Managing Change

Soon after arriving at the first of a series of parties marking the 40th anniversary of my wife’s graduation from Chenango High School in Binghamton, New York, I felt uncomfortable. Not so much from the suffocating press of old boyfriends who seemed to revel in reminding me how much they had charmed her, but how much they were enjoying retirement. You do the math. September 2002 minus 40 years. I mean these guys probably hadn’t started getting the AARP monthly magazine yet. On the way to the weekend event, I had celebrated one of those “milestone” birthdays, happily anticipating more projects, deadlines, airline meals, and strip searches from the new airport security personnel. Then came the retirement wakeup call from her ex-boyfriends.

Actually, the first breeze of a changing wind had come earlier last year when my friend Jim Marmack, assistant sheriff for detention of the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, suddenly announced-with no apparent regrets-that he was retiring after 33 years with the department, but with less than 55 years of life experience. Jim was a key part of developing more than 5,000 new bed-spaces in a system that increased average daily incarceration tenfold during his tenure. After getting beyond the “why” of his youthful retirement, I tried to focus on the “how,” how a department manages the transition from one generation to the next.

Just to keep things in perspective, the San Diego Sheriff’s Department employs approximately 1,000 security staff and incarcerates more than 5,000 on an average day. The retirement of one staff member, though senior, is not a catastrophic occasion. But when the director of the women’s facility told me she had 27 retirement parties within the department to attend this spring, I wondered if Jim started a trend that would alter the characteristics of the department.

Jack Drown, under sheriff in San Diego County, spoke with assurance that the department was prepared to fill the pending vacancies, even with 60 senior management staff exercising their early retirement options thus far. A plan to identify leadership qualities was implemented years ago and the required rotation through a variety of positions established a corporate culture focused on depth in the key leadership positions. The under sheriff stressed that answering the challenge of leadership transition is not simply early promotions; change must be anticipated.

At the October 2002 annual International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) conference in the Netherlands, Chairman Ole’ Instrup-former commissioner of corrections in Canada-reminded the international audience that corrections is always transitioning from one set of circumstances to another. He suggested that “managing the transition is meaningless,” and that the focus must be “preparedness for the transition.” In other words, change is inevitable; focus on getting as prepared as possible.

Implications for Corrections

Early retirement is not limited to the correctional field, as all components of the justice system face the loss of wisdom and experience during transitions. But early retirement programs are focused mostly on the law enforcement and correctional components due to the nature of the job. Judges, prosecuting attorneys, case managers, and court clerks usually are exempt from the “hazardous” conditions and the collective bargaining agreements that stir the compassion of elected officials. One might argue that probation case managers, guardian ad litem volunteers, and domestic violence judges (to name a few and unintentionally exclude many) also face daily job-related hazards without weapons or “staff-down” alarms. My point, however, is that the nature and face of corrections, in all its forms, will change noticeably in the next decade if leadership transition plans are not implemented by correctional agencies.

Just how operational procedures or facility design responses will change depends on how many senior staff retire early, how well the correctional community has assimilated its wisdom, and how much attention is given to effective transitioning. A few possible implications could be:

• A return to “distance management,” where the contact between staff and inmates is minimized because the generation of believers in direct management (1980s/90s) is now the group that is age-eligible for retirement.
• Correctional environments become “hardened” as the innovators of people versus gadget-driven supervision begin to spend more time on golf courses than instructing staff, politicians, architects, et al.
• A return to an attitude that correcting is a job and not a mission, resulting in a loss of imagination and innovation in everything from products to position descriptions. (remember the FBOP concept of multitasking?)
• Certainly not least is the potential loss of the leaders that Ole’ Instrup spoke of, who have a combination of experience, skills, tenacity, and charisma that can and will challenge prevailing political wisdom when, as now, wrong-headedness persists.

All of the above, and many other scenarios, can happen even if the battle-weary core remained on the job another decade. But now, as in the early-1970s, corrections is less of an economic priority in the eyes of most politicians and therefore, those “left behind” to manage, design, build, and finance our systems will potentially be more alone than anytime in the last three decades.

With well-conceived transition and transference plans in place, most governments, like San Diego, will not only survive, but also thrive. Each generation wants to believe that the next will suffer just a little in transition so that a respectful appreciation of history is assured. So perhaps this is more nostalgia than a structural weakness. For as many Florida counties have discovered, retired Ohio, Michigan, and New York law enforcement officers really can learn to say “ya’ll” in several languages that inmates understand.

My friend, Jim Marmack, wasn’t able to help me with this article because he was busy assisting Imperial County with a staffing evaluation and plan. Maybe that’s an aspect of early retirement that we should do more to promote; a kind of “reciprocity mentoring.” The correctional community would do well to harness the experience, wisdom, and insight in a more formalized manner, perhaps with National Institute of Corrections sponsorship, or at least recognition.

Since 55 no longer represents the nation’s speed limit nor senior citizenship, I vote for an initiative to create a senior tour for those who have defined the face of corrections in the past three decades. My guess is that a gallery willing to learn and applaud does exist. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to purchase a few more “happy retirement” cards for my wife’s high school classmates.

Stephen A. Carter, AICP, is principal of Carter Goble Lee LLC. in Columbia, S.C. He can be contacted by e-mail, scarter@cartergoblelee.com. Additional information may be available on the company’s Web site, www.cartergoblelee.com