I have been blessed, in my opinion, to have spent my entire professional career on the ground floor (sometimes it felt like the basement). By that I mean I always worked in facilities directly with inmates or kids. I never made it to the regional much less the central office of any agency. Some people probably wondered why I never advanced-I had all the proper credentials. I always assumed that I was never promoted because I could work with the clients. If I weren’t Episcopalian, I’d ask Can I get an amen?
The promoted people in the central office all have classy titles. My personal favorite is the Department of Corrections Risk Reduction Specialists, but every agency had people whose job was to oversee the implementation of programs and ensure compliance. They would come from afar to audit our work. That meant, of course, to look at our paperwork-never at our people. They always found something wrong. If everything were in order why would anybody need them?
In preparing for this blog, I searched the web for writings about corrections. The frustration of facility staff is palpable. They can’t do what they know they need and want to do because their time is eaten up with paperwork. I, and probably you, have stayed up nights filling out papers that had meaning only to an auditor. They were totally irrelevant to daily operations in facilities; they certainly meant nothing to the clients. Paper doesn’t produce progress: people do.
As the economy has sputtered and the numbers of inmates has splashed, budgets have been cut. Where do the Reductions in Force (RIF’s) occur? Not in the central office! ( Kingdom of Heaven, p 86, p164)
After being reprimanded by consultants for failing to prevent a suicide, a colleague came upon a raft of banker boxes being loaded onto trucks. What are those? He naively inquired.
Ten year old client records. What will be done with them?
They’ll be taken to the dump and buried.
In those boxes were the souls of so many staff. All that urgent documentation buried by a bull dozer to protect confidentiality.
If you’re hoping I have answer to all this, quit reading now. Even politicians claimed no solution.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!
But if you’re working in a facility, take heart. You’re there because you can work. (If you’re still in an institution because you found a good place to hide, that’s on you.) Remember, in the final analysis, you aren’t working for the state. (Kingdom of Heaven, p 155 ).
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