Correctional leaders

Correctional leaders

Correctional centers need experienced and skilled leaders. This is because the leaders are tasked with different challenging responsibilities of ensuring that the correctional center. Prospering in such duties, correctional leaders need to be highly motivated, humanistic, innovative, reflective, energetic and mature. Also, they should have high interactive skills to bring out the best of the inmates and subordinate officers. Primarily, correctional leaders are tasked with the responsibility of managing the centers.

Correctional leaders have complex tasks compared to the functions of ordinary officers. The primary duty of officers in the center is to ensure there is security to the inmates. They have a responsibility of ensuring there is no violence in prison. Some inmates extend their violent acts to the jail and may injure or misuse young or weak inmates. Subordinate officers must ensure all work accordingly. Their other role is ensuring inmates do not escape from the prison through safeguarding the correctional centers. The overall duty of correctional leaders is to manage the whole correctional center, including all activities. The first duty is to ensure there is a discipline for both officers and inmates.

They provide this through coming up with policies which outline the disciplinary actions that the officers and inmates should engage. Leaders also impose different punishments to different disciplinary issues. Disciplinary systems reduce misunderstanding problems in the correctional centers and also prohibit the officers from using excessive force or abuse the inmates. Second, the leaders have a responsibility of budgeting for the entire centers. The second responsibility of correctional leaders is creating a budget to run the centers. Leaders plan on the projects and other expenditure for the institution. For instance, leaders determine if there is a need for new facilities such as hospitals, sleeping quarters, offices and then budget for them. Third and most important, the role of prisons is to foster a positive change to the inmates. It is the role of correctional centers to promote different strategies that will contribute towards the positive changes. For instance, most American prisons offer vocational training courses as a way of ensuring that changing the mentality of the prisoners and giving them of having legit life after serving their imprisonment terms.

Correctional leaders use different strategies to administer prisons, depending on the environment. The first model is juvenile correctional centers. The most common factor that determines the style of administration is the nature of the inmates and the level of security threat that they pose. Typically, juvenile centers host children and teenagers under the age of eighteen years. Juvenile correctional centers are also low-security prisons as children do not pose much threat or complications to the officers. As a result, most inmates in this category need nurturing, education and nurturing. The most common model used in a juvenile center environment is transformational leadership. It entails mostly encouraging, inspiring and empowering the inmates. The reason why this strategy is best in juvenile environments is that children easily accept changes and some never had detailed information about the effects of activities that landed them in jails. Middle-security prisons need a different mode of administration than juvenile or other low-level security prisons. Such prisons may require a combination of both transformational and transactional styles of leadership. In transactional leadership, the leader recognizes the activities that an inmate needs to engage to help in the change of behaviour. The leader may deny the officers some powers for the benefit of the inmate. Inmates in high-security prisons pose threats to both officers and other inmates. The leadership in such environments needs to be serious. The most common styles of leadership in these prisons are Laissez-fare and full-range leadership. Laissez-faire model is whereby a leader is narrowly or not engaged in any form of administration, including decision making and lack of interest. In short, he or she leaves the subordinate officers to deal with the inmates on their own. The reason why high-security prison leaders adapt to this style is that most inmates are rude, and force must be used to control them. Full-range leadership involves incorporating all forms of leadership. This is the right style because it allows the inmates to rude inmates to change their behaviours.

There are many unethical issues

go on inside correctional centers. Officers are required to report such activities to the management for appropriate measures to be taken. However, an officer may tend to hide such activities as a sign that they are doing their duties correctly. The most unethical issues that officers engage in include mistreatment and use of excessive force on inmates, not reporting cases of immorality such as homosexuality among inmates, inmate altercations and sneaking illegal drugs to inmates for other favours. As a correctional leader, the first method to handle such officers is to inform and remind them they are obligating their lines of duty. It is also good to discuss with them the dangers of engaging in unethical activities. Some officers may change while others might continue with the behaviors. In case an officer continues with the practice, I would take the lawfully established measures to handle the issue. For instance, if the punishment for committing a particular unethical issue in termination of a job, I would impose the same punishment.