Prison Management

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, although many management styles have been proposed and adopted for the management of correctional facilities, variations in the elements involved--the inmates, the public, the staff, the governmental bureaucracy and the manager himself or herself--make the institutions unique and thereby the management style must be individualized. The author points out that the duty of management is to define clearly institutional objectives in precise terms, which makes it clear to correctional workers and other facility staff what has to be done, makes choices rational, permits the attachment of rewards and deprivations to performance and prevents any role redefinition and goal distortion. The paper relates that the value of bureaucratic supervision and surveillance has been questioned in many work settings because it is (1) inimical to individuals working together in a concerted group effort, (2) dissonant with individual's quest for self-awareness, (3) obstructive to individual's attempts to expand and extend their potential and (4) antithetical to contemporary realities.

From the Paper:

"The difference in the form that bureaucratic surveillance and supervision takes has been attributed to characteristics of the bureaucrats involved. While this may be true, managers can make a contribution in their willingness to relinquish managerial responsibility. There exists inferential evidence that the intrusion of bureaucratic tentacles into the domain of managerial activity is due not just to the willing acquiescence of the manager. The manager's task goes beyond the prevention of the intrusion of bureaucratic tentacle into his domain. Policy enunciation defines the parameters of managerial activity. It places constraints on what the manager of an institution can do. At the same time it implicitly specifies areas of activity that a manager could possibly profitably explore."

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