A Proposed National Corrections College
James B. Jacobs* & Kerry T. Cooperman**
I. INTRODUCTION
In 1971, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger proposed the establishment of a
“National Corrections Academy.”1 Chief Justice Burger explained that “the
management and operation of penal institutions have desperately needed
such a nationally coordinated program to train every level of prison
personnel . . . as the Department of Justice has done with police
administrators.”2
[B]ricks and mortar do not make a sound correctional institution any
more than bricks and mortar make a university, a newspaper, or a
hospital . . . . “Just anybody” cannot make a sound correctional
institution any more than “just anybody” can make a good parent or a
good teacher. . . . Well-trained personnel are [essential] . . . . We have
yet to understand that the people who operate prisons, from the lowest
guard to the highest administrator, are as important in the whole scheme
of an organized society as the people who teach in the schools, colleges
and universities.3

* Warren E. Burger Professor of Law, New York University School of Law; B.A., Johns
Hopkins; J.D., Ph.D., University of Chicago.
** Litigation Associate at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan; Former Fellow, Center for Research
in Crime and Justice; J.D., New York University School of Law.
1.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Remarks at the National Conference of
Corrections, Williamsburg, Virginia (Dec. 5-8, 1971) [hereinafter Burger Remarks at
Williamsburg].
2.
Id. In public speeches in 1967 and 1970, Chief Justice Burger had similarly
observed that “[h]aving found the accused guilty . . . we seem to lose our collective interest
in him . . . . Few things characterize our attitude toward prisoners and prisons more than
indifference.” Warren E. Burger, Ripon College Commencement Lecture on Crime and
Punishment, Ripon, Washington, (May 21, 1967); Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, For
Whom the Bell Tolls: Penal Reform, Address Before the Association of the Bar of the City
of New York (Feb. 17, 1970).
3.
Burger Remarks at Williamsburg, supra note 1. A year earlier, Burger had
observed that effective correctional leadership training “requires a monumental effort with
the best leadership and brains of labor unions, industry, the Departments of Justice, of
Labor, and of Health, Education and Welfare.” Id.

57

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In 1974, Burger’s lobbying contributed to the creation of the National
Institute of Corrections (NIC),4 a small federal agency tasked with
providing management training and best-practices recommendations to
prisons, jails, and community-corrections systems.5 Although an important
step forward, the NIC was not the prestigious and high-powered academy
that Burger had in mind.6 Thus, in early 1981, he reprised his proposal for a
national corrections academy that would be similar to the FBI Academy in
Quantico, Virginia.7
[The FBI Academy is] one of the great, and perhaps most lasting
contributions of the Federal Bureau of Investigations . . . [It] has vastly
improved the quality of law enforcement in America, both in terms of
efficiency and the kind of law enforcement a decent society should
achieve . . . The cost of creating and maintaining the FBI Academy is
but a tiny fraction of the benefits it has conferred.8

Burger explained that, like the operation of a large police department,
the “operation of a correctional or penal institution is no place for amateurs.
It calls for substantial professional training.”9 However:
At present, there is no single, central facility for the training of prison
and correctional personnel . . . . In all too many state penal institutions
the personnel . . . are poorly trained and some are not trained at all for
the sensitive role they should perform . . . . The time is ripe to extend
[the correctional training enterprise to include] a National Academy of
Corrections to train correctional personnel much as the F.B.I. has
trained State and local police.10

4.
Other advocates for the formation of a national corrections academy included U.S.
Attorneys General John Mitchell and William French Smith, the American Correctional
Association, and the NIC advisory board, including University of Chicago law professor
Norval Morris. Anthony P. Travisono & Mary Q. Hawkes, ACA and Prison Reform, 57
CORR. TODAY 70 (1995).
5.
18 U.S.C. § 4351(a) (2006) (“There is hereby established within the Bureau of
Prisons a National Institute of Corrections.”).
6.
See History, NAT’L INST. OF CORR., http://nicic.gov/History (last visited Oct. 31,
2011).
7.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Commencement Address, at George Washington
University, (May 24, 1981), available at http://encyclopedia.gwu.edu/gwencyclopedia/
index/php?title=commencements:_address_of_chief_justice_warren_burger%2c_1981
[hereinafter Burger Commencement Address].
8.
Burger Commencement Address, supra note 7 (suggesting the possibility of
grafting a national corrections academy onto the FBI Academy).
9.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Agenda for Crime Prevention and Correctional
Reform, 67 A.B.A. 988, 990 (1981); Burger Commencement Address, supra note 7.
10.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Agenda for Crime Prevention and Correctional
Reform, 67 A.B.A. 988, 988-90 (1981).

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PROPOSED NATIONAL CORRECTIONS COLLEGE

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In late 1981, the NIC established its National Corrections Academy on
the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder.11 While an important
step toward implementing Burger’s vision,12 the academy was a small and
modestly funded operation in comparison to the FBI Academy.13 It remains
so today, with just ten full-time program specialists and a $2.5 million
annual budget that has not increased since 1995.14 Corrections has no
equivalent to the FBI Academy’s leadership course, which lawenforcement executives view as an essential professional credential.
Chief Justice Burger had a good idea in 1971. It is an even better idea
today in an era of mass incarceration.15 Nationally, there are now almost as
many correctional employees as local police officers.16 Although the NIC’s
academy, state departments of corrections, some professional correctional
associations, and some college and university criminal justice departments
offer education and training for top correctional officials, none of these are
a “brain center” for research, curriculum development, and leadership
training. A National Corrections College (NCC) devoted to improving the
human infrastructure of American and even foreign prison, jail, and
community-corrections systems is sorely needed and long overdue.
Part I explains the need for a National Corrections College. Part II
demonstrates why our current educational infrastructure for high-level
11.
Travisono & Hawkes, supra note 4, at 70; Telephone Interview with Robert
Brown, Chief, Academy Div., Nat’l Inst. of Corr. (Dec. 1, 2010). In the 1970s, the NIC
conducted its training programs in classrooms and conference rooms rented from
universities. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, More Warehouses, or Factories with Fences?,
8 NEW ENGLAND J. ON PRISON L. 111, 113 (1982). In October 1981, the NIC established the
National Corrections Academy in rented space on the campus of the University of Colorado
Boulder. Id. The Academy Division moved to a new facility in Longmont, Colorado in 1987
and then to Aurora, Colorado in 2007, where it shares a building with Federal Bureau of
Prison’s Management and Specialty Training Center. Telephone Interview with Robert
Brown, Chief, Academy Div., Nat’l Inst. of Corr. (Dec. 1, 2010). In the spring of 2011, the
Academy Division moved to a new, slightly larger building in Aurora. Id.
12.
See Chief Justice Warren Burger, More Warehouses, or Factories with Fences?, 8
NEW ENGLAND J. ON PRISON L. 111, 113-14 (1982).
13.
Email from Robert Brown, Chief, Academy Div., Nat’l Inst. of Corr., (Nov. 28,
2011).
14.
Id.
15.
Prison Overcrowding: What are Other States Doing?, INFORMANT (2010),
available at http://informant/kalwnews.org/2012/12/prison-overcrowding-what-are-otherstates-doing/.
16.
There are roughly 698,000 local police officers and 518,200 correctional officers
in the United States. U.S. DEP’T OF LABOR, OCCUPATIONAL OUTLOOK HANDBOOK: POLICE &
DETECTIVES 476 (2010-2011), available at http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos160.htm; U.S.
DEP’T OF LABOR, OCCUPATIONAL OUTLOOK HANDBOOK: CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS 469
(2010-2011), available at http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos156.htm [hereinafter CORRECTIONAL
OFFICERS].

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corrections administrators is inadequate. Part III contrasts our national
investment in correctional-leadership development with leadershipdevelopment investments in private corporations, the military, and police.
Part IV sketches what a national college of corrections might look like,
how it would run, who would staff it, whom it would serve, and how it
would fit into the nation’s existing correctional-training infrastructure. The
conclusion argues that cost should not thwart the proposal.
II. THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES FACING CORRECTIONS
Effective administration of United States prisons, jails, and communitycorrections programs requires a huge corps of executives, senior-level
leaders, managers, and supervisors17 who can set budgets and priorities,
evaluate organizational performance, motivate staff to work ethically and
humanely under difficult conditions, recognize and resolve inmates’
problems and complaints, lobby executive- and legislative-branch officials
for necessary resources, and work productively with community groups.18
In addition, it is increasingly recognized that corrections officials must take
responsibility for preparing prisoners for reentry into society, thereby
reducing recidivism rates.19 Given the importance of jails and prisons for
socializing a significant percentage of the population, for social control
generally, and for the United States’s image in the world, recruitment,
nurturing, and professional development of correctional leaders should be
regarded as national priorities.
A. The Size and Cost of Corrections in the United States
The scale of the American corrections system is daunting. There are
some 3376 county jails and 116 federal prisons,20 1320 state prisons, and

17.
See infra Table 1. The National Institute of Corrections’ Core Competencies
Project identified four levels of corrections leaders (supervisors, managers, senior-level
leaders, and executives), the various positions in each level, and the leadership
competencies for each level. See U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Correctional
Leadership Competencies for the 21st Century: Executive and Senior-Level Leaders, NICIC
(July 2005), available at http://static.nicic.gov/Library/020474.pdf [herinafter Executive and
Senior-Level Leaders]. This article adopts these labels and categories.
18.
See Executive and Senior-Level Leaders, supra note 17; DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L
INST. OF CORR., Correctional Leadership Competencies for the 21st Century: Manager and
Supervisor Levels, NIC, (Dec. 2006), available at http://static.nicic.gov/Library/020475.pdf
[herinafter Manager and Supervisor Levels].
19.
See, e.g., U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L INST. OF CORR., OFFENDER WORKFORCE
DEVELOPMENT DIV., Administrative Guide, Offender Workforce Development Specialist
Partnership Training Program, NIC Accession No. 022173, (Aug. 2007), available at
http://nicic.gov/Library/022173.pdf.
20.
U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, SOURCEBOOK OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE STATISTICS, 90 tbl.1.94

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PROPOSED NATIONAL CORRECTIONS COLLEGE

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264 privately-run penal facilities.21 On any given day, these “total
institutions”22 house, feed, clothe, supervise, recreate, educate, and provide
physical and psychological care to nearly 2.3 million inmates,23 including
about 90,000 juvenile inmates.24 County jails admit and process thirteen
million people annually.25 Probation and parole officers supervise an
additional five million people.26 All told, at any point in time, correctional
personnel supervise and provide services to nearly one in thirty-one
Americans.27
A large infrastructure is needed to administer this massive correctional
complex.28 Approximately 43,500 executives, senior-level leaders,
managers, and supervisors29 oversee 474,700 lower-level employees, as
(Kathleen
Maguire
&
Anne
L.
Pastore
eds.,
2002),
available
at
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t1102.pdf.
21.
Id. at tbl.1.102.
22.
ERVING GOFFMAN, ASYLUMS 11 (1968). Erving Goffman coined the term “total
institution” to denote “a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated
individuals cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time together lead an
enclosed formally administered round of life.” Id. at xiii.
23.
CORRECTIONAL
POPULATIONS
IN
THE
UNITED
STATES
(2009),
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus09.pdf [hereinafter CORRECTIONAL POPULATIONS];
see also Adam Liptak, U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs That of Other Nations, N.Y. TIMES,
Apr. 23, 2008.
24.
U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, Juveniles in Corrections: Custody Data (1997-Present),
http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/corrections/qa08201.asp?qaDate=2007.
25.
CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS, supra note 16.
26.
U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, Community Corrections (Probation and Parole),
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=15 (last revised Nov. 13, 2011).
27.
See PEW CENTER ON THE STATES, 1 IN 31: THE LONG REACH OF AMERICAN
CORRECTIONS, (2009), available at http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/
PSPP_1in31_report_FINAL_WEB_3-26-09.pdf [hereinafter PEW CENTER]. Moreover, as of
March 2009, one in eighteen men and one in eleven African American men were under
some form of correctional control. Id. “In 2009, over 7.2 million people were on probation,
in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end—3.1% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 32
adults.” Total Correctional Population, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS,
www.bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=11 (last visited Nov. 25, 2011).
28.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the number of correctional officers
will grow 9% between 2008 and 2018. CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS, supra note 16.
Increasing demand for correctional officers will stem from population growth and
rising rates of incarceration. Mandatory sentencing guidelines calling for longer
sentences and reduced parole for inmates are a primary reason for increasing
incarceration rates. . . . Some employment opportunities also will arise in the
private sector, as public authorities contract with private companies to provide and
staff corrections facilities.
Id.
29.

Id.

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well as 2.5 million adult and juvenile inmates.30 Every state prison and
large county jail system—there are at least 170 county jail systems with
1,000 or more beds31—requires a corps of competent leaders, including a
director and assistant directors of adult facilities, juvenile facilities,
financial operations, community relations, and legal departments.32 Each of
America’s 5,000 correctional facilities also needs a capable warden,
assistant wardens, a top security officer, a physical plant manager, heads of
health and recreation services, chiefs of budget and personnel, and
supervising disciplinary officers.33 Correctional facilities also need
effective leaders at the middle-management levels, for example, shift
commanders and lieutenants or sergeants in charge of cell houses
(including administrative and disciplinary segregation units), food services,
workshops, medical services, and the school.34 Leaders must be constantly
replenished due to retirements, resignations, and prison expansion. Thus,
there is a pressing need to constantly improve the leadership skills of
incumbent administrators and to identify and train the next generation of
leaders.
B. Correctional Leaders Require Wide-Ranging Knowledge and
Skills
Corrections executives, senior-level leaders, managers, and supervisors
must exert leadership under challenging conditions. They must maintain
order, discipline, and good morale among troubled, anti-social, and often
dangerous inmates35 who live under conditions of extreme deprivation.36
30.

SOURCEBOOK OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE STATISTICS, EMPLOYEES OF FEDERAL, STATE
PRIVATE
ADULT
CORRECTIONAL
FACILITIES
(2003),
available
at
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t1104.pdf.
31.
Email from Virginia Hutchinson, Chief of the NIC’s Jails Division, Nov. 23,
2010. The top ten largest county jails in the U.S., from largest to smallest, are in Los
Angeles, New York City, Cook County (Ill.), Maricopa County (Ariz.), Philadelphia,
Miami-Dade County (Fla.), Dallas County (Tex.), Orange County (Cal.), and Shelby County
(Tenn.). Jesse Bogan, America’s Jail Crisis, FORBES MAGAZINE, July 13, 2009, available at
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/10/jails-houston-recession-business-beltway-jails.html. The
Los Angeles County Jail holds nearly 20,000 inmates per day. Id.
32.
See also Executive and Senior-Level Leaders, supra note 17; see generally, James
B. Jacobs & Elana Olitsky, Leadership and Correctional Reform, 24 PACE L. REV. 477
(2004).
33.
See Jacobs & Olitsky, supra note 32; DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L INST. OF
CORRECTIONS, supra note 32; see also infra Table 1.
34.
See Jacobs & Olitsky, supra note 32; infra Table 1.
35.
U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities 2000,
available at http:// www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/csfcf00.pdf (last visited Nov. 13, 2011)
[hereinafter Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities] (demonstrating that the
number of inmate-on-inmate assaults in correctional facilities rose from 25,948 to 34,355
AND

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63

Often, they must cope with severe inmate crowding,37 deteriorating
physical plants, inadequate budgets, a constant flow of lawsuits,38 and
health problems like AIDS, tuberculosis and hepatitis.39 Increasingly, they
are being asked to prepare inmates for successful post-incarceration
reentry. The current economic recession forces corrections leaders to
address all of these challenges with diminished resources.40
from 1995 to 2000, and assaults on staff rose from 14,165 to 17,952). However, more recent
data show that, in some jurisdictions, e.g. New York State, intra-prison violence has
dropped dramatically. Bert Unseem, New York’s Prison Turnaround, CITY JOURNAL,
(2010), http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_snd-ny-imprisonment-rates.html; see Jacobs
& Olitsky, supra note 32, at 480.
36.
See generally Dwight F. Blint, Gang Worries Prison Workers, HARTFORD
COURANT, Oct. 13, 2003, http://articles.courant.com/2003-10-13/news/0310130509_1_latinkings-bloods-gang-members; Mark S. Fleisher & Scott H. Decker, An Overview of the
Challenge of Prison Gangs, 5 CORRECTIONS MGMT. Q. 1 (2001).
37.
Prison Overcrowding: What are Other States Doing?, INFORMANT (2010),
http://informant.kalwnews.org/2010/12/prison-overcrowding-what-are-other-states-doing/;
see also Jacobs & Olitsky, supra note 32, at 480.
38.
American penal history is full of examples of penal institutions degenerating into
squalor and violence. Federal courts (and the parties themselves) have responded with
hundreds of orders and consent decrees mandating improved conditions and operations.
Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities, supra note 35, at 9. In 2000, 357 prison
facilities were operating under consent decree or court order. Id. Perhaps because of the
Prison Litigation Reform Act, Pub. L. No. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321 (1996) (codified at 11
U.S.C. § 523; 18 U.S.C. §§ 3624, 3626; 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346, 1915, 1915A; 42 U.S.C. §§
1997-1997h), the number of prisons under remedial court orders for staffing, counseling,
library services, or food services has decreased dramatically since 1995. Census of State and
Federal Correctional Facilities, supra note 35, at 10. Prison litigation has been effective in
exposing and remediating deplorable conditions and abuses, and in spawning new roles in
prison like law librarians, substance abuse counselors, nutritionists, and compliance
personnel. James B. Jacobs, The Prisoners' Rights Movement and Its Impacts 1960-80, 2
CRIME & JUST. 429, 429 (1980). It has been less effective in creating decent conditions and
operations, and ineffective in creating excellent conditions and operations. Id.
39.
In 1997, released inmates accounted for 20-26% of the HIV/AIDS cases in the
United States, 12 to 16% of hepatitis B infections, 29-32% of hepatitis C infections, and
39% of tuberculosis cases. Theodore M. Hammett et al., The Burden of Infectious Diseases
Among Inmates and Releasees From U.S. Correctional Facilities, 1997, 92 AM. J. PUB.
HEALTH 1789, 1792 (2002). Chief Justice Burger observed that “a prison is not a pleasant
place, it is not even a comfortable place. It probably can never be made either comfortable
or pleasant; . . . At its best, it is barely tolerable.” Burger Commencement Address, supra
note 7.
40.
By the end of 2011, forty-two states will face budget shortfalls totaling $130
billion (15.9% of state budgets). Elizabeth McNichol et al., CTR. ON BUDGET & POLICY
PRIORITIES, States Continue to Feel Recession’s Impact (2011), http://www.cbpp.org/
cms/?fa=view&id=711. California will have a budget gap of $23 billion and New York will
have a budget gap of $10 billion. Id. Forecasts for 2012 are nearly as dismal, with total state
budget shortfalls expected to approach $103 billion. Id.

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Corrections leaders must motivate and manage workforces that are
frequently understaffed,41 poorly educated,42 under-trained,43 poorly
paid,44 unappreciated,45 vulnerable to threats and assaults,46 and embroiled
in interpersonal and inter-group frictions.47 Inmates generally resent, and
sometimes act hostilely toward48 corrections employees.49 Unpleasant and
unsafe duties and working conditions often result in low job satisfaction50
and high turnover.51
41.
See, e.g., Wyo. Struggles with Understaffed Prison, USA TODAY (May 6, 2007)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-06-wyoming-prison-staff_N.htm
(noting
that in one correctional facility, more than a third of the jobs were unfilled).
42.
Most state prisons require entry-level corrections employees to have a high school
diploma or graduation equivalency degree. CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS, supra note 16.
43.
See, e.g., Nate Blakeslee, Shades of Gray: In Texas Prisons, It’s Hard to Tell Who
Your Enemies Are, AUSTIN CHRON., Apr. 28, 2000, http://www.austinchronicle.com/
gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A77012 (discussing the “poor training” of corrections
officers in Texas).
44.
See CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS, supra note 16. However, California officers earn
$44,000 to $74,000 per year. STATE OF CAL., DEP’T OF CORR. AND REHAB., COMPENSATION
FOR
CORRECTIONAL
OFFICERS
(2007),
available
at
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Career_Opportunities/por/docs/POASForms/CO%20Salary%20Co
mpensation.pdf.
45.
See Robert M. Freeman, Here There Be Monsters: Public Perception of
Corrections, 63 CORR. TODAY 108 (June 2001) (detailing a study of the demoralizing impact
of the media’s negative image of prisons on prison staff); Tim Kneist, Old Habits Die Hard:
Corrections Professionals Constantly Struggle Against Negative Stereotypes, 60
CORRECTIONS TODAY 46-48 (Feb. 1998).
46.
CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS, supra note 16.
47.
See generally D. J. VODICKA, THE GREEN WALL: A PRISON GUARD’S STRUGGLE TO
EXPOSE THE CODE OF SILENCE IN THE LARGEST PRISON SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES
(2009).
48.
Nationally, the number of inmate-on-inmate assaults in correctional facilities rose
from 25,948-34,355 from 1995-2000, and assaults on staff rose from 14,165-17,952. Census
of State and Federal Correctional Facilities, supra note 35.
49.
CORRECTION OFFICERS, supra note 16. “Correctional officers and jailers have one
of the highest rates of nonfatal on-the-job injuries” of any occupational group. Id.
50.
Ben M. Crouch & Geoffrey P. Alpert, Prison Guards’ Attitudes Toward
Components of the Criminal Justice System, 18 CRIMINOLOGY 227, 227 (1980); Francis T.
Cullen, How Satisfying is Prison Work: A Comparative Occupational Approach, 14 J.
OFFENDER COUNSELING, SERVICES & REHABILITATION 89 (1989) (“[T]he level of officer job
satisfaction [of southern prison guards was] lower than that of any other occupational
category.”).
51.
In 1981, Chief Justice Burger cited a study that found an “astonishing rate of
turnover of correctional personnel . . . [o]ne state has 54%, one 60%, another 65% and
another 75% turnover.” Burger Commencement Address, supra note 7, at 3. Burger
rhetorically asked how “any human enterprise [can] be effective with that rate of turnover”
and suggested “that there is a correlation between . . . the rapid turnover and the amount of

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PROPOSED NATIONAL CORRECTIONS COLLEGE

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Running a prison or large jail under these conditions requires a diverse
set of skills.52 For example, correctional leaders should be thoroughly
versed in applicable legislation, case law, and administrative rules. Strong
interpersonal skills, including the ability to define goals and motivate and
communicate expectations to staff and inmates, are also vital.
Administrators must be good problem-solvers and capable strategists,
designers, and implementers of short-, medium- and long-term plans for
preventing violence, improving living conditions, solving individual and
organizational problems, and preparing inmates for reentry. To achieve
these goals, corrections leaders must be able to deal effectively with staff,
union leaders,53 legislators,54 the courts, executive-branch officials, lawenforcement officers,55 civil rights organizations, psychological and
training.” Id.; see also Ojmarrh Mitchell et al., The Impact of Individual, Organizational,
and Environmental Attributes on Voluntary Turnover Among Juvenile Correctional Staff
Members, 17 JUST. Q. 333 (2000) (providing an insightful study of how organizational
factors create stress and turnover). One study found that turnover rates among correctional
officers are 15.4% in publicly run prisons and 40.9% in privately run prisons. Tracy Huling,
Building a Prison Economy in Rural America, in INVISIBLE PUNISHMENT: THE COLLATERAL
CONSEQUENCES OF MASS IMPRISONMENT 202 (Marc Mauer & Meda Chesney-Lind, eds.,
2002). George Camp’s 1996 study found that while prison populations were rising, prison
staffs were shrinking. Turnover rates could be as high as 50% in some institutions, though
not in entire systems. See NAT'L INST. OF CORR., U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, Managing Staff:
Corrections' Most Valuable Resource 19-20 (1996), available at http://www.nicic.org/pubs/
1996/013216.pdf. Another problem is the brief tenure (an average of approximately three
years) of state prison directors. Directors typically leave office when a new governor takes
office or if there is a prison scandal or crisis. Telephone Interview with Bob Brown, NAT’L
INST. OF CORR., ACAD. DIV. (Oct. 20, 2003). Whether a leader can be effective with such a
short tenure is subject to serious question. Id. The staff’s expectation that the head of the
system will soon be gone is itself a recipe for organizational stagnation. Id.
52.
Executive and Senior-Level Leaders, supra note 17, at vii. An NIC study observes,
“The nature of the correctional environment has changed significantly in recent years. The
technological revolution, globalization, and evolving workforce demographics are just a few
of the factors that are influencing and changing correctional agencies/organizations.” Id.
53.
In some states, unions have substantial influence over correctional operations. For
example, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), representing
more than 30,000 California prison employees, is one of the most influential lobbyists in
CORR.
PEACE
OFFICERS
ASS’N,
California
politics.
About
Us,
CAL.
http://www.ccpoa.org/union/about.
54.
See Richard P. Seiter, The Leadership and Empowerment Triangle, 3
CORRECTIONS MGMT. Q. at iv (1999).
55.
See Collaboration and the Community Corrections Field, COLLABORATIVE
JUSTICE, http://www.collaborativejustice.org/corrections/main.htm (last visited Nov. 25,
2011). Prisoners-rights lawyers and inmates themselves generate a flow of lawsuits that
requires correctional leaders to deal effectively with government lawyers, justify and
document decisions, and ensure that prison policies comply with statutes and court
decisions. TODD R. CLEAR, GEORGE F. COLE, & MICHAEL D. REISIG, AMERICAN

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physical healthcare providers, advocacy and volunteer groups, and the
media.56
III. THE CURRENT CORRECTIONAL LEADERSHIP TRAINING
INFRASTRUCTURE IS INSUFFICIENT
The country’s infrastructure for correctional-leadership development
consists of a hodgepodge of training programs run by state departments of
corrections, the NIC, the Federal Bureau of Prison’s (FBOP) Staff Training
Academy, the American Correctional Association (ACA), other
professional correctional associations, individual correctional facilities, and
some colleges and universities. There is no national institution to identify
and prioritize correctional-leadership-development needs, evaluate best
training practices, develop and disseminate quality curricula, conduct
cutting-edge research, and deliver training to a significant number of highlevel corrections leaders. Indeed, there are no national standards for
corrections training or a corrections-training equivalent to the organizations
that accredit American institutions of higher education.
In 1981, Chief Justice Burger observed that the states “have no real
training resources available”57 and that “[w]ithout special training, prison
personnel can become part of the problem rather than part of the
solution.”58 A leading corrections textbook, published in 1990, stated that
inadequate correctional-leadership development leaves American prison
administration “dominated by uncreative thinking, ungrounded and
idiosyncratic conceptualization, and an unwarranted commitment to
traditionalism.”59 In 2011, correctional leadership and skills training is, in
many ways, even less adequate.60 This is due in part to: the downsizing or
CORRECTIONS 121-22 (9th ed. 2011).
56.
Add to these factors the effect of privatization on the prison system. Between
1995-2000, the number of private penal facilities rose from 110-264. Census of State and
Federal Correctional Facilities, supra note 35. Many prison reformers and reform
organizations are opposed to private prisons as a matter of principle. Others point to poorly
performing private prisons. For example, in 2000, thirty-three private prisons were operating
under court order or consent decree, up from fifteen in 1995. Id. at 9. Privately-run prisons
also tend to have higher staff turnover (probably due to lower pay) and higher inmate escape
rates. See Scott D. Camp & Gerald G. Gaes, Growth and Quality of U.S. Private Prisons:
Evidence from a National Survey, 1 CRIMINOLOGY & PUB. POL'Y 427 (2002).
57.
Warren E. Burger, Commencement Address of Chief Justice Warren Burger, 1981,
THE GW AND FOGGY BOTTOM HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA (Jan. 31, 2007),
http://encyclopedia.gwu.edu/gwencyclopedia/index.php?title=Commencements: Address_of
_Chief_Justice_Warren_Burger%2C_1981.
58.
Id.
59.
TODD R. CLEAR & GEORGE F. COLE, AMERICAN CORRECTIONS 151 (2d ed. 1990).
60.
See generally, Billy S. Humphrey, Respectable Leadership and the Future of
Corrections, available at http://www.corrections.com/news/article/29132-respectable-

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elimination of state-level correctional-training programs in the current
public-sector budget crisis;61 high turnover of correctional executives
leaving insufficient numbers of experienced personnel to show new leaders
the ropes; understaffing of prisons, jails, and community-corrections
programs, leaving little or no time for training; and the perception, by
legislators, policymakers, and the public, that correctional management
does not require extensive training.62 Furthermore, four decades of prison
growth has caused many mid- and senior-level managers to be promoted to
top positions much faster, and with much less training, than their
predecessors.63 One study found that 90% of new wardens did not receive
any orientation prior to, or just after, assuming their position.64 Over half
reported no formal mentoring.65
A. State and County Correctional Leadership Training
Most state prisons and county jails treat any training beyond entry-level
as a luxury.66 Most state corrections systems lack sufficient manpower to

leadership-and-the-future-of-corrections (last visited Sept. 5. 2011).
61.
Telephone conversation with Robert Brown, Ph.D, Chief of Nat’l Inst. Of Corr.
Acad. Div (Nov. 22, 2010).
62.
Eric G. Lambert, To Stay or Quit: A Review of Literature on Correctional Staff
Turnover, 26 AM. J. CRIM. JUST. 61, 62 n.1 (2001). As much as $20,000 is spent recruiting,
testing, hiring, and training each new correctional staff member. Id.
63.
Corrections officers used to spend decades “in the trenches” before being
promoted to top leadership. “The timeline to earning a warden’s or senior executive’s
appointment at headquarters can be measured in a years rather than decades.” Rick Rudell,
Ten Steps to Developing Effective Leadership Training, CORRECTIONS TODAY, Feb. 1, 2010,
at 80, available at http://periodicals.faqs.org/201002/2001948291.html; Telephone
Interview with Robert Brown, Ph.D, Chief of Nat’l Inst. of Corr. Acad. Div. (Oct. 20, 2003).
64.
SUSAN W. MCCAMPBELL ET AL., CTR. FOR INNOVATIVE PUBLIC POLICIES, INC.,
RESOURCE GUIDE FOR NEWLY APPOINTED WARDENS 5 (2002), available at
http://www.cipp.org/survivial/Resources.pdf.
65.
Id. Perhaps the need for a new-wardens-orientation manual indicates a lack of
formal training for wardens. Id.
66.
Entry-level training includes instruction on such topics as “constitutional law and
cultural awareness, inmate behavior, contraband control, custody and security procedures;
fire and safety; inmate legal rights, written and oral communication, use-of-force, first aid, .
. . and physical fitness training.” Jess Maghan, CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS IN A CHANGING
ENVIRONMENT:
21ST
CENTURY—USA
4
(2002),
available
at
http://www.jmfcc.com/CorrOfficersChangingEnvirnmnt.pdf. Among the forty-two state and
federal correctional agencies included in a recent survey, introductory or basic training can
range from 40-400 hours of introductory training, which includes both classroom and onthe-job training. RICHARD P. SEITER, CORRECTIONAL ADMINISTRATION: INTEGRATING
THEORY AND PRACTICE 324 (1st ed. 2001). See Table 2 (providing a summary of the most
comprehensive state correctional training programs).

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release key personnel for weeks, or even days, of training.67 Some
correctional-leadership-development initiatives have been discontinued on
account of a budget crisis or a new administration’s different priorities.68
Probably no state has the resources to pay for a first-rate training
program.69
Indeed, it makes little sense for a state to invest heavily in correctionalleadership training because other states will simply recruit the expensively
trained executives.70 It is in every state’s economic self-interest to spend as
little money as possible on training and to use incentives and bonuses to
hire effective leaders away from the corrections departments and facilities
that trained them (i.e. a race to the bottom).71 Economies of scale also stand
in the way of each state creating its own correctional college with a fullfledged faculty and curriculum.72 Only the largest states could generate a
large enough flow of leadership candidates to justify maintenance of a
high-quality training facility.73
B. National Institute of Corrections
In 1974, two years after the Attica Prison riot and bloody retaking,74
Congress established the NIC as an agency within FBOP.75 The Law
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.

Jacobs & Olitsky, supra note 32, at 480.
Id. at 486, 487 n.38, 489 n.40.
Id. at 489.
Id.
Mark J. Terra, Increasing Officer Retention Through Educational Incentives, FBI
Law Enforcement Bulletin, Feb. 2009, at 11, 13.
72.
See Honorable Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the U.S., Remarks at the
Centennial Convocation of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Feb. 17,
1970), in The Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of N.Y., 25 The Ass’n of the
Bar of the City of N.Y. Supp., no. 3, 1970, at 14, 20-21.
73.
Berger stated:
[Correctional leadership training] cannot be done efficiently with 50 states unless
there is some degree of coordination between the states, and between states and
the federal system. . . . It makes little sense in the Twentieth Century to have each
state suffer the waste and inefficiency which accompanies the maintenance of a
complete range of facilities. Only the large states can [avoid this inefficiency].
Chief Justice Warren Burger, Remarks: For Whom the Bell Tolls, Association of the Bar of
the City of New York, (Feb. 17, 1970).
74.
Eleven correctional staff members and thirty-two inmates were killed in the riot.
Vigil to Mark Attica Riot, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 3, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/03/
nyregion/vigil-to-mark-attica-riot.html; James B. Jacobs, Norval Morris as Penologist: An
Exception Who Proved the Rule, 21 FED. SENTENCING REP. 261, 262 (2009) (noting that
Congress established the NIC partly in response to the Attica Prison riot).
75.
18 U.S.C. § 4351(a) (2006); see S. REP. NO. 93-1011 (1974), reprinted in 1974
U.S.C.C.A.N. 5383, 5284, 5312-13, 5315; see also H.R. REP. NO. 93-1298 (1974), reprinted

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Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA)76 provided the NIC with
its first three years of seed money ($5 million per year).77 Congress made
the NIC’s budget a line item in FBOP’s budget for only one year (1977).78
Since then, FBOP has been responsible for deciding the NIC’s budget
(which ranged from $10-$15 million from the late 1970s through the early
1990s).79 In 1995, FBOP increased the NIC’s budget to $20 million.80 The
budget has remained the same ever since, despite inflation and the vast
expansion of prisons, jails, and community corrections.81
The NIC is headquartered in Washington, D.C.82 and is divided into
seven divisions.83 Its main training unit is the Academy Division,84 located
in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5333, 5340. The U.S. Attorney General appoints the NIC director as
well as a sixteen-member advisory board. U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, About Us,
http://nicic.gov/AboutUs (last visited Oct. 26, 2011). Co-author, James B. Jacobs, is a
member of the NIC advisory board. NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Report to the Nation FY 2010
(2010), available at http://static.nicic.gov/library/02483.pdf.
76.
The LEAA, a former agency within the U.S. Department of Justice, was
established by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and abolished in
1982. In addition to administering federal money to state and local law enforcement
agencies, it funded law-enforcement-related educational programs and research. LEAA’s
successor agency is the Office of Justice Programs. LEAA/OJP Retrospective: 30 Years of
Federal Support to State and Local Criminal Justice, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/164509.pdf (last visited Oct. 26, 2011).
77.
Telephone Interview with Tom Beauclair, Deputy Director, Nat’l Inst. Of Corr.
(Dec. 7, 2010).
78.
Id.
79.
Telephone Interview with Robert Brown, supra note 11.
80.
Id.
81.
Approximately 50% of NIC’s budget goes to staff salary and 50% to programs,
events, overhead, equipment, and travel. Each of NIC’s seven divisions (Academy,
Community Corrections, Jails, Prisons, Information Center, Transition and Offender
Workforce Development and Research and Evaluation) receives $2-$2.5 million per year.
See generally Office of the Inspector General, Federal Bureau of Prisons Annual Financial
Statements Fiscal Year 2010, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE (Jan. 2011), available at
http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/BOP/a1114.pdf.
82.
NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Overview, NICIC, http://nicic.gov/AboutUs (last visited
Oct. 26, 2011).
83.
NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Divisions, NICIC, http://nicic.gov/Divisions (last visited
Nov. 9, 2011).
84.
Divisions, supra note 83. NIC’s prisons, jails, and community services divisions
also offer training programs. See NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Prisons Division, NICIC,
http://nicic.gov/Prisons (last visited Nov. 9, 2011); NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Jails Division,
http://nicic.gov/JailsDivision (last visited Nov. 9, 2011); NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Community
Services Division, NICIC, http://nicic.gov/CC (last visited Nov. 9, 2011). For example, the
Prisons Division offers specialized training related to prison operations and the Jails
Division conducts programs on jail administration, inmate behavior management and new
jail planning. NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Prisons Division, NICIC, http://nicic.gov/Prisons (last

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on two floors of a four-story building in Aurora, Colorado, and called the
National Corrections Academy.85 The Academy Division’s annual budget,
like the budgets of NIC’s other six divisions, is around $2.5 million.86 This
is much less than the leadership training budgets of many corporations.87
For example, Intel University has an annual budget of more than $150
million and Motorola University has an annual budget of more than $120
million.88 The Academy Division’s ten full-time instructors, (called
“correctional program specialists”),89 plus approximately 100 part-time
consultants who are practicing or retired correctional leaders and a few
academics,90 teach or run in-residence courses, online-broadcast courses,
E-Learning Center courses, virtual-online courses, training initiatives, and
technical assistance events.91 The Academy’s three flagship leadershipvisited Nov. 9, 2011); NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Jails Division, NICIC,
http://nicic.gov/JailsDivision (last visited Nov. 9, 2011). In conjunction with the National
Sheriff’s Association, the NIC also offers an annual executive development program for up
to thirty first-term sheriffs (since most county jails are under the authority of the counties’
sheriffs). Legacy of Leadership, NAT’L SHERIFF’S INST., http://sheriffs.org/content/nationalsheriffs-institute-nsi (last visited Nov. 9, 2011). The Community Corrections Division trains
probation and parole officers and provides technical assistance on issues such as caseload
management, victims programs, employee safety, classification and assessment, and
intermediate sanctions. NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Community Services Division, NICIC,
http://nicic.gov/CC (last visited Nov. 9, 2011).
85.
FED. BUREAU OF PRISONS, About Staff Training Centers, BOP,
http://www.bop.gov/about/train/index.jsp. (last visited Oct. 26, 2011).
86.
Interview with Robert Brown, supra note 11.
87.
A.
Blanton
Godfrey,
Quality
Management,
QUALITY
DIG.,
http://www.qualitydigest.com/aug/godfrey.html (last visited Oct. 26, 2011).
88.
Id.
89.
Telephone Interview with Robert Brown, supra note 11.
90.
Id. The consultants provide approximately ten to thirty days of service to NIC
each year. Id.
91.
Id. Approximately 120 senior- and executive-level corrections officers take either
the Executive Excellence Program or the Correctional Leadership Development Program inresidence at the Academy’s headquarters. Id. The Academy’s instructors train an additional
500 mid-level managers at those participants’ own correctional facilities. Id. This involves
sending a team of program specialists and consultants to each facility. Id. More than 2000
line- and supervisory-level officers participate in “regional training initiatives” taught by the
Academy’s instructors (or Academy-trained instructors) in venues all over the country. Id.
Approximately 450 corrections personnel, from line- to executive-level, receive technical
training via one of the Academy’s “technical assistance events,” which focus on such topics
as safety technology, self defense, and legal rules. Id. The Academy Division also provides
three types of distance-learning (i.e. online) courses. Id. More than 45,000 corrections
officers, from line- to senior-level, participate in live online-broadcast courses, which range
in duration from three hours to thirty-two hours. Id. More than 10,000 supervisors,
managers, and executives participate in the Academy’s 200 online E-Learning Center
courses, which range from one to four hours in duration. Id. In 2010, the Academy also

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development courses are the Executive Excellence Program, the
Correctional Leadership Development Program, and the Management
Development for the Future Program.92 Its other two core leadership
courses are Essential Skills for New Supervisors and Unleash Your
Leadership Competency Potential.93
In 2010, the Academy Division delivered training, mostly via distancelearning modules, to nearly 59,000 corrections personnel, from line-level
officers to executives.94 However, only 120 executive-level officers each
year receive training lasting more than four hours95 whereas the FBI
National Academy provides weeks of training to approximately 1000
federal, state, local and foreign law-enforcement leaders per year.96 Indeed,
over 90% of participants in the Academy Division’s training programs
receive online instruction of four hours or less and fewer than 800 students
per year (very few of whom are executives or senior-level leaders) receive
any kind of training in excess of four hours.97 Moreover, the Academy
Division is not effectively linked to academia.
Although the NIC plays an important role in providing state and local
correction’s departments with various types of training and technical
assistance, it is only a kernel of the NCC that we are proposing. The NIC’s
National Corrections Academy seeks to provide training, policy
recommendations, and a site for professional interchange among
correctional executives. But it has never been funded at anything close to
the level needed to fulfill Burger’s vision of a correctional equivalent of the
FBI Academy. Whereas the FBI Academy has a 385-acre campus, the
National Corrections Academy is located in one small building.98 Whereas
the FBI Academy has a large library, two dormitories, a mock town,
research centers, and laboratory buildings, the National Corrections

began offering virtual courses in which an Academy instructor and ten to twenty corrections
supervisors and/or managers meet online to study subjects such as crisis management and
building morale among subordinates. Id. Approximately eighty participants took these
virtual online courses between January and October 2010. Id.
92.
See infra Table 3.
93.
See NAT’L INST. CORR., Essential Skills for New Supervisors, NICIC,
http://nicic.gov/Library/024013 (last visited Nov. 9, 2011); NAT’L INST. CORR., Unleash
Your Leadership Competency Potential, NICIC, http://nicic.gov/unleash (last visited Nov. 9,
2011).
94.
See supra note 91.
95.
Interview with Robert Brown, supra note 11.
96.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS, The National Academy, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/national-academy (last visited Oct. 31, 2011).
97.
Interview with Robert Brown, supra note 11.
98.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS, FBI Academy, FBI, http://fbi.gov/aboutus/training (last visited Nov. 7, 2011); Interview with Robert Brown, supra note 11.

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Academy has only a few rooms for classes and conferences.99
C. Professional Associations
Several professional associations, comprising different categories of
corrections personnel, offer various courses of varying quality.100 There
has never been a comprehensive study of this corpus of instruction and
curricula. But there is good reason to believe that, with few exceptions, the
quality is not high. Significantly, for our purposes, few of these courses are
addressed to the top echelons of corrections administrators. Moreover, the
vast majority of correctional associations’ training programs run only a few
hours long (not nearly enough time for substantial learning or
collaboration); run only a few days per year (not nearly enough capacity to
train even a small percentage of the American correctional leadership
corps); do not rigorously evaluate the participants (the majority of courses
have no or very easy exams and quizzes); and are not accredited or rated by
an independent educational body.
Corrections’ largest professional association is the American
Correctional Association (ACA), which has more than 20,000 members.101
ACA’s Leadership Development for the Corrections Professional Program
is a seventy-two hour course taught approximately seven hours per day for
ten days by current and retired senior- and executive-level correctional
officers at participants’ home correctional facilities.102 Participants include
correctional supervisors, managers, senior-level leaders, and executives.103
Those who complete the course receive an ACA certificate as well as
continuing education credit from Sam Houston State University’s
Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.104
Other correctional associations also provide training programs of various
duration, scope, and quality. The Association of State Correctional
Administrators (ASCA) runs an annual two-day All Directors Training
99.
100.
101.

Id.
See infra Table 4.
AM.
CORR.
ASS’N,
Past,
Present,
&
Future,
ACA,
http://www.aca.org/pastpresentfuture/history.asp (last visited Oct. 26, 2011).
102.
AM. CORR. ASS’N, Leadership Dev. for the Corrections Professional Program,
ACA, https://www.aca.org/development/leadership.asp (last visited Nov. 25, 2011). The
course is customized to each participating penal institution and covers, among other things,
The Role of the 21st Century Leader; Team Building and Empowering Employees;
Assessing Organizational Cultures; Managing and Leading Change; and Fostering
Innovation. Id.
103.
Id.
104.
Some correctional agencies favorably consider continuing education credits when
evaluating staff for promotions or pay increases. AM. CORR. ASS’N, Continuing Education
Opportunities, ACA, https://www.aca.org/development/ceo.asp (last visited Oct. 26, 2011).

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Program and a three-day New Directors Training Program, where the
directors of state departments of corrections (the heads of the state prison
systems) meet to share information and ideas on issues such as
communicating with the media, fiscal management, racial disparity, and
inmate reentry.105 These operate like professional conferences at which the
various state corrections leaders meet to share experiences.106 But there are
no comprehensive curricula or formal evaluations.107
The American Jail Association (AJA) recruits high-level jail
administrators (two per seminar) to lead more than thirty two-, three-, fourand five-day “professional development seminars” (twenty to fifty students
per seminar) annually for mid- and senior-level managers.108 In 2009, AJA
also partnered with the Correctional Management Institute of Texas
(CMIT), the National Association of Counties (NAC), and Sam Houston
State University (Texas) to form the National Jail Leadership Command
Academy (NJLCA), a one-week in-residence course at Sam Houston State
University where thirty-six mid-level corrections managers (above linelevel supervisors)109 focus on such topics as Hiring and Keeping the Best,
Big-Picture Thinking, Collaborative Partnerships, and Essential Leadership
Skills.110 Although the NJLCA is among the most intensive and

105.
New Directors Training Program, ASS’N STATE CORR. ADMIN,
http://www.asca.net/articles/913 (last visited Nov. 25, 2011); All Directors Training
Program, ASS’N STATE CORR. ADMIN, http://www.asca.net/articles/349 (last visited Nov. 25,
2011); All Directors Training Program, CORRECTIONS DIRECTIONS (ASCA, Middletown,
CT), Nov. 2008, at 12-15, available at http://www.asca.net/system/assets/attachments/2389/
NovCorrectionsDirections.pdf?1299516406 [hereinafter CORRECTIONS DIRECTIONS].
106.
CORRECTIONS DIRECTIONS, supra, note 105, at 12.
107.
See ASS’N STATE CORR. ADMIN., All Directors Training Program (Description),
http://www.asca.net/system/assets/attachments/1584/All_Directors_Training_Program4.pdf?1292337370; ASS’N STATE CORR. ADMIN., New Directors Training Program,
http://www.asca.net/articles/1167.
108.
Telephone Interview with AJA Representative, Dec. 14, 2010. AJA does not
evaluate the seminar students’ performance or knowledge (i.e. there are no quizzes, exams
or final projects). Id.
109.
The February 2011 application states, “The mid-level manager is primarily
responsible for the oversight and management of a section, unit, shift, program, or team, as
well as the implementation of organizational policy.” Overview, NAT’L JAIL LEADERSHIP
COMMAND ACAD. APPLICATION, http://www.nationaljailacademy.org/documents/NJLCA
Application--ebruary2011_000.pdf.
110.
About, NAT’L JAIL LEADERSHIP COMMAND ACAD., http://www.nationaljailacademy
.org/ (last visited Oct. 31, 2011). The NJLCA offers a scholarship for each class. Nat’l Jail
Leadership Command Acad., http://www.nationaljailacademy.org (last visited Nov. 8,
2011). Students must apply for admission. Id. Students are assigned homework and a
research project. Id.; Telephone Interview with Sharese Hurst, Executive Director, Texas
Jail Ass’n (Dec. 14, 2010).

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comprehensive training initiatives in American corrections, it is not
designed for senior- or executive-level corrections leaders, it trains fewer
than 120 corrections officials per year, and it provides only one week of
instruction. This demonstrates that even the best correctional-training
programs cannot provide long-term, sustained training to even a modest
percentage of the nation’s prison, jail, and community-corrections leaders.
The American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) runs semiannual three-day “training institutes” at which correctional executives,
subject-matter experts (e.g. victim advocacy, reentry, juvenile justice,
women in corrections), policymakers, and researchers conduct workshops
for different levels of probation, parole, and juvenile justice personnel on
such topics as officer safety, sex-offender management, and reentry.111 We
know of no independent evaluation of these courses. But even if their
quality is high, three days of training, while better than no training, is
insufficient to prepare current and future leaders for the many and diverse
responsibilities of running a correctional system.
Some international correctional associations offer trainings or develop
training resources. For example, the International Association of
Correctional Training Personnel (IACTP) sponsors an annual three-day
conference for correctional trainers and educators from various countries
(but primarily from the United States), providing around two dozen ninetyminute workshops on issues such as A Multigenerational Workforce and
Preparing Supervisors to be Change Leaders.112 The International
Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) does not offer training
programs, but does produce and distribute a Basic Training Manual for
Correctional Officers and the United Nations Handbook for Prison
Leaders.113 Like the American correctional associations, these international
associations do not operate like a school, do not have full-time faculty, do
not develop curricula and do not sponsor comprehensive research.
D. University-Based Programs
There are hundreds of college- and university-based Criminal Justice
departments, in the United States and abroad, that provide education for
111.
Workshops at a Glance, AM. PROBATION AND PAROLE ASS’N, http://www.appanet.org/institutes/2011_orlando/attendee/docs/workshops_AG.pdf (last visited Sept. 20,
2011). The 2011 program’s workshops included Underage Drinking; Reentry; Probation,
Parole and the Victim; Supervising the Burned Out Officer; Comprehensive Approach to
Sex Offender Management; Partnerships in Addressing DWI Offenders; and Implementing
Business Intelligence Tools for a Performance-Driven Agency. Id.
112.
27th Annual Trainers’ Conference, INT’L ASS’N OF CORRECTIONAL TRAINING
PERSONNEL, http://www.iactp.org/conferences.htm (last visited Sept. 20, 2011).
113.
About ICPA, INT’L ASS’N OF CORRECTIONAL TRAINING PERSONNEL,
http://www.icpa.ca/pages/about-icpa (last visited Sept. 20, 2011).

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undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees. Indeed, at least 350
criminal justice departments in the United States offer masters degrees and
fifty-nine offer Criminal Justice doctoral degrees.114 A handful of collegeand university-based Criminal Justice programs offer shorter, non-degree
leadership training courses to correctional personnel aspiring to leadership
positions.115 These university-based programs do not provide professionaldevelopment training for high-level correctional administrators. They are
most valuable for providing background education for young people who
might seek careers in the field.
IV. CONTRASTING OUR NATIONAL INVESTMENT IN CORRECTIONAL
LEADERSHIP WITH LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT INVESTMENTS IN OTHER
SECTORS
Leadership training is pervasive in both the public and private sectors of
the United States.116 Private companies, large and small, spend billions of
dollars per year grooming promising junior employees for future leadership
roles and sharpening the skills of current managers and executives. The
military runs more than a dozen graduate colleges to train its senior-level
leaders for top-level assignments and posts. The FBI Academy runs a
prestigious police-leadership training course, which has come to be seen as
a de facto prerequisite for promotion to chief or sheriff of a large police
department. Many municipalities run or sponsor their own training
academies for police and other civil servants. The New York City
Leadership Academy, for example, recruits and develops public-school
leaders.
A. Corporate “Universities”
Many large corporations devote enormous resources to their leadershiptraining facilities, often called “corporate universities.”117 More than 3000
114.
List of Criminal Justice Masters Graduate Programs, GRADSCHOOLS,
http://www.gradschools.com/search-programs/criminal-justice/masters (last visited Sept. 20,
2011); List of Criminal Justice Doctorate Graduate Programs, GRADSCHOOLS,
http://www.gradschools.com/search-programs/criminal-justice/doctorate (last visited Sept.
20, 2011).
115.
See, e.g., UNIV. OF PENN., Senior Management Program, UPENN,
http://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/open-enrollment/senior-managementprograms
/\Advanced-Management-Program.cfm (last visited Dec. 2, 2011).
116.
See Bernard Wydra, Entry Selection, Training, and Career Structure in the Public
Penitentiary Service, (2006), available at http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/Justicia/Documents
/ARXIUS/doc_17765534_1.pdf (detailing foreign leadership training programs); E-mail
from Martin Horn, Lecturer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and former Director,
New York City Department of Corrections (Dec. 4, 2010) (on file with the author).
117.
Denise R. Hearn, Education in the Workplace: An Examination of Corporate

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companies worldwide, including Disney, Boeing, Motorola, and
McDonalds, have facilities and faculties to train managerial- and executivelevel leaders.118 Many spend millions (and some tens or hundreds of
millions) of dollars per year on skills and leadership training. For example,
McDonald’s Hamburger University, established in 1961, is headquartered
on an eighty-acre campus in a Chicago suburb.119 It has nineteen full-time
faculty members (restaurant operations experts) who, each year, teach four
different curricula (Crew Development, Restaurant Managers, MidManagement, and Executive Development) to more than 5000 in-residence
students (managers and franchise owners) from more than 119 countries.120
The university’s campus has thirteen classrooms, three kitchen laboratories,
a 300-seat auditorium, and twelve interactive “education-team” rooms as
well as dormitories and faculty offices.121 Hamburger University has
satellite campuses in Sydney, Munich, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and
Brazil.122 Each of the university’s four curricula is delivered via a
combination of classroom instruction, hands-on laboratory work, restaurant
simulations, and computer e-learning modules.123 The Mid-Management
and Restaurant-Managers curricula are accredited by the American Council
on Education. Thus, students who complete these programs earn, in
addition to a diploma, approximately twenty-one college credits (roughly
one semester of college-level work).124 Like most corporate universities’
training programs, Hamburger University also encourages employees to
return to the university at key points in their McDonald’s careers to obtain
skills and competencies necessary for succeeding at the next corporate
level. Over the past fifty years, Hamburger University has trained more
than 80,000 restaurant managers, mid-managers, and franchise
owners/operators.
University Models, available at http://www.newfoundations.com/OrgTheory/Hearn721.html
(last visited Sept. 19, 2011).
118.
Id.
119.
Our Facility, MCDONALDS, http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/
hamburger_university/our_facility.html (last visited Sept. 19, 2011).
120.
Our Curriculum, MCDONALDS, http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/
hamburger_university/our_curriculum.html (last visited Sept. 19, 2011).
121.
Our Facility, MCDONALDS, http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/
hamburger_university/our_facility.html (last visited Sept. 19, 2011).
122.
Id.
123.
Our Curriculum, MCDONALDS, http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/
hamburger_university/our_curriculum.html (last visited Sept. 19, 2011).
124.
The American Council on Education has approved many Restaurant Manager and
Mid-Management curricula for college credit. Careers, MCDONALDS, http://www.about
mcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/hamburger_university/college_credit_connection/earn_college
_credits/calculate_your_credits.html (last visited Sept. 18, 2011).

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That McDonald’s Corp. spends far more money to train its leadership
cadre than does the government in training the nation’s high-level
corrections leaders is telling. McDonald’s invested $40 million in 1983 to
give its training facility the resources to operate a year-round university.125
In 1991, Motorola University’s operating budget was $70 million.126 In
2005, Intel Corp. allocated $377 million for leadership development.127 By
contrast, in 2011, the federal government’s National Corrections Academy
has a $2.5 million annual operating budget, even though annual corrections
expenditures are approximately $70 billion.
B. Military Graduate Colleges
The fourteen American military graduate colleges and nine federal
service academies demonstrate the quantity and quality of leadership
training that the United States government is capable of providing.128 The
Army War College and Naval War College, for example, offer multi-month
(or longer) residential and non-residential courses, award diplomas and/or
bachelors, masters and Ph.D. degrees, and prepare military and civilian
leaders for high-level commands.129
Consider the Army War College (AWC), established in 1901 in response
to revelations of Army failures during the 1898 Spanish-American War.130
AWC’s mission is:

125.
Our Facility, MCDONALDS, http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/
hamburger_university/our_facility.html (last visited Sept. 18, 2011).
126.
Tammi Harbert, Alma Motorola, CIO, Oct. 15, 1991, at 48.
127.
Manal Khalil, Human Resource Training and Development: Expensive or
Investment?, THE CERTIFIED ACCOUNTANT 52-53 (2007), available at http://www.lacpa.org.
lb/Includes/Images/Docs/TC/newsletter30/9.%20Manal%20Khalil.pdf.
128.
U.S. OFFICE OF PERS. MGMT., PREPARING FOR THE SENIOR EXECUTIVE SERVICE:
THE FEDERAL CANDIDATE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM (2004), available at
http://www.opm.gov/fedcdp/opm_candidate.pdf (stating the purpose is to “train outstanding
leaders of the future for the Federal Government who will guide us through the challenges
and opportunities of the 21st Century.”). This fourteen-month program includes three
nonconsecutive weeks of residential training (a one-week initial assessment period, a oneweek Focused Skills seminar and a one-week Strategic Leadership Seminar), several oneday skills-training workshops, a group leadership project and other meetings and workshops
with mentors, instructors and team members. Id. Students’ sponsoring agencies pay tuition
and expenses. Id.
129.
Academic Programs, U.S. ARMY WAR COLL., http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawe
/about/academicPrograms.cfm (last visited Nov. 25, 2011); About, U.S. NAVAL WAR
COLLEGE, http://www.usnwc.edu/About.aspx (last visited Nov. 25, 2011).
130.
Army War College Evolution, U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE, http://www.carlisle.
army.mil/usawc/about/Historic.cfm (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).

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To prepare selected military, civilian, and international leaders for the
responsibilities of strategic leadership; educate current and future
leaders on the development and employment of landpower in a joint,
interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational (JIIM) environment;
research and publish on national security and military strategy; and
engage in activities that support the Army’s strategic communication
efforts.131

AWC seeks to develop “senior leadership competencies necessary for
success in the contemporary operational environment that contributes to the
development of senior leaders.”132
AWC’s full-time faculty, headed by a “commandant” (an Army majorgeneral),133 consists of more than sixty military and civilian professors with
impressive academic credentials.134 Most AWC students are United States
Army officers, from senior captains (eight to ten years experience) to
lieutenant general (thirty to thirty-five years experience).135 However, there
are also students from the other United States military branches, foreign
militaries, and civilian United States government agencies, such as the
Pentagon, State Department, and National Security Agency.136
AWC offers two graduate-level academic programs. The Resident
Program, for approximately 380 students per year, is a ten-month-long
course of study aiming to hone the commander’s ability to formulate and
communicate a vision for their commands; understand and develop
strategic concepts; improve such leadership skills as critical thinking, selfawareness and consensus-building; draw lessons from the history of
warfare; “develop broader intellectual and professional horizons”;
understand the political, economic, military and informational elements of
national power; and “cultivat[e] values-based, [sic] ethical climates and

131.
U.S. DEPT. OF THE ARMY, Organization and Function United States Army War
College, TRADOC Regulation 10-5-6, at 5 (Ft. Monroe, Virginia: United States Army
Training and Doctrine Command, Sept. 15 2006), available at http://www.tradoc.army.mil/
tpubs/regs/r10-5-6.pdf.
132.
About the U.S. Army War College, U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/about/aboutUs.cfm (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
133.
See U.S. ARMY WAR COLL., http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/about/docs/
Martin.pdf (last visited Oct. 1, 2011). Several colonels and a former ambassador to Iceland
make up the rest of the AWC’s leadership cadre. U.S. ARMY WAR COLL.,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/about/docs/van%voorst.pdf (last visited Oct. 1, 2011);
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE, http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/about/leadership.cfm (last
visited Oct. 1, 2011).
134.
Telephone Interview, AWC representative (Dec. 2, 2010).
135.
About, U.S. ARMY WAR COLL., http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/about/
programOverview.cfm (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
136.
Id.

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cultures throughout their commands [in ways that will] inspire others to
think and act.”137 The curriculum includes six core courses, five elective
courses, a national security seminar, a strategic decision-making seminar,
several specialized seminars (e.g. Military Leaders and the Media,
Economics of National Security, Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century
and War-Torn Societies) and a research project on military strategy.138
Those who successfully complete these requirements receive a Master of
Strategic Studies degree.139 Students in the Distance Education Program,
approximately 500 per year, take the same curriculum online over a twoyear period.140
AWC hosts research institutes that provide data, research findings,
reports and recommendations to students and faculty.141 For example, the
Strategic Studies Institute, staffed by more than twenty-five civilian faculty
members, high-ranking military officers and others, publishes studies and
strategic recommendations for Defense Department officials, Congress,
universities, news media, think tanks and military institutes.142 Each year,
the Chief of Staff of the Army invites international fellows from select
countries to visit AWC in order to “study, research, and write on subjects
of significance to the security interests of their own and allied nations.”143
Imagine an NCC whose mission was to prepare selected correctional
leaders for the responsibilities of strategic leadership; educate current and
future leaders on the development and employment of correctional
authority in a joint, multiregional and interagency environment; conduct
137.
138.

Id.
See Office of the Registrar, Curriculum Catalog, U.S. ARMY WAR COLL.,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Registrar/pdf/catalogue.pdf (last visited Oct. 1,
2011).
139.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLL., U.S. Army War College Academic Programs,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/asawc/about/academicPrograms.cfm (last visited Oct. 1,
2011). AWC also runs shorter leadership-training courses, including a one-week Adjutants
General National Security Seminar, a two-week Joint Flag Officers Warfighting Course, a
one-week Joint Forces Land Component Commander Course and a one-week Senior
Reserve Component Officer Course. Id. For less-senior officers, AWC’s Pre-Senior Level
College offers a thirteen-week (in-residence and online) course called Basic Strategic Art
and a six-month course called Defense Strategy. Id.
140.
Id.
141.
See, e.g., Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. ARMY WAR COLL.,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/ (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
142.
See Faculty and Staff Directory, STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE, U.S. ARMY WAR
COLLEGE, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/about/faculty-staff.cfm (Nov. 25,
2011); All Publications by Date, STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE, U.S. ARMY WAR COLL.,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/year.cfm (last visited Nov. 25, 2011).
143.
Academic Policies and Procedures, U.S. ARMY WAR COLL., http://www.carlisle.
army.mil/usawc/Registar/policies.cfm (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).

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and publish research on correctional strategy; and engage in activities in
support of state and local correctional systems’ strategic communication
efforts.144 Such a college would train senior and executive level
correctional officials to formulate, communicate and achieve goals via
critical thinking, self awareness, consensus-building skills, and learning
from successes and failures.
C. The FBI Academy
The FBI Academy is recognized throughout the world as the leading
institution for training police officials. Located on a Marine Corps base in
Quantico, Virginia, the Academy’s campus includes two dozen classrooms,
eight conference rooms, three dormitories (accommodating over 900
occupants),145 a 1000-seat auditorium, forensic laboratories, a library, and
dining halls.146 It has approximately 180 full-time faculty members and a
roughly $75 million annual budget.147
The FBI Academy has two flagship programs dedicated to leadership
development.148 Its National Academy is a ten-week in-residence course of
study, offered four times per year, to high-level American and foreign lawenforcement leaders.149 Admission is highly competitive. The course trains
approximately 250 executives and managers of police departments,
sheriffs’ departments, military police organizations, and other lawenforcement agencies from the United States and over 150 foreign
countries150 on such subjects as law, behavioral and forensic science,
144.
Cf. About the U.S. Army War College, U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE,
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/about/aboutUs.cfm (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
145.
These dormitories are filled virtually year-round. Indeed, the FBI Academy often
rents additional rooms in area hotels to accommodate students and visiting fellows.
Telephone Interview with FBI Academy representative, FBI Headquarters, Washington
D.C., (Dec. 14, 2010).
146.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, The FBI Academy: A Pictorial History, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007/may/acad_history051407 (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
147.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, FY 2011 BUDGET REQUEST AT A GLANCE (2011),
available at http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2011summary/pdf/fy11-fbi-bud-summary.pdf.
148.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, Leadership Development Institute, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/overview (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
149.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, The National Academy, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/national-academy (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
150.
Id. Applicants must be nominated by a commissioner, superintendent, police
chief, head of a county police agency or head of a state police or highway patrol
organization. Applicants must be at least twenty-five years old, must have attained the rank
of lieutenant, must have a high-school diploma, and must agree to remain in law
enforcement for at least three years after graduation. FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION,
Nomination of Law Enforcement Officers to Attend the National Academy, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/national-academy/na-nominations (last visited Oct. 1,

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terrorism, leadership development, communication, and fitness.151 This
includes foreign police officers facilitating good relations between
American police and their foreign counterparts and building general
goodwill with foreign countries.152 It aims “to support, promote, and
enhance the personal and professional development of law enforcement
leaders by preparing them for complex, dynamic, and contemporary
challenges through innovative techniques, facilitating excellence in
education and research, and forging partnerships throughout the world.”153
Successfully completing the National Academy has become a de facto
prerequisite for achieving top positions in state, federal, and local
policing.154 One Assistant U.S. Attorney called the FBI Academy “the
temple where leaders of law enforcement come to receive their mission.”155
The FBI Academy provides leadership training via its Leadership
Development Institute (LDI),156 which seeks to “foster[] innovative,
applicable, and effective leadership practices and encourag[e] a spirit of
respect and cooperation between and among FBI employees and our law
enforcement and intelligence community colleagues worldwide.”157 LDI is
in charge of leadership education in the following FBI subunits: (1) The
National Executive Institute (NEI), which provides a one-week leadership

2011).
151.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, The National Acad., FBI, http://www.fbi.gov/
about-us/training/national-academy (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
152.
See FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, International Training, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/ilea (last visited, Oct. 1, 2011). The FBI Academy also
trains 800 new agents per year. New Agent Training, FBI ACADEMY,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/sat (last visited Nov. 25, 2011). The twenty-week inresidence new-agent training program includes 850 hours of instruction in academics (e.g.
law, ethics, intelligence, behavioral and forensic science and interrogation), case exercises
(in a mock town on the FBI’s Academy’s campus called Hogan’s Alley), firearms training
(handgun, shotgun, submachine gun) and operational skills (e.g. physical fitness, selfdefense and surveillance). Id. By contrast, the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (FBP) training
program for new federal correctional employees is a three-week in-residence course called
Introduction to Correctional Techniques. About Staff Training Centers, FEDERAL BUREAU OF
PRISONS, http://www.bop.gov/about/train/index.jsp (last visited Nov. 25, 2011). The Staff
Training Academy also offers a few specialized courses, e.g. Bus Operations, Marksman
Observer, and Witness Security. Id.
153.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, The National Academy, FBI, http://www.fbi.gov/
about-us/training/national-academy (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
154.
Id.
155.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, Leadership Development Institute, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/ldi (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
156.
Id.
157.
Id. LDI has two units: the Community Leadership Develop Unit and the FBI
Leadership Development Unit. Id.

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course, several times per year, to the chiefs of the largest law enforcement
agencies (agencies with more than 500 officers serving a population of at
least 250,000) in the United States, Canada, the U.K., and Australia;158 (2)
The Law Enforcement Executive Development Seminar (LEEDS), a five
day leadership course offered several times per year to the chiefs of midsize (50-500 officers) police departments;159 and (3) Regional Command
Colleges, which provide a forty-hour leadership course, nearly two dozen
times per year, to the top officers of smaller (fewer than fifty officers)
police departments.160
The federal government is far more committed to excellence in policing
at all levels of government than excellence in incarceration.161 The 1994
Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act established the
Community Orientated Policing Services (COPS Program) to help state and
local police departments: (1) increase the number of police officers
deployed in American communities; (2) foster interaction between police
officers and communities; (3) encourage innovation in policing; and (4)
develop new technologies for assisting officers in reducing crime.162
Congress allocated $8.8 billion for the COPS Program over six years.163
This money flowed as grants to state and local police departments,
primarily to hire additional officers.164 The COPS Program is still funded at

158.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, The National Executive Institute, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/ldi/nei (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
159.
Command Institute for Law Enforcement Executives, FBI LEEDA,
http://www.leedafbi.org/i4a/pages/Index.cfm?pageID=3294 (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
There are additional programs for supervisors, executives, and managers. See, e.g.,
Supervisor Leadership Institute, FBI LEEDA, http://www.leedafbi.org/i4a/pages/Index.
cfm?pageID=3296 (last visited Oct. 1, 2011); Training: The Executive Survival Policing in
the 21st Century, FBI LEEDA, http://www.leedafbi.org/i4a/pages/Index.cfm?pageID=3293
(last visited Oct. 1, 2011); Regional LEEDS Program, FBI LEEDA, http://www.fbileeda.org/
i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3282 (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
160.
FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, Law Enforcement Executive Development
Seminar (LEEDS) & Regional Command Colleges, FBI, http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/
training/ldi/leeds (last visited Oct. 1, 2011). LDI also collaborates with the faculty of
Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management to provide additional
means of training. FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, Leadership Development, FBI,
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/ldi /leeds (last visited Oct. 1, 2011).
161.
See, e.g., Jeffrey A. Roth & Joseph F. Ryan, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L INST.
OF JUSTICE, THE COPS PROGRAM AFTER 4 YEARS—NATIONAL EVOLUTION 1 (Aug. 2000)
available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183644.pdf.
162.
U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, COPS Office: COPS History 1994-Present, COPS,
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=44 (last visited Nov. 11, 2011).
163.
Id.
164.
Id.

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hundreds of millions of dollars per year.165
The FBI Academy provides an important example of what correctionalleadership training would look like if the federal government considered
the nation’s correctional infrastructure a higher priority. Perhaps the
legislators think apprehending criminals is much more important and
complex than confining, protecting, and rehabilitating them. Just as the FBI
Academy has established the United States as a world leader in democratic
policing,166 the NCC’s aspiration would be to establish the United States as
the world leader in democratic corrections. Success, or even substantial
progress, in achieving this goal would have huge payoffs for domestic
tranquility and for the United States’s international reputation for
respecting human rights.
V. A FRAMEWORK FOR A NATIONAL COLLEGE OF CORRECTIONS
The proposed NCC would be similar to Chief Justice Burger’s vision of
a highly prestigious institution dedicated to researching, teaching, and
promoting competent, effective, and ethical correctional leadership.167 The
NCC would stand at the apex of the nation’s correctional-training
infrastructure by: providing leadership and management education;
generating, evaluating, and certifying curricula; promoting and
disseminating best training protocols, courses, and pedagogies; and serving
as a forum for connecting federal, state, and local correctional leaders with
one another, with foreign prison and jail officials, and with high caliber
academics and corporate leaders.168 As the FBI Academy did for police in
the 1970s,169 the NCC should produce major improvements in the quality
of professional correctional leadership. That, in turn, should produce major
improvements in, among many other things, prison and jail efficiency,
prison and jail safety, prisoner productivity, ex-offender reentry, caring and
mentoring staff, and reductions in recidivism. Rather than merely reacting
to the public’s shifting complaints about the need for prisoner
rehabilitation, toughness on crime, reentry or cost efficiency (as the
American correctional-training providers have done for decades), the NCC
should be the nation’s leader in creating correctional policy, shaping the

165.
166.

Id.
See, e.g., FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, Strengthening the Global Rule of Law,
Part 1: A Remarkable Partnership Is Born In Budapest, FBI, http://www.fbi.gov/news/
stories/2004/february/ilea020204 (last visited Nov. 11, 2011).
167.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, An Agenda for Crime Prevention and
Correctional Reform, 67 A.B.A. J. 988, 990 (1981).
168.
Id. Chief Justice Burger suggested that a national academy of corrections “should
also provide technical assistance to state and local institutions on a continuing basis.” Id.
169.
See discussion supra Part III.B.1 and accompanying footnotes.

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public’s perception of corrections, and keeping the quality of correctionaltraining high.
A. Expansion of the NIC
The NCC should be the next step in the maturation of the NIC. Indeed,
Chief Justice Burger’s original vision for the NIC was a full-scale, wellfunded, year-round academy similar in size and prestige to the FBI
Academy’s sprawling campus in Quantico, Virginia.170 The NIC describes
itself as “a center of learning, innovation and leadership that shapes and
advances effective correctional practice and public policy” and pursues the
following goals: “effective management of prisons, jails and community
corrections programs and facilities”; “enhanced organizational and
professional performance in corrections”; “community, staff and offender
safety”; “improved correctional practices through the exploration of trends
and public policy issues”; and “enhanced services through improved
organizational and staff effectiveness.”171 The NIC’s Academy Division
has four decades of experience in correctional-leadership training at the
national level, a corps of experienced correctional trainers, a Colorado
facility devoted to correctional training, a sizeable e-library of correctional
training materials, and extensive links with state departments of
corrections, county jails, professional correctional associations, and some
university-based academics.172
The NIC and its Academy have made significant investments in studying
the competency requirements of correctional leaders. For example, in 2005
and 2006, the Academy Division published two thick reports that “provide
a tool for refining [NIC’s] leadership training programs and for helping
correctional agencies and organizations of all sizes identify the most
appropriate candidates for leadership training.”173 The reports provide
recommendations on recruitment, placement and retention of leaders, and
on development of leadership skills.174 They identify the necessary
leadership competencies of four levels of correctional leaders: executives,
170.
171.

See supra Part II.C.2.
U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Mission & Goals, NICIC,
http://nicic.gov/Mission (last visited Sept. 23, 2011).
172.
See FED. BUREAU OF PRISONS, Central Office – National Institute of Corrections
(NIC), BOP, http://www.bop.gov/about/co/nic.jsp (last visited Nov. 7, 2011); see also
INST.
OF
CORR.,
Correctional
Training
Opportunities,
NICIC,
NAT’L
http://nicic.gov/Training (last visited Nov. 11, 2011); Fran Zandi, New Jail Resources and
Training from NIC, CORRECTIONS TODAY (June/July 2011), at 75-76.
173.
Executive and Senior-Level Leaders, supra note 17, at iii; Manager and
Supervisor Levels, supra note 18, at iv.
174.
Executive and Senior-Level Leaders, supra note 17, at iv; see also Manager and
Supervisor Levels, supra note 18, at iv.

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senior-level leaders, managers, and supervisors.175 These impressive
reports also introduce strategies, techniques, and frameworks for
implementing each competency.176 An expanded NIC—with a much larger
physical plant (e.g. lecture halls, seminar rooms, dormitories, research
centers, conference rooms, a library, offices and an auditorium) and a
larger corps of faculty and staff—could use these reports to generate,
disseminate, and teach rich correctional-leadership curricula.
B. The NCC’s Size, Organization, and Capabilities
To establish its identity and bona fides, the NCC needs comfortable
facilities. It must have a venue conducive to serious study and attractive to
correctional managers and academics.177 There must be ample classrooms,
dormitories, faculty and administrative offices, research centers, and
conference rooms. There should be up-to-date technology for operation of
the institution and for delivery of training. The NCC should have a large
library that makes accessible, onsite and online, American and foreign
correctional studies, reports, recommendations, articles and books.
American prisons and jails are not well-regarded abroad or even at
home;178 changing the reality and the perception should be a top national
priority. The NCC therefore requires a distinguished dean who has a
reputation as a correctional leader, innovator, and educator; this dean will
be the face of the institution and of American corrections. There should be
at least twenty-five full-time faculty members, including world-class
corrections leaders and scholars who have made their marks in such areas
as management, public administration, law, psychology, sociology, ethnic
studies, organizational politics, and corrections and criminal justice. It is
important that the NCC be able to accommodate a small number of
American and foreign academics and distinguished correctional
administrators for periods of several weeks to several months. The
envisioned NCC will attract Americans and foreigners who relish the
opportunity to interact with top-notch faculty and fellow correctional
leaders in other states, regions, and countries.
The NCC’s students should be executive-level prison, jail, and
175.
See infra Table 1 (providing a list of the competencies for each level of
correctional leadership).
176.
See Executive and Senior-Level Leaders, supra note 17, at xviii, xix, xxv; see
generally Manager and Supervisor Levels, supra note 18.
177.
Burger Commencement Address, supra note 7, at 4–5 (suggesting that a national
corrections academy could be grafted to the FBI Academy or that “the United States could
acquire the facilities of a small, centrally located college which is closing its operations.”).
178.
Adam Liptak, U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs That of Other Nations, N.Y. TIMES,
Apr. 23, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.122537.
38.html.

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community-corrections administrators. The heads of state and county
correctional agencies could nominate candidates for enrollment, but the
NCC must have control over admissions. Having NCC, rather than state or
local correctional directors, be primarily responsible for the admission of
its students would help ensure that the selection process does not become
politicized and that the quality of each incoming class is high. The NCC’s
courses should not require students to be in-residence for more than three
consecutive weeks; busy prison and jail personnel will not be able to leave
their jobs for longer than that. Thus, the NCC should provide courses that
combine residential, online and independent study. For example, students
could take two weeks of intensive in-residence classes, followed by several
months of studying and researching, followed, six months later, by another
in-residence period in which papers and projects would be critiqued.
The NIC’s Academy Division already has experience with courses like
this; its Executive Excellence Program requires its students to take two
consecutive weeks of in-residence classes at the National Corrections
Academy followed by six online classes over a period of months and a
subsequent four-day in-residence stint.179 Similarly, John Rakis, a former
correctional manager and longtime NIC trainer,180 annually conducts two
180-hour Offender Workforce Development Specialist Partnership
Training courses, which train jail, probation and parole officers to prepare
prisoners for reentry.181 The first week of the program is in-residence,
followed by several months of self-study, completion of a practicum and
online assignments, followed by a concluding in-residence week.182
Approximately twelve instructors (three at a time), all nationally
recognized reentry practitioners and academics, teach each course to thirtysix students.183
The NCC should aim to develop courses that make correctional
executives more effective leaders. We envision a core curriculum that
draws on business school and public administration curricula adapted for
corrections. These core courses should include management, leadership,
179.
See NAT’L INST. OF CORR., Executive Excellence Program, NICIC,
http://nicic.gov/Training/11E1501 (last visited Sept. 23, 2011) (“The Executive Excellence
Program is conducted in two phases, six blended activities planned between the two.”).
180.
About, JOHN RAKIS & ASSOCIATES, http://users.rcn.com/jrakis/About.html (last
visited Sep. 25, 2011). Rakis was the deputy executive director of the New York City Board
of Corrections from 1984-1988. Id.
181.
See generally, NAT’L INST. OF CORR., ADMIN GUIDE: OFFENDER WORKFORCE
DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM (Aug. 2007), http://nicic.gov/Library/
022173.
182.
Telephone Interview with John Rakis, former Deputy Executive Director of the
New York City Board of Correction (Dec. 2, 2010).
183.
Id.

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87

law, human relations, budgeting, cost-benefit analysis, and organization
theory. The NCC should offer specialized short courses on topical issues
such as dealing with stakeholders, integrating social networking into
corrections, controlling gangs, setting goals, measuring progress, and
preparing inmates for reentry. The architects of NCC’s curricula should
also obtain information, from correctional educators and practitioners,
about students’ learning styles in order to determine the proper
combination of lecture, group work, brainstorming, and interactive
computer instruction.184 Bringing each state’s top correctional trainers,
leaders and future leaders together to get to know each other, share ideas,
and form coalitions would facilitate this process. All of NCC’s courses
should aim not only to develop students’ leadership skills, but also to
produce educational materials, curricula, and policy ideas for future NCC
use. The courses would give faculty an opportunity to interact with
correctional leaders from all over the country. The faculty would then be
well-positioned to provide recommendations to agencies conducting
searches to fill leadership positions.
Time spent at the NCC should not be a boondoggle. NCC’s courses must
be rigorous, require background reading, homework, and out-of-class
projects, quizzes, and exams. Perhaps a graduation requirement should be a
management-improvement project in which students, after completing the
coursework, prepare and implement a management innovation at their
home correctional agency. Students who successfully complete an NCC
course of study should receive a certificate. Outstanding performance at the
NCC, like outstanding performance in the FBI’s National Academy,185
should come to be seen as a significant career enhancer.
Finally, the NCC should be a base for career correctional leaders.
Leadership competencies become more numerous and complex as a
correctional official progresses from manager to senior leader to executive.
The competencies build upon one another. Top correctional officials should
not begin training in these competencies the day they are chosen to lead a
department. Instead, corrections supervisors, managers, and executives
must receive substantial training periodically throughout their career. The
NCC should provide “career learning,” by inviting corrections managers,
senior leaders, and executives to return to the college at key career stages to
prepare for upcoming promotions. Accordingly, the NCC curricula should

184.
John Rakis observes that the best pedagogical approach to teaching experienced
correctional officers is mixing short lectures with discussions and group exercises. Id.
185.
See FED. BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, FBI National Academy: Where Lasting
Friendships Are Forged, FBI (May 3, 2006), http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2006/may/nat
_aca050306 (“Police departments nominate their top candidates for admission. Less than
one percent of police officers in the country are accepted.”).

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track career progression.186
C. NCC’s Relationship with Other Correctional-Training Providers
A NCC would not and could not monopolize all corrections training.
Even in its most robust form, it could not train all, or even a substantial
number, of the nation’s correctional executives in all required knowledge,
skills, and competencies. However, a well-staffed and well-supported NCC
could begin the hard work of transforming the disparate mélange of
training programs into a more coordinated network that generates,
identifies, and advances good ideas, curricula, courses, teachers, and
pedagogical methodologies; links correctional training to private-sector and
public-sector developments in management, public administration, highereducation research, law, social science, criminal justice generally, and
corrections specifically; and certifies or rates courses offered by other
providers.
The NCC would provide state correctional agencies with curriculardevelopment
support,
training
resources,
pedagogical
ideas,
recommendations, and perhaps accreditation. States could also send their
top correctional trainers, top correctional leaders, and most promising
correctional leaders-to-be to study at NCC and to bring back to their home
institutions skills, ideas, and strategies. A NCC could collaborate with state
correctional departments to jointly run training programs customized to the
needs of particular correctional departments, units, or facilities.
The NCC could also advance the objectives of the professional
correctional associations. For example, a NCC could help improve ACA’s,
APPA’s, and AJA’s training initiatives by sharing and critiquing (and
perhaps certifying) courses and training materials. An NCC could also
serve as a forum in which the associations’ leaders could meet, with one
another and with academics, researchers, and other experts, to amend old
and create new curricula, policy, and lobbying and fundraising strategies.
A NCC could provide college and university criminal justice
departments with research opportunities. For example, academics from the
United States and foreign college and university criminal justice
departments could come to the NCC for a year or two as fellows to teach,
conduct research, and participate in conferences.

186.
See,
e.g.,
CORR.
MGMT.
INST.
OF
TEX.,
About
CMIT,
http://www.cmitonline.org/about/html (last visited Nov. 1, 2011) (offering training for both
County Corrections and mid-management officials); ARIZ. DEP’T OF CORR., About COTA,
http://www.azcorrections.gov/adc/employment/Jeff_Employment_COTA.aspx (last visited
Nov. 8, 2011).

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VI. CONCLUSION
In 2011, it should strike legislators, regulators, and the public as
bewildering that the country with the world’s largest penal infrastructure
has no full-fledged national-level training and research institution devoted
to making American corrections as humane and effective as possible.187 In
the twenty-first century, a country that spends nearly $70 billion per year
on corrections188 should have at least a modestly-funded national
corrections college.189
Efficient, safe, and well-run prisons, jails, and community-corrections
systems do not come cheaply. Obtaining political and financial support for
American corrections’ human infrastructure has been and will continue to
be a Herculean challenge. In his May 1981 commencement address at
George Washington University, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger observed
that “1981 is hardly the year in which to propose large public expenditures
for new programs to change . . . penal institutions.”190 Today, with federal,
state, and local governments facing their worst budget crises since the
Great Depression, it is an even worse time to be advocating a new (even
very modest) federal expenditure.191
However, there will probably never be a propitious time for advocating
that federal legislators spend taxpayer money to improve prisons, jails, and
community-corrections. Investing in corrections has and may always have
less political payoff than funding the military, police, and courts.192
187.
See Richard Wagner, Touring the Naval War College, BEYONDSHIPS 2 (2006),
http://www.beyondships.com/files/NWC.pdf.
188.
OFFICE OF MGMT. AND BUDGET, FEDERAL BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011,
WHITEHOUSE (2011), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/
budget/fy2011/assets/budget.pdf.
189.
See U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, Expenditure Trends by Function Chart, available at
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/exptyptab.cfm. This is a 660% increase since
1982. Id. Corrections has been the second-fastest growing category for state budgets for the
last twenty years. PEW CTR., Public Safety Performance, PEW CENTER ON THE STATES,
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/initiatives_detail.aspx?initiativeID=31336.
190.
Burger Commencement Address, supra note 7.
191.
See, e.g., STATE OF N.J., OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GEN., SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS
OF STATE AUTHORITIES’ EMPLOYEE BENEFITS 15 (Oct. 23, 2006), available at
http://www.state.nj.us/oig/pdf/rpt_october_23_06.pdf
(demonstrating
difficulty
in
advocating for $.06 increase in state employee travel reimbursement); Clifton Adcock, City
Council Retains Moratorium on Out-of-State Travel, OKLAHOMA GAZETTE, Nov. 3, 2010,
http://www.okgazette.com/article/11-03-2010/City_council_retains_moratorium_on_out-ofstate_travel.html.
192.
Indeed, in 2010, the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended the
appropriation of nearly $74 million to renovate the FBI Academy’s physical plant.
MIKULSKI, DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE AND JUSTICE AND SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES
APPROPRIATIONS BILL, S. REP. NO. 111-29, at 64 (2011), available at

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However, the shortsightedness of this political judgment should be obvious.
As Chief Justice Burger admonished in a speech to the American Bar
Association in 1969, three weeks after the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on
the moon:
A society which can spend billions to place three men into a flawless
moon landing operation—and bring them back with new knowledge of
the universe—ought to be able to . . . deal with its delinquents both
before and after conviction . . . I challenge the social utility of any
system of criminal justice which allocates, as we now do, a
disproportionate amount of our resources to the techniques of trials,
appeals and post conviction remedies while it gravely neglects the
correctional processes which follow a verdict of guilt.193

Chief Justice Burger urged the United States to undertake this challenge
“[e]ven in this day of necessary budget austerity.”194 Ironically, in the last
two decades, the United States has undertaken a massive expansion of its
carceral infrastructure. Given national corrections expenditures of close to
$70 billion annually,195 the United States ought to be able to afford say $50
million per year (still amounting to 20% of the FBI Academy’s budget) for
leadership training.196 Thirty years ago, Chief Justice Burger argued that
“[i]mprovements [in our prison systems] . . . will cost less in the long run
than the failure to make them.”197 This is still true today.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-111srpt229/pdf/CRPT-111srpt229.pdf.
193.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, A Proposal: A National Conference on
Correctional Problems, American Bar Association, Dall., Tex. (Aug. 11, 1969) in 33 FED.
PROBATION 3, 3-4 (1989).
194.
Burger Commencement Address, supra note 7.
195.
Key Facts at a Glance, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS (2011),
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/exptyptab.cfm.
196.
See generally Facts and Figures International Offices/FBI Budget, FED. BUREAU
OF INVESTIGATION (2010), http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/facts-and-figures2010-2011/international-offices-fbi-budget. If the NCC were to subsume the NIC’s
Academy Division, the $50 million would really amount to an additional $28 million
expenditure. See generally Bureau of Prisons 2009 Budget Request, DEP’T OF JUSTICE, FED.
PRISON SYSTEM (2008), http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2009summary/pdf/bop-bud-summary.
pdf. Tuition paid by state and local departments of corrections and jails could cover part of
the cost. Foundations might provide additional funds. Overall, correctional dollars would
likely be saved by smarter and more efficient penal management. Reductions in recidivism
would also translate into substantial societal savings. See Jacobs & Olitsky, supra note 32.
197.
Chief Justice Warren Burger, More Warehouses, or Factories with Fences?, 8
NEW ENG. J. PRISON L. 111, 115 (1982).

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91

APPENDIX: TABLES
Table 1: The National Institute of Corrections’ Managerial Profiles198
Leadership Level Positions within Each
Necessary Leadership
Leadership Level
Competencies
Ethics and Values
Supervisor
Classification Supervisor
Interpersonal
Adult or Juvenile Correctional
Relationships
Housing Unit Supervisor
Oral and Written
Juvenile Treatment Coordinator
Communication
Correctional Industries
Motivating Others
Supervisor
Developing Direct Reports
Probation, Parole, Community
Managing Conflict
Corrections/Sentencing
Team Building
Supervisor
Collaboration
Interstate Compact
Problem Solving and
Administrator
Decision Making
Accounting, Budget, Legal,
Criminal Justice System
Purchasing, and/or Contracts
Supervisor
HR Supervisor
Public Information, or Training
Supervisor
Information/Technology
Services Supervisor
Capital Programs or
Correctional Industries
Administrator
Health Services or Substance
Abuse Program Supervisor
Victim/Witness Program
Supervisor
Food Service or Facilities
Supervisor
Manager
Corrections Unit or Program
Ethics and Values
Manager
Interpersonal
Institution/Prison Department
Relationships
Head
Motivating Others

198.
DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L INST. CORR., Correctional Leadership Competencies for
the 21st Century: Executive and Senior-Level Leaders, NIC Accession Number 020474
(July 2005), available at http://nicic.gov/Library/020474; DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L INST. OF
CORR., Correctional Leadership Competencies for the 21st Century: Manager and
Supervisor Levels, NIC Accession Number 020475 (Dec. 2006), available at
http://nicic.gov/Library/020474.

92

Senior-Level

CRIMINAL AND CIVIL CONFINEMENT
Deputy Superintendent of
Institution/Prison Department
Institution/Prison Major or
Captain
Boot Camp Director
Probation, Parole, Community
Corrections, or Community
Sentencing Department Head or
Regional/District Manager
Interstate Compact
Administrator
Deputy Jail Administrator
Jail Department Head
Juvenile Facility Department
Head
Accounting, Budget, Legal,
Purchasing, and/or Contracts
Manager
HR Managers
Information/Technology
Services Manager
Capital Programs or
Correctional Industries
Administrator
Health Services or Substance
Abuse Program Manager
Victim/Witness Program
Manager
Food Service or Facilities
Manager
Director of Probation, Parole, or
Community Corrections
Deputy Director of Probation,
Parole, or Community
Corrections
Director of the Division of
Institutions/Prisons
Deputy Director of the Division
of Institutions/Prisons
Regional or District Director of
Field Services
Warden/Superintendent

[Vol. 38:57

Developing Direct Reports
Managing Conflict
Team Building
Collaboration
Problem Solving and
Decision Making
Strategic Thinking
Managing Change
Program Planning and
Performance Assessment
Criminal Justice System

Self Awareness
Ethics and Values
Vision and Mission
Strategic Thinking
Managing the External
Environment
Power and Influence
Strategic Planning and
Performance
Measurement
Collaboration
Team Building

2012]

Executive

PROPOSED NATIONAL CORRECTIONS COLLEGE
Juvenile Facility Administrator/
Director/Superintendent
Juvenile Probation Director
Jail Administrators/Deputy Jail
Administrator in Large Systems
Correctional Industries Director/
Deputy Administrator
Medical and Program Services
Director/Deputy Director
Capital Program Director/
Deputy Director
Director of Human Resources,
Budget, or Information Services
Deputy Director of Human
Resources, Budget, or
Information Services
Director of a State Department
of Corrections
Director of a City or County
Department of Corrections
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Regional Director
Sheriff
Director of a State Juvenile
Department of Corrections
Director of a Local Juvenile
Department of Corrections
Director of a State or Local
Probation System
Director of the Paroling
Authority Where it is Separate
from the Department of
Corrections
Deputy Directors of large
systems

Self Awareness
Ethics and Values
Vision and Mission
Strategic Thinking
Managing the External
Environment
Power and Influence
Collaboration
Team Building

93

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Table 2: Large State Correctional Leadership Training Programs (Circa 2011)
Program
Duration
Brief Description
Texas Department of
16 – 87
Supervisory Level (Tier 1): courses
Criminal Justice,
include Principles of Supervision (20
hours
Correctional
hours), Training for Staff Trainers (40
Institutions Division,
hours) and Sergeants, Food Service (87
Leadership
hours)
Development
Mid-Level Management (Tier 2): courses
Program199
include Leadership Forum (16 hours),
Success Through Active Responsible
Supervision (36 hours) and Lieutenant
Command School (16 hours)
Senior-Level Management (Tier 3):
Correctional Administrator Preparedness
Training (16 hours)
Arizona Department
of Corrections, Staff
Development and
Training Bureau200

several
days –
several
weeks

Correctional Officers Training Academy:
provides Tactical Services Unit training,
Professional Development Program,
Caseworker Academy, Sergeant’s
Leadership Academy, K-9 Academy and
other special programs
Correctional Managers Academy: devoted
to enhancing the leadership skills of new
administrators
Correctional Administrators Academy:
developed to enhance the skills of newly
promoted wardens
Correctional Leadership Academy: course
for security supervisors, focusing on
communication, team building, employee
discipline

Florida Criminal
Justice Executive
Institute201

several
days –
several

Chief Executive Seminar: available to the
heads of state and local correctional
facilities and to the chief executives in

199.

Leadership Development Program, Correctional Institutions Division, TX. DEP’T
http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/cotrain_ctsd_leadership.html (last visited Nov.
28, 2011).
200.
The Staff Development & Training Bureau, ARIZ. DEP’T OF CORR.,
http://www.azcorrections.gov/adc/divisions/newsuppdiv/Zoya_training.aspx (last visited
Nov. 28, 2011).
201.
Florida Crim. Justice Exec. Inst., FL. DEP’T OF LAW ENFORCEMENT,
OF CRIM. JUSTICE,

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PROPOSED NATIONAL CORRECTIONS COLLEGE
weeks

95

county, municipal and state criminal
justice agencies; the class meets for three
sessions on three topics (Defining the
Future, Organizational Realities, and The
Leadership Challenge)
Executive Leadership Seminar: available
to the upper management leadership of
Florida Criminal Justice organizations;
meets for three sessions; topics include
environmental scanning, the influences of
culture on policy, presentation skills,
ethics, values of organizations, the vision
of leaders, and the leadership of change
Senior Leadership Program: a continuing
education forum for Florida’s criminal
justice professionals; nine weeklong
sessions, spaced six weeks apart;
participants study leadership skills, teambuilding, strategic thinking, strategic
planning and innovative problem solving
Executive Future Studies Program:
program for criminal justice middlemanagers (supervisors of supervisors);
participants study futures forecasting,
managing generations, organizational
culture, ethics, and leadership of change;
class meets for four weeklong sessions
over six months
Continued Executive Development:
program for criminal justice executives
and managers; offers workshops and
seminars on contemporary issues in
leadership; classes range in length from
one to five days

http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/content/getdoc/508f8695-2877-4b83-bf11-01222c0248ee/FCJEIHome.aspx (last visited Nov. 28, 2011).

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Table 3: The NIC Academy Division’s Flagship Leadership Courses202
Course
Duration/
Number of Brief Description
Location
Students
Executive
Two weeks in
30–36 per
Course for upper-level
Excellence
residence, six
cycle (two corrections executives. Based
Program203
follow-up online
cycles per
on four leadership theories:
sessions and four
year)
(1) the development model
days of
(i.e. executives should
understand the corrections
concluding infield and be physically fit,
residence sessions
ethically grounded, and
intellectually challenged); (2)
the assessment and feedback
model (i.e. executives should
understand themselves via
systematic feedback from
bosses, peers, colleagues,
faculty, and direct reports);
(3) the correctional CEO
model (i.e. leaders must have
a clear vision, think
strategically, be actionoriented, and be ethical); and
(4) the executive leadership
development model (i.e.
leaders must create an actionoriented plan to help ensure
future success)
Correctional
Leadership
Development
Program204

Nine and a half
days in residence,
with follow-up
online classes and
independent study

25–32 per
cycle (two
cycles per
year)

Course for senior
correctional leaders, such as
wardens, superintendents, jail
administrators, and senior
probation and parole
supervisors. It addresses
leadership practices such as

202.
E-mail from Robert Brown to author (Nov. 28 2011) (on file with author)
(confirming the information in this chart).
203.
Executive Excellence Program, NIC, www.nicic.gov/Training/11E1501 (last
visited Nov. 25, 2011).
204.
Correctional Leadership Development, NIC, http://www.nicic.gov/Training/
11M101 (last visited Nov. 25, 2011).

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PROPOSED NATIONAL CORRECTIONS COLLEGE

97

challenging the process,
inspiring a shared vision and
enabling others to act
Management
Development
for the
Future205

Seventy-two
hours conducted
in sixteen
segments over
approximately one
year in
participants’ host
facilities, with
follow-up online
classes

72 hours
(over six
months)

Course for mid-level
correctional managers.
Students “prepare a dynamic
individual leadership plan
and undertake action-based
learning projects focused on
relevant issues in their
agencies with the intention of
applying the skills and
strategies learned in the
program to build
organizational capacity and
manage organizational
change.” The courses
combine three 24-hour
classroom sessions (held at
participants’ host sites), elearning courses, online
virtual instructor-led
sessions, participation in
online community forums
and discussions, and
independent work

205.
Management Development for the Future, NIC, http://www.nicic.gov/Training/
MDFFY12 (last visited Nov. 25, 2011).

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Association

CRIMINAL AND CIVIL CONFINEMENT

[Vol. 38:57

Table 4: Professional Associations for Corrections
Main Training Services

American Correctional
Association (ACA)206

Leadership Development Program
Professional Certification Program
Training Workshops
Corrections Online Training Collaborative

American Probation and Parole
Association (APPA)207

Training Institutes
Leadership Institute
Specialized Training Workshops
Online Training

American Jail Association
(AJA)208

Professional Development Seminars
Online Training Institute
Online Distance Education (in partnership with
Fort Hays State University)
National Jail Leadership Command Academy
(in partnership with the Correctional
Management Institute of Texas, the National
Association of Counties, and Sam Houston
State University)

Association of State
Correctional Administrators
(ASCA)209
International Association of
Correctional Training Personnel
(IACTP)210

All Directors Training Program
New Directors Training Program
Correctional Trainer Certification Commission
(in partnership with AJA)
Correctional Trainer E-Journal

206.
Training, AM. CORR. ASS’N, http://www.aca.org/development/ (last visited Nov.
25, 2011); Online Training, AM. CORR. ASS’N, http://www.aca.org/onlinecorrections/ (last
visited Nov. 25, 2011).
207.
Training, AM. PROBATION AND PAROLE ASS’N, http://www.appa-net.org/eweb/
(last visited Nov. 25, 2011).
208.
Training and Education, AM. JAIL ASS’N, http://www.aja.org/training/default.aspx
(last visited Nov. 25, 2011).
209.
New Directors Training Program, ASS’N STATE CORR. ADMIN,
http://www.asca.net/articles/913 (last visited Nov. 25, 2011); All Directors Training
Program, ASS’N STATE CORR. ADMIN, http://www.asca.net/articles/349 (last visited Nov. 25,
2011).
210.
Certification and Training, INT’L ASS’N OF CORR. TRAINING PERS.,
http://www.iactp.org/#certification (last visited Nov. 25, 2011).

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PROPOSED NATIONAL CORRECTIONS COLLEGE

International Corrections and
Prisons Association (ICPA)211

99

Annual Conferences
Training Manuals

211.
About ICPA, INT’L CORR. & PRISONS ASS’N, http://www.icpa.ca/pages/about-icpa
(last visited Nov. 25, 2011).