Bethune Cookman University Criminal Justice Prison Committee Questions

I’m working on a law multi-part question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

You are the warden of a medium security prison. Because of turnover and prior year budget cuts, you do not have a full complement of correctional officers and many positions could be filled with additional funding. Prior year budget cuts also caused you to eliminate your educational program and much of your recreational activities for inmates, such as arts and crafts and physical fitness programs. You do not have a full complement of medical staff and mental health staff. Your statistics show that violence between inmates and attacks on guards has increased with the budget reductions and cuts in staff and programming. However, you can’t glean from your statistics if the rise in violence is due to the lack of planned activities or the reduction in correctional staff. You suspect that lack of structured activities and programming may be the root cause of the inmate unrest. You believe that boredom is a major stressor. A small budget increase for corrections has been announced, and you have decide how to allocate the new funds. In the past, filling correctional officer positions has been the fairest order of business with budget increases. However, you have had contact with an accredited educational firm that will provide online courses for your inmates at a very low rate. An initial investment has to be made in a server for the prison and laptop computers to rent to the inmates for them to access the program. The initial investment for the program will take up almost 40 percent of the budget increase. You would like to add the online educational opportunities for the inmates in spite of the initial cost involved. You decide to form a committee to consider your plan on allocating the budget increases.

Create a statement addressing the below items:

1. Who would you appoint to the committee and why?

2. How would you structure the committee’s agenda?

3. What issues/questions would you give the committee to consider?

4. You believe that the increase in violence is due primarily to the lack of structured activity and inmate programs. What is the logic of the argument? Is there any research that would support this argument?

5. What obstacles will you face in implementing the online educational program in your prison?

6. Develop and then describe strategies to overcome resistance to change.

7. Identify the internal and external constitutions that will have a stake in implementing the educational program.

8. Correctional officers are notoriously cynical. How would you sell the educational program to the officers?

9. By what metric will you know that the new educational program has been implemented as planned?