PA Prison Guards as Behavior Managers
Latoya Campbell started a fight over ”hair grease” in Northampton County
Prison. Angered when another inmate took too much of her styling gel, Campbell got in the woman’s face and became so threatening that she was locked down until she cooled down. Reported in The Morning Call.
But, instead of sending the rest of the inmates to their cells to thwart a bigger fight, the guards talked to some of them. Turns out that there was a reason Campbell got upset. She has no family to get her things like gel, so when it was nearly gone, she acted out. The woman later apologized to Campbell.
”When you say I’m selfish…I get mad. I don’t have things given to me,” said the 29-year-old Easton mother who has since been released from prison.
Order was kept thanks to a new guarding technique in Northampton County Prison. The technique — Inmate Behavior Management — sounds bureaucratic, but the principle is pretty basic.
The guards don’t just observe inmates’ behavior, they manage it, using rewards, punishments and sometimes compassion to keep prisoners in line.
”This isn’t a hug-a-thug program.” said Michael Bateman, a deputy warden. ”It’s not going to work for everyone.”
It’s a social compact. The guards, now called unit managers, promise to meet the inmates’ basic needs — physical and social — and set expectations. The guards give inmates incentives to meet those expectations. Some guards use a point or gold star system to grade the behavior.
So, on some cell blocks, the inmates in the cleanest cell of the week get a cup of Ramen noodles. A well-behaved block gets a some sparkly pencils and art supplies or Sunday night football. Misbehave, lose those privileges.
”It sounds like kindergarten, I know,” said inmate Saiquala Sullivan, as she looked down at a photograph of her son beaming from a sparkly, foam frame she had made in the prison. ”But here, where you have nothing, those things really mean a lot.”
At Northampton, 200 of its 800 inmates have been under behavior management since the fall. They are housed in special cell blocks — two for males and one for females.
The program is part of a growing trend to manage a burgeoning inmate population in 3,500 jails across the nation. The National Institute of Corrections has trained people at 150 jails in the program over the last five years. While other jails, such as Lehigh County Prison, have used concepts like clean cell contests, Northampton is the first in the Lehigh Valley to implement the full program.
The goal is to stem violence and other problems that plague jails. Make no mistake: Northampton has problems. Last year, two inmates slashed other inmates with razors. Two other prisoners were charged for restraining a guard while they flushed contraband down the toilet. There was a suicide last year.
None of those incidents, though, occurred in the units where the behavior was ”managed.” At Northampton, participants are selected based on their ability to accept behavior management. Those who don’t do well are sent back to the general population.
Those who stay aren’t just first-time criminals accused of nonviolent crimes like bouncing checks or not paying child support. Some are repeat offenders accused of dealing drugs, setting fires and attacking others.
The argument goes that inmates are rational. Treat them human; they act human. Humans with nothing to do will find something to do, and it might not be the best choice. So, keep them productive. This is rapidly changing the dynamics between captor and captive.
Guards are not therapists, but they can help inmates get into therapy. Guards are not lawyers, but they can get them legal forms. Guards are not coaches, but they can get them a ball to play sports. Guards are not inmates’ friends, but they often know all the names of the inmates on the block and the names of their children.
The jury is still out on whether this will have a long-term effect on inmate behavior, but experts say early results are promising.
Scott Hoke, a former Northampton guard who is now a professor at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, is studying the program in Northampton and four other jails across the country.
”The early results show a dramatic change in the behavior of inmates,” said Hoke. For example, the number of misconducts in Northampton County’s female unit recently went from six in three months to one. In Texas, a male block dropped from 72 misconducts to 39. The inmate grievances there went from 40 to 29, he said.
Hoke cautioned, though, that there will always be a certain inmate segment — probably 10-15 percent — that won’t respond and will need the traditional jail structure.
Hoke likened inmate management to the trend in policing that focuses on crime prevention — working with at-risk youth and empowering neighborhoods. There’s more to stopping the bad guys than making arrests. So, too, must prison guards be proactive, he said.
For repeat offenders like Sullivan, who spent time at infamous Riker’s Island in New York City, the new style of guarding has changed her outlook on what it means to be in prison.
Cells on the program’s blocks must be clean. By 8 a.m., gray blankets are tucked neatly underneath the bunk-bed mattresses, books are stacked on the desks and, on the women’s block, videotapes are alphabetized by title and inmate artwork hangs on the wall. On the men’s block, some inmates are quietly play chess and checkers after morning chores; others watch the History Channel. One inmate has done a portrait of President Barack Obama.
Corrections officer Karen Wiley, who guards Sullivan’s block, said she has noticed a change in the inmates. She said they work like a team most days, cleaning their cells, reading or doing artwork. They also police each other’s speech — no cursing.
While she may have scoffed at the idea in her younger years, Sullivan appreciates the program now. It’s still jail, she laments — locked away from her son and under constant eye of guards. She doesn’t want to be here, but after being at Northampton a couple of months, she said feels more like a person.
”I’m not coming back,” she said.
Broome County NY Jail officials have quietly adjusted the way they handle disputes between inmates, now that a former inmate has sued Sheriff David Harder and three jail employees who he says failed to help him during a fight with another inmate. 
Thirty-five years after his office was set up in answer to a deadly riot at Kingston Penitentiary, the correctional investigator of the Canadian Correctional system says history is dangerously repeating itself.
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