Dan Pacholke: How prisons can help inmates live meaningful lives

74,703 views ・ 2014-08-13

TED


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00:12
We're seen as the organization that is the bucket for failed social policy.
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I can't define who comes to us or how long they stay.
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We get the people for whom nothing else has worked,
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people who have fallen through all
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of the other social safety nets.
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They can't contain them, so we must.
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That's our job:
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contain them, control them.
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Over the years, as a prison system,
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as a nation, and as a society,
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we've become very good at that,
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but that shouldn't make you happy.
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Today we incarcerate more people per capita
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than any other country in the world.
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We have more black men in prison today
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than were under slavery in 1850.
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We house the parents of almost three million
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of our community's children,
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and we've become the new asylum,
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the largest mental health provider in this nation.
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When we lock someone up,
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that is no small thing.
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And yet, we are called the Department of Corrections.
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Today I want to talk about
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changing the way we think about corrections.
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I believe, and my experience tells me,
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that when we change the way we think,
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we create new possibilities, or futures,
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and prisons need a different future.
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I've spent my entire career in corrections, over 30 years.
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I followed my dad into this field.
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He was a Vietnam veteran. Corrections suited him.
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He was strong, steady, disciplined.
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I was not so much any of those things,
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and I'm sure that worried him about me.
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Eventually I decided, if I was going to end up in prison,
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I'd better end up on the right side of the bars,
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so I thought I'd check it out,
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take a tour of the place my dad worked,
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the McNeil Island Penitentiary.
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Now this was the early '80s,
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and prisons weren't quite what you see
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on TV or in the movies.
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In many ways, it was worse.
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I walked into a cell house that was five tiers high.
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There were eight men to a cell.
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there were 550 men in that living unit.
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And just in case you wondered,
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they shared one toilet in those small confines.
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An officer put a key in a lockbox,
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and hundreds of men streamed out of their cells.
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Hundreds of men streamed out of their cells.
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I walked away as fast as I could.
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Eventually I went back and I started as an officer there.
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My job was to run one of those cell blocks
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and to control those hundreds of men.
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When I went to work at our receptions center,
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I could actually hear the inmates roiling from the parking lot,
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shaking cell doors, yelling,
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tearing up their cells.
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Take hundreds of volatile people and lock them up,
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and what you get is chaos.
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Contain and control — that was our job.
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One way we learned to do this more effectively
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was a new type of housing unit
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called the Intensive Management Unit, IMU,
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a modern version of a "hole."
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We put inmates in cells behind solid steel doors
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with cuff ports so we could restrain them
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and feed them.
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Guess what?
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It got quieter.
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Disturbances died down in the general population.
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Places became safer
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because those inmates who were most violent or disruptive
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could now be isolated.
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But isolation isn't good.
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Deprive people of social contact and they deteriorate.
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It was hard getting them out of IMU,
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for them and for us.
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Even in prison, it's no small thing
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to lock someone up.
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My next assignment was to one of the state's deep-end prisons
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where some of our more violent or disruptive inmates are housed.
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By then, the industry had advanced a lot,
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and we had different tools and techniques
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to manage disruptive behavior.
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We had beanbag guns and pepper spray
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and plexiglass shields,
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flash bangs, emergency response teams.
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We met violence with force
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and chaos with chaos.
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We were pretty good at putting out fires.
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While I was there, I met two experienced correctional workers
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who were also researchers,
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an anthropologist and a sociologist.
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One day, one of them commented to me and said,
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"You know, you're pretty good at putting out fires.
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Have you ever thought about how to prevent them?"
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I was patient with them,
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explaining our brute force approach
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to making prisons safer.
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They were patient with me.
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Out of those conversations grew some new ideas
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and we started some small experiments.
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First, we started training our officers in teams
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rather than sending them one or two at a time to the state training academy.
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Instead of four weeks of training, we gave them 10.
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Then we experimented with an apprenticeship model
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where we paired new staff with veteran staff.
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They both got better at the work.
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Second, we added verbal de-escalation skills
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into the training continuum
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and made it part of the use of force continuum.
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It was the non-force use of force.
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And then we did something even more radical.
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We trained the inmates on those same skills.
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We changed the skill set,
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reducing violence, not just responding to it.
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Third, when we expanded our facility, we tried a new type of design.
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Now the biggest and most controversial component
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of this design, of course, was the toilet.
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There were no toilets.
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Now that might not sound significant to you here today,
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but at the time, it was huge.
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No one had ever heard of a cell without a toilet.
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We all thought it was dangerous and crazy.
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Even eight men to a cell had a toilet.
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That small detail changed the way we worked.
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Inmates and staff started interacting
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more often and openly and developing a rapport.
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It was easier to detect conflict and intervene
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before it escalated.
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The unit was cleaner, quieter, safer and more humane.
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This was more effective at keeping the peace
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than any intimidation technique I'd seen to that point.
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Interacting changes the way you behave,
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both for the officer and the inmate.
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We changed the environment and we changed the behavior.
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Now, just in case I hadn't learned this lesson,
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they assigned me to headquarters next,
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and that's where I ran straight up against system change.
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Now, many things work against system change:
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politics and politicians, bills and laws,
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courts and lawsuits, internal politics.
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System change is difficult and slow,
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and oftentimes it doesn't take you
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where you want to go.
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It's no small thing to change a prison system.
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So what I did do is I reflected on my earlier experiences
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and I remembered that when we interacted with offenders, the heat went down.
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When we changed the environment, the behavior changed.
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And these were not huge system changes.
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These were small changes, and these changes
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created new possibilities.
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So next, I got reassigned as superintendent of a small prison.
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And at the same time, I was working on my degree
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at the Evergreen State College.
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I interacted with a lot of people who were not like me,
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people who had different ideas
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and came from different backgrounds.
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One of them was a rainforest ecologist.
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She looked at my small prison and what she saw
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was a laboratory.
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We talked and discovered how prisons and inmates
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could actually help advance science
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by helping them complete projects
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they couldn't complete on their own,
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like repopulating endangered species:
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frogs, butterflies, endangered prairie plants.
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At the same time, we found ways to make
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our operation more efficient
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through the addition of solar power,
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rainwater catchment, organic gardening, recycling.
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This initiative has led to many projects
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that have had huge system-wide impact,
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not just in our system, but in other state systems as well,
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small experiments making a big difference
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to science, to the community.
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The way we think about our work changes our work.
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The project just made my job more interesting and exciting.
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I was excited. Staff were excited.
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Officers were excited. Inmates were excited.
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They were inspired.
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Everybody wanted to be part of this.
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They were making a contribution, a difference,
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one they thought was meaningful and important.
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Let me be clear on what's going on here, though.
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Inmates are highly adaptive.
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They have to be.
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Oftentimes, they know more about our own systems
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than the people who run them.
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And they're here for a reason.
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I don't see my job as to punish them or forgive them,
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but I do think they can have
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decent and meaningful lives even in prison.
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So that was the question:
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Could inmates live decent and meaningful lives,
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and if so, what difference would that make?
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So I took that question back to the deep end,
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where some of our most violent offenders are housed.
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Remember, IMUs are for punishment.
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You don't get perks there, like programming.
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That was how we thought.
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But then we started to realize that if any inmates
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needed programming, it was these particular inmates.
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In fact, they needed intensive programming.
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So we changed our thinking 180 degrees,
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and we started looking for new possibilities.
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What we found was a new kind of chair.
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Instead of using the chair for punishment,
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we put it in classrooms.
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Okay, we didn't forget our responsibility to control,
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but now inmates could interact safely, face-to-face
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with other inmates and staff,
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and because control was no longer an issue,
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everybody could focus on other things,
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like learning. Behavior changed.
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We changed our thinking, and we changed what was possible, and this gives me hope.
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Now, I can't tell you that any of this stuff will work.
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What I can tell you, though, it is working.
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Our prisons are getting safer for both staff and inmates,
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and when our prisons are safe,
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we can put our energies into a lot more than just controlling.
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Reducing recidivism may be our ultimate goal,
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but it's not our only goal.
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To be honest with you, preventing crime
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takes so much more from so many more people
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and institutions.
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If we rely on just prisons to reduce crime,
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I'm afraid we'll never get there.
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But prisons can do some things
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we never thought they could do.
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Prisons can be the source of innovation
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and sustainability,
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repopulating endangered species and environmental restoration.
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Inmates can be scientists and beekeepers,
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dog rescuers.
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Prisons can be the source of meaningful work
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and opportunity for staff
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and the inmates who live there.
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We can contain and control
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and provide humane environments.
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These are not opposing qualities.
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We can't wait 10 to 20 years to find out
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if this is worth doing.
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Our strategy is not massive system change.
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Our strategy is hundreds of small changes
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that take place in days or months, not years.
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We need more small pilots where we learn as we go,
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pilots that change the range of possibility.
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We need new and better ways to measure impacts
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on engagement, on interaction,
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on safe environments.
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We need more opportunities to participate in
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and contribute to our communities,
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your communities.
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Prisons need to be secure, yes, safe, yes.
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We can do that.
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Prisons need to provide humane environments
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where people can participate, contribute,
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and learn meaningful lives.
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We're learning how to do that.
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That's why I'm hopeful.
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We don't have to stay stuck in old ideas about prison.
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We can define that. We can create that.
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And when we do that thoughtfully and with humanity,
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prisons can be more than the bucket
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for failed social policy.
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Maybe finally, we will earn our title:
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a department of corrections.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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