Corrections Today articles from October 1997

Corrections Today archives from October 1997

ACA honors E.R. Cass Award winners. (American Correctional Association; Edward R. Cass Correctional Achievement Award)(Orlando '97)
October 1, 1997... The E.R. Cass Correctional Achievement Award, ACA's highest honor, was bestowed upon Dr. Kathleen Hawk, Col. David Parrish and Dr. T.A. Ryan at the E.R. Cass Awards Banquet, Aug. 13, in Orlando, Fla. The following citations are printed as they...

Longtime educator takes teaching to a new level. (Nebraska Center for Women's education/vocation coordinator Janice Axdahl)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... Twenty-one years ago, Janice Axdahl quit her teaching job in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Nebraska to join the Department of Corrections. Now an education/vocation coordinator at the Nebraska Center for Women (NCW), the only state prison for...

Making a difference for victims and inmates. (Adult Parole Authority word processing specialist Margie Clark)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... A few years ago, a young man from Pennsylvania traveled to Akron, Ohio, eager to attend college. Shortly after his arrival, he was abducted and murdered by three men. The victim's mother, devastated by the news, felt helpless because she was so...

Rolling with the punches. (Camden County Youth Center head instructor Sonnie DeCencio)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... "What would you do if I punched you in the face?" Not exactly something a new teacher wants to hear from a student upon walking into the classroom on the first day of school. Then again, Sonnie DeCencio knew she was teaching young offenders at...

Trainer instills pride in staff. (Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice training branch manager Michele Foley)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... "She is the kind of person who will never disappoint you when you need something done well." This is how supervisor Cheryl Roberts describes Michele Foley, training branch manager for the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice. A 26-year...

Preaching the gospel of accountability. (former Texas Youth Commission director of fiscal affairs John Franks)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... In Texas Youth Commission circles, John Franks has been known as something of a penny-pincher. Staff members would cringe whenever he approached them during budget time, knowing he would ask them to find ways to further cut expenditures....

Succeeding against all odds. (D.C. Department of Corrections Youth Center deputy warden Pete Jackson)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... Pete Jackson managed to go from "hoodlum to respectable individual." Once a juvenile offender incarcerated at the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) Youth Center in Lorton, Va., he now is deputy warden for programs at the prison. How did such a...

Reducing inmate lawsuits. (Missouri constituent services officer Lisa Jones)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... On any given day, Lisa Jones receives 25 phone calls, letters or faxes about the conditions of confinement in Missouri's 20 state prisons. Every once in a while, one of those letters or calls is to congratulate the department on a new policy or...

From soldier to mental health counselor. (Fort Knox Regional Corrections Facility's Sgt. Shannon Peck)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... Sgt. Shannon Peck has seen firsthand how stress can be physically and emotionally debilitating. An Army mental health counselor at the Fort Knox Regional Corrections Facility in Kentucky, he's been in the military for 10 years, and while he had...

Energy, optimism, concern. (Indianapolis Women's Work Release Center superintendent Mary Lou Ritter)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... When Mary Lou Ritter first came to the Indianapolis Women's Work Release Center in 1984 as superintendent, she admits she was a little nervous. Although she'd had previous leadership experience, she wasn't used to supervising such a large group...

Officer breaks code of violence. (Central New Mexico Correctional facility's correctional officer Dwayne Santistevan)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... Dwayne Santistevan strolled nonchalantly toward the woman who had just driven into the parking lot of the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility. Casually, so as not to attract the attention of the tower, he told her that his cousin was...

Building the best in the business. (architect Frank Sheridan)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... When Architect Frank Sheridan left private industry to take a job with the New York Department of Correctional Services (NYDCS), he was used to spending a year or 18 months planning and designing a new building, and another year or so completing...

Correctional officers' heroic actions save a life. (Andrew Slade and Ronnie Nicholson)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... "We were just doing our job," says Ronnie Nicholson, when recalling how he and fellow correctional officer Andrew Slade saved the life of a staff psychologist from a psychotic inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Estill, S.C. The...

Seventy-six going on twenty-four. (senior citizen volunteer Vivian Tohanczyn)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... Vivian Tohanczyn, could be anybody's grandma. "How old are you? she asks this Corrections Today staff member during her phone interview. "Twenty-five?" "Twenty-four." "Why, you're not even old enough to buy a cigarette, love," she says...

A real-life crime drama. (police officer Larry Van Schuyver)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... (Screen is black. Suddenly, we see Larry Van Schuyver, police officer extraordinaire, chasing down an inmate. As a young man, he's a blur of motion, his muscles straining, his hair dripping with sweat, his brow furrowed and focused on the job at...

Faith in his fellow man. (Kauai Community Correction Center's warden Neal Wagatsuma)(Best in the Business)
October 1, 1997... They say that no man is an island. That may be true. But it's also true that one man on an island in the Pacific can make a huge difference in the lives of the inmates under his care. That man is Neal Wagatsuma, warden of the Kauai Community...

Where we've been: from San Diego to San Antonio, New York to Nashville, ACA's conventions broaden horizons. (American Correctional Association)
October 1, 1997... Twice a year, the American Correctional Association hosts conferences to enable its members to share the latest information on correctional research, technology and programs. Attended by more than 5,000 corrections professionals, the conferences...

Coping with incarceration - from the other side of the bars.
October 1, 1997... When Margaret's son went to prison for second-degree manslaughter, she went to prison, too, although the instrument of her confinement was not made of concrete and steel. Instead, it was an edifice she and society had fashioned out of...

Red River flood impacts North Dakota corrections. (flood of Apr 16, 1997)
October 1, 1997... Grand Forks, North Dakota, a town of 55,000, is no longer a stranger to natural disasters. And neither is the Grand Forks County Correctional Center or the Grand Forks County Juvenile Detention Center, both of which are housed in the same...

Guidelines for implementing inmate medical fees.
October 1, 1997... On Nov. 9, 1994, several inmates at the Berks County Prison in Pennsylvania instituted a class action suit alleging that the prison's policy of charging inmates for medical care deprived them of their civil rights. During litigation, the...

Deliberate mentoring: creating tomorrow's leaders by design.(Series on Leadership, part 6)
October 1, 1997... In his book Excellence in Leadership, Norman Jaspan says, "Show me a half-dozen honest key supervisors who know their business, and I will show you 1,000 honest employees. Show me a couple of executives who are dishonest, disinterested and...

January heats up with ACA's 1998 Winter Conference. (American Correctional Association)
October 1, 1997... Make Plans Now to Attend the Winter Conference, January 19-21, 1998! If there is any truth in the saying "They do everything big in Texas," then San Antonio, Texas is the perfect site for ACA's 1998 Winter Conference. Scheduled for January...

Evaluating drug treatment programs.
October 1, 1997... For many years, the field of corrections has been dominated by a belief that the philosophy of rehabilitation and treatment is bankrupt. Although many studies have demonstrated that treatment can be effective in reducing drug use, modest...

Knoxville's community-based approach to public safety. (Knoxville Police Department)
October 1, 1997... Recently, a number (if trends have impacted the way in which law enforcement and correctional agencies do business. Continuing public concern for safety and security, coupled with the need for government services to reduce costs, have led these...

NIC update. (National Institute of Corrections)
October 1, 1997... Does your agency have detailed job descriptions that clearly list duties for each position? If not, you may find it difficult to retain new staff, evaluate job performance, design training or justify physical requirements for certain positions. A...

Legal briefs. (cases filed by inmates against the US District Court)
October 1, 1997... Jones-Bey v. Wright, U.S. District Court, Indiana, 1996 In this case, the U.S. District Court ruled that segregating an inmate who refuses to submit to an infectious disease test does not violate the Constitution. Nathaniel Jones-Bey, an inmate...

Juvenile Gangs, 2nd ed.
October 1, 1997... In the second edition of Juvenile Gangs, authors Herbert C. Covey, Scott Menard and Robert J. Franzese correctly cite the lack of a standard definition for what constitutes a gang. They review a multitude of definitions, from the oft-quoted...

The Execution Protocol.
October 1, 1997... Several years ago, the Discovery Channel aired a documentary on the use of the death penalty in Missouri at the Potosi and Jefferson City correctional centers. A nonfiction work, The Execution Protocol was the basis for the television show. If...