Reference no: EM133699442

Problem

You have spent the last 6 years as a counselor at a minimum-security state correctional facility. Your effectiveness has earned you a strong reputation throughout the Department of Corrections as a specialist in prerelease counseling, a program designed to prepare inmates for their return to society upon parole or completion of their sentences.

Lately, a series of highly publicized violent crimes have been committed by former inmates of the state's super-maximum-security facility. All were released recently upon completion of their sentences, and all had moved almost directly from their cells back to the criminal lifestyles that originally landed them in prison.

Hard-line correctional officers insist that because those incarcerated in the "supermax" are the worst of the worst, they cannot be trusted to behave during prerelease counseling. The safety risks such inmates represent, they say, make leaving them in their cells until the law requires they be set free, the only sensible course of action. What happens after that, in the hard-liners' opinions, is both the decision and responsibility of the former inmate.

Reformers insist that immediate recidivism is the likely outcome of releasing inmates directly from a harsh, totally controlled lockdown environment. They call for significant transitional counseling as essential for helping inmates adjust to free society and for defusing their angry urge to make society pay for the harsh life from which they are being released.

Both the governor and the commissioner of corrections face daily media demands to explain what the administration is going to do about this problem. In particular, the governor is under the gun because his opponent in the upcoming and hotly contested gubernatorial race has seized on this as an issue that demonstrates "this governor's inability, or unwillingness, to take the tough steps necessary to protect the good citizens of our state."

You have been asked to speak at a meeting to develop potential courses of action to address this problem. The meeting will be chaired by the corrections commissioner, and various wardens, and senior correctional specialists from throughout the state will attend. It is likely, but not yet confirmed that the governor will also attend.

In essay fashion, respond answering the following questions:

1. What issues will you address?

2. How might you resolve the conflict between the need to protect counselors and staff from the often violent behavior of supermax inmates and the need to provide this critical prerelease counseling to these troubled inmates?

3. How would you respond to hard-line corrections officers who content that what happens after release is not their problem?