In my role as a change facilitator and leadership coach, I have been working since last year with leaders who operate in a prison context, or more specifically within the correctional system. They work in human resources, in the legal department, in finance, as well as in prison management and directly in custodial operations.
The concepts of “confidence” and “trust” play a central role in the leadership training delivered by me and my colleagues, as well as in the culture change program as a whole. I have to admit that for a long time, I found it puzzling how these concepts, or rather these values, of “confidence” and “trust” fit into the prison context. I asked myself: do the people attending our training sessions not deal day after day with offenders, or at least suspects? How can they possibly succeed in giving trust and placing confidence in others?
At first, I bridged this for myself by assuming that the leaders who come to the training apply these values only to their own staff, but not to the inmates. Then everything made sense to me again: in my view, good leadership simply works through trust, delegation, and empowerment, in every context.
And yet, quiet doubts continued to creep in, especially around the question of how mistakes are handled in such an environment, in other words, the culture of dealing with mistakes. After all, a mistake made by an employee could become a security risk for a colleague.
After two visits to correctional institutions, I received answers to my questions, and many of my doubts began to fade.
I was able to observe how strongly the employees at the first institution I visited are guided by the conviction that every young person deserves a second, third, and fourth chance, for example, by being given the opportunity to complete vocational training in a skilled trade, even though closed detention has been ordered by a judge. It is hard to imagine how much effort is required to make this possible: the safety of everyone must constantly be kept in mind, which means the instructor-to-trainee ratio is very high, and the procedures must be followed in an extremely structured way.
What impressed me deeply was the strength of the employees’ determination, despite all the adversity, to accompany the inmates with dignity, humanity, and confidence in their potential.
My second visit took me to a remand prison. This differed from the first institution in one important respect: all inmates there are presumed innocent. The staff described how disciplined they are in repeatedly reminding themselves to give priority to that presumption of innocence, no matter how serious the offences the inmates are accused of may be.
In this institution, from my perspective, the word trust played a particularly important role. Little by little, the staff, together with the prison management and the head of custodial operations, had relaxed the rules for the inmates. Whereas previously inmates had only been allowed to leave their cells for one hour a day, and at staggered times so that only a few could encounter one another, they are now allowed to move freely through the building for six hours a day at the same time. This means that all approximately 50 inmates can meet each other every day. They can exercise whenever they wish and attend their medical and other appointments independently. In addition, the inmates can share two meals a day together.
To the best of my knowledge, these “openings” toward greater self-determination for the inmates have proven successful in every respect. Among other things, the inmates’ greater independence saves the staff a considerable amount of work, allowing them, for example, to devote more time to the ongoing redesign of the prison’s processes.
For me, it was an eye-opening experience to see how much appreciation, mutual respect, empathy, confidence, and courage the staff bring to their work in the correctional system, in this case, in a remand prison. I can now begin to grasp that all of this is only possible because they rely on building relationships with the inmates. In my understanding, working through relationship-building also forms part of the security concept itself. The inmates know that the “freedoms” they enjoy are a concession, one that can be withdrawn at any time if they abuse that trust.
Once again, this showed me that, as human beings, we can achieve far more good through trust than through control and punishment, even in dealing with people who have not adhered to the rule of law, and certainly in everyday leadership.
By the time of this second visit to a correctional institution at the latest, I had received confirmation that it is possible to apply trust in every context.