course not. But that task may very well be one officer and more than 100 residents. When you've got everybody down for count twice a day, when they… everybody has to goto their cell and you get locked in and they count to make sure that everybody is accounted for. Oftentimes, you have you have one or two COs for a vast number of residents. So if you if you go and just look up, what is the staff to inmate ratio on the average in the US, you’re not going to find the kind of numbers I'm talking about. Specific tasks throughout the workday on a shift. Okay. Does that make sense? I want to I want to be really careful to not ever exaggerate. The system is terribly broken but I don't want to make a sound worse than it is. I don't ever want to be doing that clickbait thing. You know? The shocking headline that tries to pull people in.
(33:32)
I just want to talk about the reality and I want to encourage us on the outside to care enough that we think about it, that we talk about it, that we quit ignoring it, and that we quit allowing people around us to ignore it. But that instead we make a discussion of Corrections, a normal part of the social discourse because something has to change.
And there are models out there for us to look to. We can learn so much from Corrections in other countries that has moved past the point we are at now and moved into something better; Where the recidivism numbers are way down, where staff retention is way up, and where staff satisfaction is way up. There are better ways to do it. We need to have those conversations.
If you would like to learn more, if you would like to connect with like hearted people. We have a PrisonCare Facebook group. I would love for you to join that and join in the conversations. Every Friday afternoon we try to throw a prompt out there for conversation on some one of the topics on the podcast or in the news. We share articles. We share all kinds of stories and things for discussion. Please join us on our PrisonCare Facebook group. Please take advantage of the free pdf resources at prisoncare.org. See what you can find there that could help you become involved in supporting positive prison culture and consider becoming a financial supporter. Part of the work that we're doing at PrisonCare Incorporated is speaking to students on University campuses all over this country, students who are already interested in moving into fields in the criminal justice sector, in sociology. Students who are already interested in what's going on with corrections and they are going to become the policymakers.
Over the course of the next decade, they’re going to be stepping in and their voices and hands are going to be shaping what Corrections looks like in this country in the coming years. They need to be introduced to the idea of the prison neighborhood. They need to recognize the shared goals that exist among residents and staff. They need to be equipped to tear down that construct Us Versus Them is the only way to do this. Static security. Cookie cutter. This is how we keep things safe.
They need to instead be coached in looking at the humanity of the individuals who are coexisting in a prison neighborhood and learn to understand how Dynamic security, how Rapport, mutual respect, healthy relationship and communication can be the change that the US is desperately looking for.
So please visit prisoncare.org and continue listening to the PrisonCare podcast. I love it that you tune in and listen and I hope that it is encouraging you to think about things that you say are important to think about. I think they're important to think about. I wouldn't be doing a podcast about them if I didn't think that. I hope that you share the podcast too with other people who might agree that these are important things. And as always friends, thank you for caring.
+++++++++++++++++++
Thanks for listening to The PrisonCare Podcast. Be sure to visit us at prisoncare.org.
PrisonCare: equipping compassionate people to support positive prison culture from the outside, because everyone on the inside matters.
http://prisoncare.org/community.html
Learn more about PrisonCare, Inc. and donate to our work
Time Markers:
(0:57) Wired Differently
(4:30) Incarcerated Introverts
(7:43) Incarcerated Extroverts
(11:37) Switching Uniforms… Extroverted and Introverted COs on the job
(14:34) The Static US Model
(16:29) Dynamic Security is Possible
(20:06) Taking Advantage
(22:50) Sympathetic COs
(25:42) Sympathetic Residents
(28:44) A Shared Neighborhood with Shared Goals
(33:32) Moving Forward
Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version)
Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/