Judith Sachwald served as Maryland's Director of Parole and Probation, leading over 1,300 employees who provided supervision to approximately 69,000 individuals under probation, parole, mandatory supervision or home detention. She guided the development and implementation of a research-based approach to supervision which holds offenders accountable for their actions while assisting them in becoming law abiding, responsible and productive. Under this new approach to supervision, offenders were 38 percent less likely to be arrested or violate the rules of supervision.
What role does failure play in corrections?
Having worked in government for 31 years in a field that legislatures love – education – and a field that legislatures dislike – corrections – I can say that in general, corrections doesn’t get additional money unless there’s a tragic incident. Correctional administrators are very stretched and barely get the plumbing and electricity to work. In Maryland, we developed a new strategy for supervision that didn’t get funded until a probationer shot and killed a state trooper who was a personal friend of mine. It’s something I feel very conflicted about. It can also work the other way. One of my fears about new funding for rehabilitation programs in prison is that someone is going to go out and do something awful and all of the new funding will get cut. In general, public policy in the states is a patchwork of reactions to events, not thoughtful and results-driven.
Does that also mean that people who work in corrections are afraid to make mistakes?
There’s an existing workforce throughout the country who bring their own biases to work every day. Some have a “trail ‘em, nail ‘em and jail ‘em” philosophy and it’s very difficult to move them into 21st century evidence-based practice. They will tell you, the first time someone screws up, we need to take him off the street so we insulate ourselves from the fallout if he commits a new crime. What do you mean by mistake, though? Does it mean being 10 minutes late for an appointment with the parole or probation officer, missing a single treatment session after six months of perfect attendance, or getting arrested for armed robbery? The research is telling us that we should be focusing on the moderate to high risk people and doing less with low risk offenders. That’s a big change.
How do you convince staff to change?
You have to change the workplace environment. I had a standing offer in Maryland that if people wanted to try something new, but there was a division policy prohibiting it, all they had to do was call me and ask for a waiver of policy. It was a long time before anyone came forward, but what was interesting was that there was not a single case where the policy actually prohibited what they were proposing. Organizational culture is a funny thing, and people who are trying to move up and advance their careers are afraid to make mistakes. Let me give you another example. We did a leadership program where we asked people to come up with a dream project and present it to the senior leadership team. It was amazing. Most of the ideas were things that they could have done on their own without permission from above. After so many years of working in a Henry Ford-style factory, people were afraid to make a change in the assembly line process despite their heartfelt commitment to public safety.
What other steps did you take in Maryland to encourage experimentation?
I think the important thing in parole and probation is to break away from the old paramilitary model of command and control. One of the things I did was eliminate words like superior and subordinate, which made me the superior and others in the agency the subordinate. The complexity of corrections requires the commitment and investment of every brain in the room. We need to change the work environment so that it’s not only physically safe but intellectually safe for people to learn and make mistakes. The general public thinks that government officials never get fired. I can tell you that mid-level employees are always worried about being fired! I can’t explain it. People used to call the walk to the director’s office that I occupied the ‘walk of shame.’ It took a long time to change that mindset.
What results were you able to achieve with this new mindset?
We created 4 pioneer sites where we tested new some new ideas. What we found from the early research is that people in pioneer sites were much less likely to commit technical violations and be rearrested. We didn’t have the resources to roll the program out in a full-fledged manner, so what we did was to try to weave some of the ideas into practice throughout the state Our slogan was “48,000 hours” because we had 1,200 full-time employees, which translates to 48,000 hours a week to use responsibly for the supervision of all of the offenders under supervision. We need to redefine our work. We pushed our leadership team to look for their own solutions, and they started to look at their caseloads in different ways. For example, they moved some lower risk offenders into reduced contact categories in order to see high-risk offenders more often in the office and in the community. The key was empowering people to take ownership and make well-informed, results driven decisions.