Management Assessment and Policy Dissemination in Federal Prisons

• NCJ Number: 162103
• Journal: Prison Journal Volume: 76 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1996) Pages: 81-91
• Author(s): M S Fleisher
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 11 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Measurement/Evaluation Device
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Based on a paper presented at the 1991 American Society of Criminology conference, San Francisco, Calif.

Annotation

This article discusses the importance of, the characteristics of, and the implementation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' institution character profile (ICP), which is designed to assess each prison's quality of work life for staffers, the working and living conditions for inmates, the stability of the institution within its community setting, and the nature of the professional relationship between Federal agencies.

Abstract

This article describes the dynamics of the ICP as both an expression of the Bureau of Prisons' organizational culture that reaffirms core management principals and an effective conduit to disseminate programmatic and operational policies. Under ICP's implementation, no places go uninspected by the ICP team, no data are off-limits, and no inmates who want to talk are silenced. The ICP includes structured interviews with staff and inmates, a complete review of records (incident reports, grievances, union complaints, etc.), and a systematic set of observations. The staff interview schedule has four sections: community relations, professionalism, staff morale, and communications. The inmate interview contains 20 questions that rate accessibility to staffers, staff responsiveness and maintenance of the facility, and quality of inmate programs. A regional director selects only senior regional administrators to join an ICP team. In 3 to 5 days, depending on the size of an institution, team members observe daily events and even informally interview inmates' visitors. The ICP team conducts 40 interviews with staffers identified by the Bureau's Office of Research and Evaluation, using a stratified, proportional random sample. Forty inmates are selected for interviews, using the random sampling program available in the Bureau's inmate database. When the on-site ICP is concluded, qualitative and quantitative management indicator data are analyzed, and ICP reports written. These are detailed compilations of interview, observation, and records data. Some impediments to the effective implementation of ICP's are identified. 43 references