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The Prison Officer Podcast
The Prison Officer Podcast is a place where prison officers and correctional staff share their experiences, discuss leadership, cope with stress, and learn survival strategies for one of the toughest careers out there. Hosted by Michael Cantrell, this podcast delves into the lives, dreams, and challenges faced by those who work inside the walls of our nation’s prisons. It features interviews, insights, and discussions related to the unique and demanding world of corrections. Whether it’s overcoming difficult leaders, understanding rehabilitation, or addressing misconceptions about incarcerated populations, the Prison Officer Podcast provides valuable perspectives from professionals in the field.
The Prison Officer Podcast
107: Inside the American Jail System: Leadership & Innovation - Interview w/Shaun Klucznik
When was the last time you heard a positive story about what happens inside America's jails? For most of us, these facilities only make headlines when something goes wrong—an escape, a use-of-force incident, or a facility failure. But as Major Shaun Klucznik reveals in this compelling conversation, corrections professionals save lives, change futures, and demonstrate extraordinary leadership every single day, largely without recognition.
Major Klucznik's remarkable journey from a 19-year-old corrections cadet to the 45th President of the American Jail Association offers a window into how corrections work and builds exceptional leaders. Starting at $5.60 an hour in 1997, he rose through the ranks while witnessing the profession's transformation. His pivotal role in transitioning Hernando County Jail from private to public operation showcases the complex management challenges correctional leaders navigate.
"Every position is a position of leadership," Klucznik emphasizes, noting how correctional officers develop crucial skills managing challenging situations with minimal resources beyond their communication abilities. This crucible of leadership development explains why so many officers become community leaders outside work—coaching youth sports, leading religious programs, and serving their communities.
The conversation delves into the critical role Field Training Officers play in shaping agency culture, the need for transparent communication with the public about both successes and failures, and how leadership philosophies like Jocko Willink's "Extreme Ownership" create empowered, accountable correctional teams. Klucznik also addresses the profession's fight for recognition as first responders, noting correctional officers are first on scene for suicide attempts, medical emergencies, and facility crises.
Whether you work in corrections or simply want to understand this essential but often invisible profession, this episode provides invaluable insights into the leadership, professionalism, and dedication that define America's correctional workforce. As Klucznik powerfully argues, corrections isn't a stepping stone—it's a legitimate career where professionals make life-changing differences every
E-mail Shaun at shaunk@aja.org
American Jail Association https://www.americanjail.org/
Mentioned by Shaun - Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Also, check out Michael's newest book - POWER SKILLS: Emotional Intelligence and Soft Skills for Correctional Officers, First Responders, and Beyond
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Take care of each other and Be Safe behind those walls and fences!
Hello and welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast. Before we get to our topic today, I just want to take a minute to thank one of our sponsors. Innovation has always been the key to success of Pepperball, and the Pepperball Blast is just one more way to deliver a payload that will distract, disorient or incapacitate an inmate. This lightweight, refillable delivery system is perfect for carrying in a holster in your pocket or just holding in your hand as part of a cell entry team or a cert team. Each reloadable blast cartridge contains up to three projectiles worth of PAVA powder. When the quick flip safety is turned and depressed, the PAVA powder is pushed out of the tube by a 1.8 gram nitrogen cartridge. This will quickly cover the inmate and saturate the cell. Since there's no actual projectiles deployed upon firing, this is a truly non-lethal product with no impact. To learn more about Pepperball, go to wwwpepperballcom or click on the show notes today for more information. Pepperball is the safer option first. Well, hello and welcome back to the Prison Officer Podcast.
Speaker 1:My name is Mike Cantrell and today I've got Major Sean Klusnick with me. He currently serves as the Judicial Services Bureau Commander and Jail Administrator at the Hernando County Sheriff's Office in Florida. He's been working in the criminal justice field since 1997, holds dual certification in both corrections and law enforcement. He's a working in the criminal justice field since 1997, holds dual certification in both corrections and law enforcement. He's a graduate of the FBI National Academy, session 283, american Jail Association National Jail Leadership Command Academy, class no 10. Serves as the Commissioner of the Florida Corrections Accreditation Commission. Is a certified jail manager through the AJA Accreditation Commission. Is a certified jail manager through the AJA.
Speaker 1:Major Klusnick holds an Associate of Science degree in Criminal Justice from St Petersburg College, a Bachelor of Arts degree from St Leo University, a Master of Arts in Philosophy from St John Vianney College Seminary maybe you can correct me on that and a Graduate Certificate in Criminal Justice education from the University of Virginia. And most recently he was sworn in as the 45th president of the American Jail Association. I am super happy to have him on here Once again. He's someone that I've been following and reached out to on LinkedIn. I know he's a student of leadership and I want to talk about some of that stuff. And welcome to the Prison Officer Podcast, sean. So, like you, if you've listened to this podcast before you know, I like to see how people got here and how we got into corrections and what formulated our lives. So where'd you grow up at?
Speaker 2:Sean, there's some propaganda back there, some New England Patriots propaganda. So I grew up in Boston, massachusetts, and we actually believe it or not. My family owned a restaurant in Foxborough just before the Patriots got good. They were really terrible. We owned a restaurant just south of the stadium before they knocked it down and made it a parking lot and built a new stadium. But my dad said, listen, if we're going to be poor, we're going to be warm. Because we lost our building and we moved to Florida when I was 12 years old and it's been a love affair with the heat since then, I know I went to high school down here and, believe it or not, I was working a job as a kid 18 years old
Speaker 2:roughly 18. Just graduated high school and I saw one of my former coworkers walk in the store where we used to work together and she was wearing a deputy uniform. And I'm like what happened here? Karen was a cashier. Now she's walking in, she's, she looks like a cop. Let me go see what's going on. So I walked over and talked to Karen and she was telling me that at the time the Pasco County Sheriff's office in Florida, um, was just open, a very large jail, and uh, they were staffing it quickly and she had got hired and sponsored through an academy and she was working as a correctional officer. So I said, let me find out how to do that. So I thought it was cool. I just thought the uniform was cool at first. So I filled out the application, turned it in and six months later went through the hiring process and got hired on as a corrections cadet, went to the academy in a little place called Gower's Corner, Florida. My academy size was a whopping 16. We were sponsored and I was excited by the rate of pay. At the time was $5.60 an hour or something like that, and when we graduated we jumped up to $10.77 an hour and I thought I was rolling in it. This is 1997.
Speaker 2:Had a great start to my career at Pasco County, did some cool stuff. I got to be an FTO pretty quick. I was an FTO about a year after I got off probation. I went to the crossover at that point and the only reason I went to the crossover honestly was the crossover to Law Enforcement Academy was just to prevent myself from being privatized. We had two jails really close to Pasco County, one to the immediate north Hernando County and one to the north of that, citrus County that were run by CCA and I didn't want to. You know, the threat was always there at budget time. We're just going to privatize the jail and not worry about trying to add staff or add funding. We'll just privatize. That was a big threat. Thankfully for me that never happened. But I was an FTO and then I loved being a and I'll admit this. The only reason I became a training officer is because I liked the chevron on the sleeve at first. Right.
Speaker 2:I thought it looked good, so I went into FTO school and then realized I love training. I actually loved. You know that was your first foray into leadership, yet you're responsible for one staff member, at least you know before.
Speaker 2:We're responsible for anywhere from 48 to times 110 inmates at a time yeah but having a having a new person who's interested in in the profession and doesn't have any bad habits, especially the ones that are straight out of the academy, it was by far the best to teach. But I loved being an FTO. In 2004, I became a corporal. I was appointed to the rank of corporal and in 2007, I was appointed to the rank of sergeant I'm sorry, promoted to the rank of sergeant and that was by far my second favorite uh rank. Sergeant was fun because you know you get to do that training, you get to do that mentoring and then you get to develop your squad the way you see fit, and um had some great times as a sergeant, pasco, and then in uh we had I think the whole country experienced the economic downfall of the mortgage industry.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And the Hernando County was still privatized was still CCA was running up there and the county was strapped for cash. So they asked the sheriff at the time up there to take a look at the jail to see if he could run it cheaper than CCA, because, no matter what was going on, cca never missed a contractual increase and there was no. Oh, I know you guys are hurting, so let's back off the contract a little bit. So the sheriff went up there and took a look and realized the building was in real bad shape in 2010. So the sheriff was considering it, but he actually was quoted in the newspaper saying the jail's a piece of junk, I'm not interested. Well, at that point the private vendor saw an opportunity, I guess, to ask for a raise in a time where we couldn't afford a raise as a state, as a country and they pulled plug.
Speaker 2:So the sheriff was asked again if he'd do it. At the time it was Sheriff Nugent who became Congressman Nugent. He agreed to it. So then they hired a jail administrator and then they hired me. Next I came on as the only lieutenant from Pasco. I was told I was going to be promoted to lieutenant in Pasco County three months from then, or I could be promoted to lieutenant in Hernando County, you know, within two days.
Speaker 1:Was that part was part of that because you'd done so much training that they wanted you in place to to do a lot of this change over and training and stuff, or what do you think the reason was that they were reaching out to you, well, believe it or not? Because you were on the street at this time, right.
Speaker 2:No, I was. I was still working in the jail.
Speaker 1:You were back in the jail, okay, my fault.
Speaker 2:I never went to the law enforcement side until Hernando so I was dual certified the whole time in the jail but I was never allowed to go out to patrol. Luckily in Hernando things changed a little bit. Okay, hurt my feelings a little bit. I'm hoping Brian had to watch this video podcast because when he called me up and asked me if I would consider going to Hernando County leaving Pasco County, he was my major at the time.
Speaker 2:He was my professional mentor and he basically kicked me out of the nest. He saw an opportunity for me to actually have a once in a lifetime or once in a career opportunity to take a jail over from a private vendor. So I went up and met with at the time it was Major Mike Page and he gave me the hey, I need a lieutenant, Are you interested? That was my interview. I said how much time do I have? He says I can give you 15 or 20 minutes. So I called my stepdad at the time and he was a retired NYPD, passed away since then, but he was retired and I said hey, Tony, what do you think I should do? He goes, you should go. The rest is history.
Speaker 2:So, 2010, we were part of a transition team. We hired 130 correctional professionals, from control operators to deputies. We were appointing people into ranks, into corporal sergeant. We had a whole medical unit, we run our own medical unit, we run our own kitchen. So we hired all in uh and we did all that with full background checks and we did that in just under 90 days. So to hire 130 people in under 90 days with full background checks, it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:How much of an academy were you putting them through?
Speaker 2:We didn't. So, believe it or not, the only person that we hired that had no experience was one, and he's one of my two lieutenants now. Javier De Jesus has been a rock star and he's the only one that came in with no experience, but he picked it up pretty well. He never actually had an FTO program. Everybody we hired was already no experience, but he picked it up pretty well.
Speaker 1:He never actually had an FTO program Okay.
Speaker 2:Everybody we hired was already Florida certified. They came from either the Florida Department of Corrections. We did pull a few people from Pasco County, all over the state of Florida, and we made our own team in 2010. And since then it's been 15 years and it's been an absolute blessing. It's been an absolute blessing. 2010, roughly 2017, I got appointed to the rank of captain. The sheriff gave me an opportunity to become the jail captain. That's kind of when I had the opportunity. When I was a lieutenant, I went to HR for four months. That was the sheriff giving me my first chance Outside of the jail. I was the interim human resources director, where I probably learned the most in my career in those four months being in charge of human resources.
Speaker 1:Helped you as a supervisor too later on, didn't it? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I transferred back to the jail and then had an opportunity to go over to special operations where they allowed me to kind of just basically dabble, where I couldn't get in trouble with my law enforcement certification. So at the time I was in charge of animal enforcement and some of the specialty units the SWAT team and aviation and marine those kind of things that were pretty fun to be around and then cool, great staff to learn from. From there I got promoted to captain, went back to the jail for a couple years and then my major at the time, major Page, retired. The sheriff brought over a couple majors from the law enforcement side. I got to train basically train two majors. So one of them was there for a year and then they switched out and went back to the patrol side and the other one came over. I was there for a year and then they switched out and went back to the patrol side and the other one came over Great guys and one of them became the chief deputy and actually the other one became the chief of police at a local police department. So it was pretty cool and when they left I had the opportunity to share it for my birthday in 2020.
Speaker 2:They took me to lunch and asked me if I was interested in being a jail administrator and I said absolutely. He said you sure you're ready? I said I've been ready, boss, and you know the most professional, polite, not condescending way, because it's been. That was my goal, was to develop myself into that, to be ready when the time came. What an opportunity it's been, and so it's been just over five years since then. Been it's been, and so it's been just over five years since then been able to do some really cool stuff, because I have really amazing people. You mentioned in the intro that um, I'm a florida correction accreditation, one of the commissioners on that commission, and then about three weeks ago, I was sworn in as the 45th president american jail association, which is should be the pinnacle your career, right, should be the absolute peak um, but I hope to have at least 10 years to go. This year is going to be very interesting, very busy. It's been a busy three weeks and I'm just looking forward to what's next.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. How big is Hernando County now? How many staff, how many inmates are you working with there?
Speaker 2:So we have for county inmates only you working with there. So we have for county inmates only we have 480. Now when we took over oddly enough 15 years ago we took over the first count cleared at 602. And now I have down to 480. Covid really dropped. It's spiked back up. We've been hovering well like 120 less than that day one. But we also house prisoners for the US Marshal Service and then we actually hold inmates for Pasco County because they're out of that space. They've got new construction going on, so we house about 200 paying customers. We say it that way and so I'm sitting at, you know, 650 or so. It's design capacity of the building is 812. We know that. You know design capacity doesn't mean anything when classification gets involved. Operationally 748 is comfortable, and then in the county we're just over 200,000 people. So as a county, staff-wise I have roughly 150, 160 staff and that's sworn civilian medical everybody together.
Speaker 1:Okay, so just inform me. In the state of Florida, when you say sworn, they're sworn deputies and then they work in corrections, so they go through the same academy as somebody that works on the street.
Speaker 2:No, there's two different academies. There's actually three different academies. There's a law enforcement academy, corrections academy and there's a probation academy and a corrections academy and a probation academy and the corrections academy is about three and a half months and it's good training.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Law enforcement academy is a little bit longer than that, just over six months. But it's better than a lot of states that don't even have a base for a career academy, so we are definitely way ahead of them.
Speaker 1:Sure, even have a base recruit academy. So we are definitely way ahead of them, sure? So is there a cto, fto program when they come back from the academy also?
Speaker 2:yeah, we have a three-phase uh san jose model fto program. Okay, we do that's uh, four weeks, four weeks, and then the two-week third phase, final phase, but that's now 12-hour shifts. It's really two weeks, two weeks and one full week of work, but it's worked for us, believe it or not. My trainers have always been awesome. My FTOs have been awesome. We've only really ever remediated anybody three, four times in 15 years. They really take it seriously. Obviously, as a trainer, you're training your partner, you're training your backup, you're training that person you're going to be relieving and you want to make sure they're doing the job right. So when you get there, you're not having to control chaos or get everybody back in business. But our FTOs are great and our sergeants in the middle management especially right now, my middle managers are amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I just had this discussion a couple of weeks ago about CTOs or FTOs, and they are one of the most important positions that you can have, because they not only give these people the start and the knowledge and everything that they need to become a correctional officer, but those people truly set the culture inside your agency, don't they?
Speaker 2:They can set it and they can ruin it if you're not careful.
Speaker 2:Your line trainers to CTO, fto or in your training unit in general can really set the tone. They really spend the most one-on-one time with anybody, even if it's just a week of in-service or a day here and there at in-service, you have a lot of influence when you're in front of a room and you're making off-color comments about the agency or maybe talking about the command staff, and there's no place for that. You've got to own your life and own your position, no matter what, and obviously if you're complaining about it, you're not trying to fix it. So it's important to own your spot and lead, no matter what.
Speaker 1:Right, that's actually how I became a lieutenant. I was griping, I was a GS-8, walked in the lieutenant's office. I can still picture it. He looked up over his glasses. He was typing. He goes are you on the lieutenant's roster. I said no. He said then shut up and get out of here. You're not going to help fix it.
Speaker 2:I don't want to hear it I mean in all reality, every position, even if you don't want to move up, every position is a position of leadership, right? But sergeants have a huge influence, at least their squad and shift lieutenants typically have a huge influence on their shift. So they set the tone, they set typically the demeanor, especially those night shift lieutenants who get the new people. You've got to be careful about how you assign those and make sure they're not being cultivated into a negative situation. But that takes time, especially if you're inheriting a culture that's challenging. I mean, you've seen some of the things going on across the country.
Speaker 2:I couldn't imagine trying to set up shop in certain places but I mean leadership and relationships work right. So if you know your people and you're willing to take the bull by the horns and kind of you know toe the line you know I'm not backing off this. These are the standards we're going to adhere to. People need to be led that way. We want to be Joke around. Talk about the inmate population, but even your staff, even your kids, it's just the Cesar Millan rule, the dog whisperer. They need rules, boundaries and limitations, right they?
Speaker 2:start doing something that you don't want them to do. You got to fix it. I mean, obviously, course correcting is not no, you can't do it like with a dog. You can't. You can't just yoke on the leash a little bit and tighten them up. But some days you probably want to, but it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We all need that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think you see it in corrections, because corrections as a, as a position, is a leader, whether it's just inmates or whether it's your peers, coworkers. But you look outside of corrections and our officers, when they go out in the community, they're running t-ball coaches, they're running the Sunday school Bible study, they're doing all these things in the community and the reason is because they're such good leaders. Not everybody leads at Artelab.
Speaker 2:No, you're right. And what kind of job do you typically have where you have a captive audience and you get to do practice public speaking almost daily, right? So you're used to managing crowds and recognizing when something's off a little bit. You've gotten to the point where you walk into a housing unit and you know something just went wrong. Either something just happened or something's about to happen, and you can usually tell the difference pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:Every position, like I said it, just right. I used to coach T-ball. I used to coach, you know, uh, youth league baseball and and, uh, I, I loved it. Uh, actually, my nephew my nephew was just here and when he gets old enough I plan on doing it again, but that is. You're part of the community and and my sheriff says it all the time could see the inside of what happens in a jail every day, because you don't know, the only time people pay attention to a jail or a prison is when something bad happens. Right, sometimes it somehow gets the news.
Speaker 2:Or you know, all of a sudden there's a perimeter and somebody's looking for somebody and that's a bad day, but there's so much good stuff that happens inside our jails and prisons all across the country every single day that the public just doesn't get to know about. So sometimes we've got to be our best advocates, our own best advocates, and share that information. Part of the reason I'm here today is to talk about. You know, we are professionals and this profession is a legitimate profession. And you know, I remember when I was probably 23, 24 years old and I was visiting my aunt in Massachusetts and back then I called her an aunt, but now it's aunt, but I, you know she's like.
Speaker 2:So when are you going to be done with the jail? When are you going to go to the law enforcement side? What do you mean? She goes. Well, it's just a stepping stone. I said nothing about what I'm doing is a stepping stone. We, you know, we're controlling chaotic places and most of the time most places probably make it look easy. We do a good job. I think we professionalize this profession so well that the training is. I mean, there's always a place for improvement, there's always room for improvement.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's something that I'm passionate about pretty early and there's no place. I'd rather be this is it. Yeah, I'm passionate about pretty early and there's no place. I'd rather be this is it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't think I heard that when I started 30 years ago as much. But I am hearing more and more of the officers I talked to know this is my career. This wasn't because when I 30 years ago, I do feel like a lot of people thought it was a stepping stone, but I think now there's a lot of people that do look at it as a career and there's such wow. I mean, you can go any direction in corrections. Where do you want to live in the US? Where do you want to live in the world? And you could be a correctional officer. That's the best part, you know.
Speaker 2:So my father-in-law I married into a great family. My father-in-law, phil Wood, was. He was a lieutenant for the Hernanacash Sheriff's Office. He retired before I got to work there. I met his daughter she worked records. I met his wife. She was the director of IT. So it's a family business. But he worked in a jail back when it was the small jail in downtown Brooksville and he swore by former correctional officers.
Speaker 2:Anybody who worked in a jail or prison came to the street. They had that gift of gab. They were able to talk themselves out of a lot of scenarios and a lot of situations. Because you know, you don't run into the housing unit typically with a bat belt, you don't have a firearm, you're not wearing a baton typically I mean what most? Pepper spray in a set of handcuffs most of the time. And he raves about that.
Speaker 2:And all the way to what we're doing now, we started about two years ago. We finally, believe it or not, the state of Florida lowered the lowest age to start as a correctional officer to 18. They did that to benefit the Department of Corrections because their staffing was so low. They were trying to just add bodies. So we took advantage of it. So we started hiring people right out of high school, training them the way we want to train them. Put them through the Corrections Academy, give us two and a half years, three years.
Speaker 2:If you want to go to the law enforcement side, we will put you through the Crossover Academy, pay you to go and then transfer you to patrol. And quite often the former detention deputies, the former COs that go to the patrol side, they flourish, they do a good job. Former COs that go to the patrol side, they flourish, they do a good job, they don't. You know, pressure's not a big thing when you're surrounded by you know a hundred felons and you compare that to talking to one suspect in a room or clearing a scene. It's something that should be more taken advantage of.
Speaker 2:I think you know I mean California, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department is who I kind of saw that model where they put them through the jail first. I mean they come out of the academy they're basically peace officers, dual certified, we call it in Florida and go to the jail and if you want to go to patrol, then you transfer out, and if you want to promote, you go back into the jail, learn how to be a supervisor and then go back out to the law enforcement side. We haven't gone that far, but the models work so far.
Speaker 1:We're doing pretty well.
Speaker 2:We've had a lot of success and what I'm happy about is some of those detention deputies are like, no, this is right where I want to be. I don't want to go anywhere. So I thought you know could run into a staffing issue for us, but luckily for us, we are probably right at 100% staff. To be honest, actually, throughout the entire agency, we're doing pretty well. It's a blessing right now, nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I'm going to butcher this paraphrase, but somewhere in the art of war it says something about in the midst of chaos there is always opportunity is because how often does the normal person have the opportunity to test their leadership, to test their decision-making skills, to test their communication skills, whereas in corrections, like you were saying earlier, I mean that's every day, Every single day, yeah All the way down to getting the population to comply with, getting their bunks made and lining up straight for chow Right.
Speaker 2:It's easier to let it get loose. It's a lot easier as a person. Why should I deal with that Especially? You know we've all relieved that officer that we were like, oh no, taking this post over this place is going to be chaos.
Speaker 2:It's going to be a mess, right. You know you hope for when you walk into a housing unit and the inmates are saying, oh no, it's collusion, right, Because I'm not going to be. I've never been abusive, Absolutely not, Never been disrespectful, but I told the line. I knew that in my handbook better than any of the inmates ever did so, and I enforced it and consistently enforced it. So the consistency is the key and I think that's where you develop as a CO to flourish anywhere you go, because you're going to be consistently disciplined and to do the right thing no matter what, even if it's pain in the rear when you're relieving that one officer that you don't want to relieve. But you know you've got to straighten that unit out. It's going to take a couple hours, but it's definitely worth it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let me, because you have worked your way up and you see another side of corrections in jail and I want to talk about that because you're a member of the Florida Corrections Commission and, of course, now you're president of the American Jail Association. So from that larger strategic look, what are some of the things that you're looking at now that we can improve that, that we're moving forward with what's some of those challenges that are out there in front of you at that level. So I still think um.
Speaker 2:So let's put it on a national level. I think one of the biggest things we can work on is still continue that professionalization of the profession hard to say, it seems like it's even harder to do. I think one of the things I want to work on this year with the American Jail Association is try to develop a sort of like a one-size-fits-all at least very basic corrections academy curriculum of some sort that jurisdictions that don't have them could take a look at them and use them and try to develop their own things.
Speaker 2:We have so many good trainers, amazing trainers in Jail Association that I would highly encourage them to reach out to anybody, even on the board of directors or staff. We'd be able to point anybody out in the right direction. I think, establishing those minimum standards too. We just watched a situation in New Orleans still unfolding still two escapees out there. But Louisiana doesn't have minimum jail standards. I believe it's something like 24 states, don't? Still the numbers are guess, so don't quote me there.
Speaker 2:But I know having the Florida model jail standards to follow is just such a great guideline. There are times where sheriffs get elected and they don't always hire or have somebody that they know from the jail, so they want to put somebody they trust in as a jail administrator. Well, what better way than to have a good set of policies and model jail standards to follow? To run your jail will help you get out or stay out of so much hot water.
Speaker 2:But I think at the same time, nationally, just recognizing correctional officers as first responders. You know we are absolute first responders. The first person, the first group of people to respond to a suicide attempt is a CO. If there's a fire in a prison or a jail, the correctional officers are responding to those fires. First, you know we're responding to ODs. There are times we're responding to and especially hopefully in a jail setting more than a prison, but we're responding to, you know, pregnant inmates starting to give birth going to labor, we're responding to anything like that heart attacks, any of that stuff so we are the first to respond.
Speaker 2:Of course we're going to call paramedics, we're going to call the fire department, but we're the first ones in there and there are plenty of places that don't recognize correctional officers as first responders or just at the same level as a firefighter or a police officer. You know we're going in there serving and maintaining that security as best we can every single day. There are days where you're short-staffed. Or you know, three years or a few years ago, when we were for three years surrounded by COVID, no matter what, and all that doom and gloom being stuck in the buildings.
Speaker 2:So when people wanted to come to work more then you know they wanted to serve. They recognized that scenario and they wanted to make sure that they were not part of the problem. They wanted to be there and I remember some of my guys would get COVID I'm trying to get cleared as fast as possible and I was like don't get cleared when you're healthy and ready to come back. That's what I'm worried about. But on a national level, if we can get some even just resolutions from the legislators to say you know, correctional officers.
Speaker 2:You know we got a week a year in. May right, ronald Reagan nailed that in 1984. And you know, I think we could benefit the profession more if we just recognize the great work they do behind the walls every single day.
Speaker 1:So how do we? Because and you mentioned this we get noticed when somebody leaves the jail. We get noticed when a use of force goes bad, but I can name a couple of dozen times in my career that I know an officer saved a life and if we were outside the walls it'd be front page of the newspaper, but you've never heard about it. You never will. How do we get that out there? How do we bring about? We're so secretive and that comes from the way we used to be. We didn't want people looking at our jails. They were a very private thing. I don't know if because they didn't want them to see what was going on or what, but we're no longer that way. How do we open it up? How do we bring people in? And I mean more than just shows like Jail for 60 Days or whatever that one is. That makes they almost make fun of what we do. So any thoughts on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of those shows are beneficial, especially the booking stuff. The booking is, I think they do a good job of not, you know, making us. You know the days of the knuckle-dragging cage kickers are over right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We are absolute uniform professionals and I think what we need to do is we need to sell ourselves. So I have the absolute blessing right now of working for an agency that has about 180,000 followers on our Facebook page. So every time we do something well, somebody gets a certification. We pass an inspection all the way down to somebody drops off food to share with the staff. We post it. We do it as much as we can. Our Citizens Academy is a jail day. It includes the history, the background on how we operate and then a huge tour. We have to own our message. We have to be able to tell our story and I know even all the way down to when we have a GED graduation. We make sure the sheriff comes over. He's the master of ceremonies, basically.
Speaker 2:We always invite a county commissioner to come, and typically they show up and they come and enjoy that too. So I mean, wins for inmates are wins for us too, right?
Speaker 2:So if we're the vast majority of the people we work around every single day, that live there, are going to return to your community one way or another and if we can return a better person to society, a more well-trained I mean our GED program. The recidivism rate, at least in our own county, is so low it's not even funny. I can't tell you if they've recidivated somewhere else, but the same people that get their GED in my building. They don't come back. So I mean that says something. I think we have to own our message. I mean social media.
Speaker 2:Every time we can get on a media outlet of some sort a podcast like this, anytime. We, from a jail association perspective, we often and always need people to write for our magazine. So if you're an expert in something and you want to share your expertise, we are always looking for content for our magazine and we have a great staff. Madison does a fantastic job at headquarters no-transcript, she's great. Push the narrative that we have to work on ourselves and and just get better, and we have to own our mistakes.
Speaker 2:I mean, I agree with you hiding behind the wall and not telling what's going on there is is challenging. Obviously you don't want to ever mess up a criminal investigation or something like that, or or upset necessarily uh, potential or you know victims of people you want to make, you want to be careful it. But we have to own the narrative and sometimes you know sunlight's the best disinfectant and there are times where you know telling the full story and showing the pictures and sometimes showing the video, yeah, here's what we did here. This was bad. This is what we learned. Here's how we're going to fix it. If you come out and say, hey, we screwed up, it's better than hiding for years and years and years until the judge orders it released.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Just get ahead of it. You've got to control the narrative. You've got to control your own message.
Speaker 1:I know the AJA does some of this already, but I would also love to see judges, congressmen, senators. I want to see them come through more. And it blows my mind because I know jails that haven't seen a judge walk through in forever. And how can you seriously sentence somebody to jail or prison if you haven't seen where it's at? And I would love to open it up like that more and have those people come through more, because they're the ones that have the money. They're the ones that put out the resources. Tennessee is a great example. Do you know about TCI? I'm sure over there, tennessee Correctional Institute you know. A lot of that money comes from the legislature and they're not very many states do that, and that money goes out to the jails for training and improves all of them. So I would love to see our politicians involved in this more. They've got to be involved in it more. It's a huge part of our country.
Speaker 2:So in the state of Florida, by statute jails I'm sorry, prisons legislators, anybody from the executive branch of the state, government, judges, at any time can just walk into a prison and they really can't stop them. We don't have that standard of the state. Government judges at any time can just walk into a prison and they really can't stop them. We don't have that standard at the jail. But if a judge or a local congressman or somebody wants to walk around, we're going to show them in. Come on in, my sheriff offers it all the time. If you want to just see the inside of the jail, just because you're nosy, perfect, let's go. You know, it's funny.
Speaker 2:Sergeant Brad Clito is my administrative sergeant right now and he did a presentation for the county, kind of has like a citizen's academy for their staff and it's you know. They just show you all the different parts of the local government. Well, in Florida the sheriff is an independent constitutional officer. So when they say but the county is ultimately responsible for the jail, so they recognize that the sheriff's running it for their benefit, but they came and did the jail, so they recognize that the sheriff running it for their benefit, but they came and did the tour. And Brad pointed out before the tour started. He said, just so you know, we operate 24-7 here.
Speaker 2:He says we are 95% inspection ready at all times. But when you see the place clean and you don't smell anything it's because we do that every day. We didn't clean up because you're here, so you got to operate that way. But having that level of openness and the ability to, if a citizen legitimately wants to walk into a tour, we'll do it. I'll do a 24-hour stay. I have staff there 24 hours a day. Somebody can peel off and do a tour real quick.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, and you're absolutely right. I visited a federal prison last week. They invited me up there for correctional workers week and we started taking the tour and we hadn't been, I don't know a couple of hundred feet inside and somebody was like well, let me show you this over here. You know we do a real great. I said I already figured out you do a real great job. I said I've been around this a long time. I can walk in immediately and look at the corners and look at the inmates. And the inmates were not scared of the staff. They were all engaging, they were interested, and these were inmates who are talked to, communicated with on a regular basis. And I knew that the minute I walked through the door. So we don't have any reason to hide it. We do a great job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the other things we could focus on too. Speaking hiding is part of being on the accreditation commission in florida is where we're accredited and next week actually, we're getting our fourth three accreditation for fcac. I'm on the commission, so I'll have to recuse myself for that one, but it's going to be an awesome opportunity. In three years or three yeah, three years from now, we're going go to what's called Excelsior status for FCAC, which takes time to get there. But when I have assessors in the building, we have Florida Model Jail Standards, which requires a scheduled audit or inspection every year, and then there's a 120-day window post or previous to that scheduled inspection they can have unannounced. So we're expecting an unannounced any day of the week, but when the assessors are in the building, my staff don't run for them. They, you know, walk through the hallways everybody's office door isn't closed trying to avoid the assessors or the audit team. They want to engage, they know their job, they love their job, they're proud of their job and they want to tell the story and they're prepared, of course. Of course, when our fcac inspection comes around, do we? Do we send out the reminders? And, hey, if you hypothetically a question comes up, you don't know the answer, it's okay, find the answer and find that assessor and go tell them you found the answer here you go.
Speaker 2:But you know when you, when you have the culture of doing the right thing no matter what and then being inspection ready at all times, there's no reason to avoid telling your story. So I mean, that's how we get some great ideas anyway, sometimes your assessors come through your building and they steal one of your programs or they steal the way you're doing things. And as you get involved personally as an assessor or an accrediting body inspector, you go get to steal some stuff too, because everybody's doing good things. You're not going to voluntarily do extra accreditation if you're not doing the right thing. You're going to meet the minimum standards, and that's what scares me about what I said earlier. Sometimes the minimum standards aren't even there because you don't know what they are.
Speaker 2:But we just have to own the narrative and that takes training and that takes the culture of. It's okay to make a mistake. You're not going to have your head lobbed off. If you make a mistake, be honest about it. But we're much better off when we're telling our story and then showing the world what we're doing to the best of our ability. Obviously, you're not going to have news crews walking around, running around with live feed from the jail. You want to control that to somewhat, because you have to make sure people have dignity too, meaning the people that live there.
Speaker 2:You've got to treat them like professionals at all times. If we can tell good stories and then just get ahead of the bad ones, I think we'll be okay.
Speaker 1:I think you caught my eye on LinkedIn because we think a lot alike. I know some of your leadership thoughts you put out on LinkedIn and one of them I saw pretty early on I think you just posted the word good, and so if you've ever listened to Jocko's, is that where you oh, yeah, yeah, instead of making excuses, let's figure out how we can move forward. So I know you study this leadership. What's some of if you're going to give you know this let's start off with a recruit. If you're going to start off with a new officer coming into work at a jail, what's some of that information and advice you want to give them?
Speaker 2:So this is going on right now. As a matter of fact, one of my patrol captains, his son, came to work for me. Gavin's a good kid and he met with me before he decided to. He applied to go to the law enforcement training the cadet path and I said why don't you come to the jail first and learn how to talk to people right? And then John and I Captain McMurdo and I are pretty good friends and he brought him over and we had a good conversation. The first thing I did was hand him the Jocko and Leif book Extreme Ownership.
Speaker 1:Absolutely and.
Speaker 2:I said read this. This is going to become your manhood Bible. When you are able to own everything in your life, realize that you're the cause of most of it and you're the only one that can take uh, you know, control your own emotions, as you, your reactions to your emotions as you, um and truly. And it all comes down to leadership, right you, every day, we're leading ourselves. And that's exactly what that talks about. Um, and?
Speaker 2:And I hadn't heard back from gavin, and I can't wait to point this out to him and I sent him an email hey, how's the book going? And he admitted right away, he meant I haven't had a chance to get to it yet, I'll get started. And then I said all right, I'm expecting some kind of response. And a couple weeks later he responded I started the book. Here's what's going on in the first three paragraphs or not paragraphs, but chapters. He's figuring it out pretty quick. In our roll call room, we use the mantra up there it's no bad teams, only bad leaders. So we have that right on the line. And it's also it's not what you preach, it's what you tolerate.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You can have the gift of gab. You can talk about the things that you would ideally like to have in an organization, but until you can back it up and prove that you're doing that, you have nothing. So I take advantage of those. There's some phenomenal books out there, especially when it comes to leadership books. There's so many different ways to look at leadership, but you're truly all telling the same story. It's just a matter of how you like to ingest it. I was never in the military. I started this job when I was 19 years old, so I enjoy the paramilitary lifestyle and so the military books resonate with me and those guys at National Off-Front. They do a great job. Those books are absolutely amazing. I had the opportunity a few years ago my wife bought me for Father's Day. I got to go to one of their roll call sessions in Dallas.
Speaker 1:Oh, did you really Tell me about that? Oh, that was man.
Speaker 2:It was awesome. I remember I was back up to a whopping 260 pounds. My all-time high weight was 302, not proud of that, but after the FBI and A, it got down to 210. Now I'm sitting at like 230. But I had to get down because I knew that I was going to have the full experience and I knew they were going to do the PT in the morning and I didn't want to miss it. So I did and I went to Texas and we got up and down. We're in the parking lot at 430 in the morning. That's where I got to meet Jocko and I got an autographed picture of him and office.
Speaker 2:And what a great group of people though. Those guys are, so down to earth. Their stories are amazing, their leadership style is amazing, and it was only a day and a half seminar, basically, but it echoed exactly what you read in the books and it was cost effective. It wasn't too expensive and it was just an opportunity. And I'm friendly with a couple of them still and we're connected on LinkedIn and we're friends on Facebook a couple of them and a couple of them I can always reach out to. Hey, I get this scenario. What do you think?
Speaker 2:And most of the time it gets back to like. Dave Burke, as a matter of fact, is one of them. He's like you've got to detach, you're taking it too personal, and he's usually right, and it's nice to have that a little bit of an outlet. Luckily for me, I finally I think I figured it out. We all have bad days, uh, but are you really having a bad day or is it a bad few minutes, right?
Speaker 2:so you have to just be able to adapt and overcome. And those guys, the adaptation when it comes to that, that three minutes of watching that video, good, right, yeah, everything's going wrong. Good, this is an opportunity to improve. Find a better process. Find, most of the time, that better process is inside your own head, getting it right and then resetting and being able to, to move forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mentioned dave burke. I'm super excited. July is that when his book comes out. Yes, it is july. Yeah, so I'm really looking. I love his, his conversations on there and, like you said, so, down to earth Leadership. Now I want you to step up to and I don't know how it works in your jail, but I'm that mid-level supervisor, that person who's now taken that step and they've got their peers under them. They're setting the standard, they're setting the culture.
Speaker 2:Tell me about what your advice for those guys is no bigger challenge, I think, than going from being with your friends and co-workers as a peer and then suddenly now you're the boss and of course they get to know, especially when you're taking over a shift. I think we do a pretty good job because I recognize when I made sergeant I was suddenly in charge of my friends, which was not an easy transition. Right, you have to make sure that anybody being promoted to rank a sergeant goes to a different shift and they get to start over with a fresh slate. Basically, yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's the hardest part separating yourself from the line and recognizing that now you're responsible for everything. That line is doing Nothing, saying you can't be friendly. You need to have relationships to be successful in leadership or supervision.
Speaker 2:You have to know your people. You have to know them pretty well, especially at the line level, because, honestly, you're their first responder. Something's going on at home. They're distracted or they're sick, or somebody in the family is sick and they're having money troubles these things. Eventually you get to know their faces, you know something's up. As long as you're treating them right and you have good relationships, you'd be able to identify those things early, be able to react to them and make sure that they're going to be okay, because there's nothing more stressful.
Speaker 2:I'll say nothing more stressful If something, if I'm home and something my wife and I have a fight. Thank God we don't fight very often, but I know that I'm distracted until I get that sorted out, because she's my world, my family, is my most important thing. So until that's sorted out, I can't concentrate fully on anything else I'm doing. So I'm thinking your staff is probably going to have the same challenges. So, truly getting to know your people, especially if you're a new sergeant, I think that's the key. Moving into middle management, some shifts, some places, like my facility, a sergeant runs a shift. Historically, my last jail, a lieutenant In Florida, most of the mid-sized to large jails it's a lieutenant or a captain being able to now lead the leaders. Nothing more stressful, probably, than a junior lieutenant trying to tell a 30-year sergeant hey, something's wrong with your squad, we need to get this fixed. The paperwork's not right. How come you can't form sentences? I don't understand what's going on. These things you didn't have to deal with because they weren't your sergeant.
Speaker 2:You were working next to them right, but being willing to stand up and be that leader, at the same time trying to. You can't just do as I say, not as I do. You got to work with them. But I think the challenge is, honestly, is keeping good, solid relationships with people. So you know your people and you know their needs and if you can meet their needs, do it. There's no more frustrating of a situation I was talking about this at the AJA conference a few weeks ago For people when they put requests in or suggestions in, or ask for clarification on a policy or submit a memo to even to ask for meritorious gain time for an inmate, and they just don't hear anything back.
Speaker 2:When you as a middle manager or a leader in general. If you get something on your desk that somebody has taken the time to create a document, to send up the chain of command and you can't take the time to respond to them, that is a response right, and that response looks like a middle finger back at the staff. Honestly, and nothing will disenfranchise staff or lower morale faster than people not responding to suggestions. If it's important to them, it should be important to you, and if it's something that just won't work, that's okay. Explain it to them, call them down to your office or meet them on their post and hey, I have your memo, I have your suggestion.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about it. Can we afford it, you know? Is it politically feasible? Is it going to work long term, you know? And have them work through it, because no supervisor wants somebody to come to you with just problems. Right, you talked about that earlier. You're on the lieutenant's list. Okay, stop crying about it. If you have a problem, identify the problem, come with solutions and I will help you pick your best solution, because it's not going to be my decision.
Speaker 2:One of the greatest compliments I've received as a lieutenant Sergeant. Todd Dane, retired still one of the greatest people I've worked with he came to me and said LT, can I say something to you? I said any day of the week because I appreciate the fact that anytime we come to you with a situation if it's classification versus housing or booking versus the kitchen or whatever and we come to you with an issue, as long as we come with solutions, you always hear us out. I said well, why wouldn't I? I'm not here to. I don't want to make all the decisions. I absolutely don't want to. I want to be the tiebreaker if necessary. That's the worst thing.
Speaker 1:I want to do.
Speaker 2:I want to be. If I have to make the decisions, then I'm doing something wrong. If I'm not, I'm not developing people and I'm not making sure that they're able to run their shift or confident enough to make decisions. I shouldn't nobody's nobody should be that excited to make the decisions all day long. Listen, because you have the same results If you work for a micromanager or a laissez-faire leader, right, you have the same results, called apathy. Your staff don't care at that point because the sergeant is going to come down and tell them what to do anyway, so why should I be proactive? Or he doesn't care enough, so why should we care? It's too, too easy to let them engage them. I remember one of the first articles I wrote for American Jail Association magazine was lowest level leadership.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I would push as many decisions as possible down the chain, not just because I didn't want to, but empowering people to reason through them and make the decisions. And what triggered that, honestly, was one day I was sitting as a I think it was a captain and I got a phone call from a warden of a prison.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And they were reaching out to me to ask me if it was okay if one of their prisoners wrote letters to one of my inmates. Why is the warden of a prison asking me if an inmate can write a prisoner's crime name? Why can't that decision be made somewhere else, Even in the mailroom, as far as I'm concerned?
Speaker 2:check to make sure there's no victim issues and no co-defendant issues. And then who cares? Right, especially the way we've made everything electronic. We're going to gather intel potentially, so why not let it in? As long as you're not hurting anybody, why not? So that was one of my favorite articles I ever wrote and I live it. I don't need to make all those decisions. I don't want that. I want a culture of people willing to make decisions, willing to lead, and guess what If something goes wrong? That's on me, right. I mean, let's talk about Jocko, talk about his TED Talk. That kind of started it all.
Speaker 1:It's on me.
Speaker 2:If something goes wrong, it's okay, I'll wear it. And when I went to, when I went to human resources for those those first four months there that I was there, I had a meeting with the staff and I said listen, whatever goes wrong back here is on me, whatever we win is on y'all, so don't worry about it, I'll take the brunt of it. And that one goes such a long way because when you're used to not, you know why is? Why did this go wrong and how is this? How did this happen? Because I let it happen and you have to be able to be willing to own it. It's, it's, it's. So once you, once it clicks in your head, read the books and actually live a little bit once it clicks it's easy, it makes life easy, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your decision is to build and surround yourself with good people so that you don't have to make every decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean Henry Ford. I think he was quoted as saying that too. He's like I'm not the smartest person in the room. I'm going to surround myself with people that are smarter than me and just let them work, because you can't, you can't beat it, you can't beat it, you can't, you can't.
Speaker 1:So tell me what's going on with you coming up with the AJA, with what have you got in the works?
Speaker 2:So we are getting back to basics, and hopefully soon. Actually, I just got notified that some of our internal podcasts are almost ready to come out. Congratulations, thank you. We put together four of them while we were at the conference. Don't let anybody know, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:So we're going to put them out at least once a month.
Speaker 2:We're going to try to get our narrative out there a little more active on social media, all the way down to YouTube, and I know we are, as an association, getting back to the basics. The reason why I fell in love with the American Jail Association was in 2007,. I went to a class called Medical and Security Working Together what a concept, right, and that's not always that easy to do. Luckily for me, my medical director, christine Ducaney, and I have worked together a long time. She was an LPN when I started as deputy. I'm sorry, vice versa, she was an LPN when I was a deputy. Already We've gone through the ranks, we've grown up together. Every time I got promoted, she got promoted, and the last time was the first time ever that she now gets to work for me, which was a tough adjustment for her. Just kidding, we have such a good relationship. But that first exposure to American Jail Association training was phenomenal.
Speaker 2:I came back and that one training affected that part of my career so much because I joke about the medical staff. You know I love them Like you love your little sister, right when they come down to pass medication or you've got to deal with a triage situation. Protect them, get them out of your hair as fast as you possibly can, but make sure they're safe and treat them right and engage them. And we do engage medical and mental health and most a lot of decisions we make operationally because why not? It's a different perspective. Worst case scenario it's maybe it doesn't have anything to do with medical, but somebody's got a different perspective. So engage all your thought leaders that are surrounding you, because not every like I said earlier, not every decision has to be yours.
Speaker 2:But we're getting back to basics. We are getting back to providing world-class training. We're going to make sure we are meeting the needs of the members. I don't think we've ever not met the needs of the members, but I think we're going to double down this year. I'm excited we're going to talk about online training. We're going to revitalize that online training section on our website. We're creating good content. I got to actually record some content a couple weeks ago, which was the first time I've ever done that when it comes to training purposes. It was fun, but we are doing some good stuff. We're always going to lead the way in legislative stuff. I know the FCC ruling that came out a few months ago has really hurt jails and prisons across the country. When it comes to funding about the, they cut the.
Speaker 1:Oh, the collecting money off of phone calls.
Speaker 2:We stood to potentially lose $450,000 a year, which paid for five people. Well, if that funding goes away, then I got to find a way to either lose people, which I don't want to do, or get the county to fund them. So we're going to push that legislative initiative to make sure we can try to get the FCC to at least come back to the table and talk about how we can enforce it or, if not, just, you know, forget about it. Now the courts are going to rule on that and I'm hoping soon and I believe based on interactions we've had, I don't think the fcc is going to um, they're not going to hurt feelings if it gets overturned. So they're either way.
Speaker 2:It's fine, but we need to push it and make sure we don't lose that valuable source of funding and then also potential long-term intelligence. Because what's the benefit of a? What prompts a phone company to go out and create technologies that could help identify escape attempts or criminal activity? Why do it if you're not making money? Because they're in the business to make money. We're not there to give free phone calls away.
Speaker 1:And they're not truly free. They're on the taxpayer's dime.
Speaker 2:Absolutely right at that point. There's been a few sheriffs across the country that have said you know what, if I can't make money off of this to support the inmate programs, then I just don't need phones. No court case has ever come out and said you have to give an inmate programs, then I just don't need phones. Nothing. No court case has ever come out and said you have to give an inmate phone calls. You don't have to. You have to give them access to people. You can do that on a letter, pen and paper, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So we're going to continue to legislate a front and make those pushes and make sure we're paying attention to bills all the time that come out. Even bills that you think would only affect the Bureau of Prisons eventually trickle down and affect the jail. I mean, prea snuck up on us and people were like this will never pass, this will never pass. And guess what it passed. Now we're even paying attention to that the PREA Resource Center being defunded during the DOGE situation with the current administration. So we've offered some training recently on PREA. Prea's still there, the rule. It's still a law. If you're going to remain compliant, you're going to have to get inspected and you're going to do all those things, but those resources are gone. So we're going to try to fill that void a little bit, to offer our insight, anything that benefits the members specifically, especially in their leadership development. So one of the things I enjoy talking about is our certifications. So I'm a certified jail manager. I was a certified jail officer.
Speaker 2:And when I said in my speech a couple weeks ago, when I saw a job advertisement in Texas for a jail administrator position that required a bachelor's degree but preferred somebody with a master's degree or an American Jail Association certified jail manager, I knew that that credential meant something. So when they held it to the same level as a master's degree, that's important. So credentialing is such a great way to help professionalize yourself, work towards yourself. I mean, it's not an easy credential to get, it's not a gimme, and I'm 28 years in at this point. July 7th will be my 28th year, so I've been doing this a long time, so I'm still trying to work on things.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, that is those accreditations. I did them through the ACA when I first started and you do learn a lot and it sets you up for promotions. It sets you up for success because you can go into the house and you can learn from old Bob there in the back and he'll teach you a few things. But when you want to look outside of that housing unit and you want to know how jails and prisons and the system runs, you've got to, you've got to reach out farther.
Speaker 2:So that's great. Back into the case law and the why behind the reasons why we do things. It really opens your eyes and it's going to help you later on when you're answering grievances too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you mentioned that. It's something I noticed traveling the country and teaching is the lack of case law and we've really got to get that back in our training. A lot of officers are out there working and have no idea why they're doing what they're doing and the repercussions of it is the other thing.
Speaker 2:Locally we hosted a few months ago, american Jail Association, my agency hosted a classification course. It wasn't the traditional classification course that we offered. It was modified and one of the things we did do was we added a legal section. Now I took full advantage of the fact that our staff attorney is also the attorney for the Board of Directors for the American Jail Association. So I asked her if she'd offer some background and some insight into the why behind what we're doing, and she did a great job. It turned into a two-hour basic of legal section before the classification course kicked off and it really set the tone. It was really beneficial and she did a great job.
Speaker 2:But you're absolutely right, it's too easy nowadays, especially with the easy ability to do the research. We have all this opportunity with AI. I know I don't recommend you just go write reports or start making crazy ideas with AI and submitting them. You have to use it as a tool. You've got to take full advantage. You have to vet the information. But you can ask ChatGPT to do a lot of stuff to include. Give me some case law that might help here and it'll do a good job of it. You've got all. You gotta make sure it's accurate.
Speaker 1:but sure it'll really get you going have you used uh notebook lm yet? Oh, I got into that a few weeks ago. You just bring in, you point it to all these pdfs and all these things and then ask it questions based on everything you've uploaded to it. It's pretty cool, wow, all right, yeah, but same as every other ai. You got to go back through it and make sure that it's uh giving you good information. But uh, yeah, so I and I'll put all this stuff in the uh underneath in the info section, but tell if people want more information on certification, join in the AGA and that type of stuff where where can they go?
Speaker 2:So just go to AGAorg. The website is full of information and if you can't find it for some reason, I will answer email almost 24 hours a day. So you can email me, seank at AGAorg. Seank at AGAorg. I have no problem sharing that. I love engaging, especially if you're an AGA member.
Speaker 2:Jump on iConnect. Iconnect is a great opportunity to get a bunch of questions answered for you. It's basically a listserv, but it's basically live people asking questions and providing good information. But, yeah, the website is definitely the best starting point. Any questions Anybody on the board of directors is more than willing to answer questions. Anybody at headquarter staff all their emails are on the website too Anybody. And if you just want to follow up and send me an email too, I'll be glad to help push your question along. I'll probably have a lot of answers for you, but the nuanced stuff the headquarter staff is going to be I would hope that I wouldn't misspeak. I prefer to get the right information out there first, but they do such a good job. But I'd be happy to engage with anybody that's listening to further their career in any way.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm super excited to have you on here. I've been wanting to meet you for a while. Great conversation, I knew it would be, and I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, it was a great time and I'll be happy to come back anytime.
Speaker 1:We'll do that. Have a good day. Thank you you too. Hey, before we go, I'd like to take a minute to thank one of our sponsors.
Speaker 1:Omni Real-Time Locating System is a company I've been working closely with for years. I'm proud to be a part of this innovative team that's developed the best real-time locating system on the market today for your jail or prison. Omni's PREA-compliant real-time monitoring technology is the very best way to track and record your inmates' locations, their movements, their interactions, throughout every square inch of your correctional facility. Imagine getting an alarm the second an escape happens, or an alert that lets you know when an inmate's heart rate drops below a set level. To learn more about Omni, go to wwwomnirtlscom that's omnirtlscom or you can click on today's show notes to get in the information guide. Omni Real-Time Locating System is a powerful tool specifically designed for the modern correctional professional. If you haven't done so, please take a moment to like my podcast or, better yet, hit the subscribe button so that you'll be notified when the next episode comes out. Thanks for listening and let's be safe out there.
