Below is a message that is sent to our wardens, today. Of course, appearance, order and cleanliness are everyone’s concern. However, the rest of the message has particular application to several divisions and the principles are applicable to all.

 

Ironically, complacency never sleeps; it is always on the offensive. Have a great week and keep pushing forward.

 

 

Good Morning,

 

I regret that I was unable to speak with you during the last wardens meeting. However, I did have two things that I wanted to accomplish.

 

The first was to issue a reminder about your roles as leaders of your prisons and leaders within this agency. Nothing breaks my heart more than getting news that someone in a position of leadership in this agency has failed to meet or enforce our standards. From our rules about employee relationships to our standards for inmate movement to our standards for the appearance and grounds maintenance, leaders must not only meet our standards, but we must also ensure that others do so as well.

 

Therein lays the difficulty: doing so means that leaders never get to turn a blind eye; leaders never get to ignore the problem or the weakness; we must always hold people accountable. It can be tiresome and it can become discouraging. However, accountability is never optional and when there is no accountability, standards will be ignored.

 

The top 10% of performers will do the right thing and meet standards because it is the right thing to do and because they are committed to excellence. But, many in the middle and all of those at the bottom of the performance curve need to be accountable; they need recognition for good performance and consequences for bad performance.

 

I hope that no one in your prison would ever hear the words, “you better (fill in the blank) because you never know when the director will drop by.” An unannounced visit by me should be the least concern in the minds of your employees. Instead, their bigger concern should be whether you or your associate warden, or your major or anyone else in your chain of command should find their area of responsibility out of compliance. Likewise, those good performers should relish hearing your commendation for their consistently good performance. That is a culture of accountability.

 

In the prisons where such a culture exists, my visits are often of little consequence and beyond affirmation of good work, I have little to say. In those places, I seldom see inmates or staff scurrying around, trying to hide or ‘fix’ areas where standards are being ignored.

Is that the case in your prison?

 

Second, I am going to offer two pieces of specific advice.

 

Grounds Keeping: I have long lamented the lack of real interaction among our institutions. I have tried to recognize consistently outstanding prisons and I have attempted to convince each of you to stop fighting the same battles or trying to reinvent the wheel; instead, I have suggested that you go to prisons that excel in a particular function or standard and find out how that warden and staff consistently meets standards. In that regard, I have failed.

 

Since I have been unable to break down the silo mentality held by some, I offer the following specific advice about grounds keeping. I can safely say that I have visited more of our prisons, more often, than anyone else over the past seven years and this advice comes straight from the mouths and practice of your peers who excel in maintaining immaculate grounds.

 

For all but the smallest of work centers, during the growing season, which is most of the year in our state, if it is daylight and not raining (in some places, even if it is raining) you should hear grass being cut and you should see improvements being made; small engines should be running and flowers/beds/additions/etc should be in the works. This should be true everyday, with the possible exception of Sunday. Your standard should not be once a week, it should be all the time. It should not be dependent on this tractor or that mower. Your crews should “baby” those tractors, knowing that if it breaks, the grass will still be cut by whatever means necessary. (For many, the option when a tractor is broken is a push mower or even a rotary push mower. I see more of these as I move around our agency; when that is the alternative, inmates are less likely to break the tractor.)

 

Trash on the Yard: This comes down to watching inmate movement, especially to and from meals. “Mainlining” is a fancy correctional term for the practice of requiring employees from different functional areas to attend and monitor meals. It works.

 

Whether you take that approach or not, if we continue to allow inmates to toss trash and drinks on the ground after meals, we are failing. Those inmates should be inconvenienced greatly and then required to pick up the trash and clean the area. They could forfeit their tumblers. Again, simply having another group of inmates or even staff pick up the trash is insufficient to correct the underlying character defects of disrespect, rudeness, indifference, selfishness, et.al. If you do not believe that there are prisons in our system where inmates do not throw trash and liquids after meals, let me know and I will send you to a few.

 

In those places, meals are not a bother to staff, they are an important event. It shows not only in the absence of trash and liquids being tossed, but also in the condition of their cafeterias and kitchens, the number and seniority of staff involved in the meal evolution, and in the enforcement of uniform rules.

 

By the way, there should be little secret as to what we expect in terms of our cafeteria and food service; while we cannot control our limited funding in this area, we can ensure that what we serve is well prepared, and served in a clean and orderly setting. We recently had a cafeteria receive a DHEC grade of “B.” Needless to say, I am embarrassed by that grade and by overall the lack of pride and attention to detail that it represents. Most of you do a great job in this area; do not allow complacency to steal your success.

 

Regardless of how it get done, I remind each of you that you are responsible for making sure that your prison meets SCDC’s high standards for appearance, order and cleanliness at all times. If the way you have always done things is not working, then change it.

 

I look forward to seeing you soon.