Pace Law Review
Volume 30
Issue 5 Fall 2010
Opening Up a Closed World: A Sourcebook on
Prison Oversight

Article 6

11-18-2010

Prison Oversight and Prison Leadership
Stan Stojkovic
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Recommended Citation
Stan Stojkovic, Prison Oversight and Prison Leadership, 30 Pace L. Rev. 1476 (2010)
Available at: http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol30/iss5/6
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Prison Oversight and Prison
Leadership
Stan Stojkovic
In a previous piece titled Correctional Leadership: A
Cultural Perspective, my co-author and I identified the critical
nexus between correctional leadership and organizational
culture within prisons.1 Our purpose in that work was to show
that correctional leadership mattered in how prisons were run.
Moreover, we were interested in showing how a correctional
culture could be created, one that recognized modern
leadership and management practices and reflected the best
values within the democratic tradition of the country. In this
brief piece, I will make a similar connection between prison
oversight and prison leadership. My thesis is that prison
oversight matters when it comes to correctional leadership, and
that it is in the best interests of everyone to have effective
oversight mechanisms within our prison systems. I will pursue
this topic by examining three interrelated topics that highlight
the importance and criticality of oversight mechanisms to
prison leadership. These three topics are: prison oversight and
democratic values, prison oversight and prison effectiveness,
and prison oversight and societal expectations.2
Walter J. Dickey has noted the importance of prisons being
run in a manner that is consistent with democratic ideals.3


Dean and Professor, Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
1. STAN STOJKOVIC & MARY ANN FARKAS, CORRECTIONAL LEADERSHIP: A
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE (2003).
2. See Anne Owers, Prison Inspection and the Protection of Prisoners’
Rights, 30 PACE L. REV. 1535 (2010). This revealing paper highlights the
major differences between British and American ideas on oversight and is
essential for those interested in prison oversight as a correctional
management tool.
3. The Management of Prisons in a Democratic Society: Written
Testimony Before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons,
Feb. 8, 2006 (statement of Walter J. Dickey, Professor & Senior Assoc. Dean
for
Academic
Affairs,
Univ.
of
Wis.),
available
at
http://www.prisoncommission.org/public_hearing_4_witness_dickey_walter.

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Having been a former director of a department of corrections,
Dickey experienced the difficulties of leading and managing
prisons under very austere circumstances. All directors of
departments of corrections operate public agencies, in the
words of Michael Lipsky, with infinite expectations and finite
resources.4 Addressing the multiple demands of institutional
systems can be daunting, yet doing this within the context of
public oversight and review makes things even more
problematical.
For most correctional administrators, the
balancing act of providing everything to everyone with limited
resources has forced them to pursue a state of anonymity.
What I mean by this is that anonymity is the preferred
position when you cannot address what you need to address
and where dollar limitations force you to either cut corners or
evade mandates. It is not a personal choice; it is more of an
organizational choice, one imposed by reluctant legislators who
see limited political utility in advocating for adequate resource
allocations for prison systems.5
Moreover, the resource
allocation question is invariably placed within the context of a
public debate regarding what aims we want to pursue with
prisons. This question, more often than not, is not easily
understood and answered. The proverbial “public” wants
everything, yet has a limited knowledge base from which to
make informed choices about what are reasonable aims for
prisons.6
This is where oversight may be of assistance to prison
officials. In order to move from a state of anonymity to one of
transparency, prison leaders will need to be convinced of its
benefits. In short, how will prison oversight assist prison
4. MICHEAL LIPSKY, STREET LEVEL BUREAUCRACY: DILEMMAS OF THE
INDIVIDUAL IN PUBLIC SERVICES (1980).
5. Conversation with Judge William Wayne Justice at the Opening Up a
Closed World: What Constitutes Effective Prison Oversight Conference, in
Austin, Tex. (Apr. 23, 2006). In addition, readers should know that Judge
Justice was one of the leading judicial officials of the time (in the 1970s) in
promoting change in prisons so that they met the legal requirements as
promulgated by various federal and state laws. Presiding over one of the
most controversial cases in correctional legal history, Ruiz v. Estelle, 503 F.
Supp. 1265, 1339 (S.D. Tex. 1980), Judge Justice had experienced first-hand
the recalcitrance of political officials to agree to manage constitutional
prisons.
6. See generally STAN STOJKOVIC & R. LOVELL, CORRECTIONS: AN
INTRODUCTION (2d ed. 1997).

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leaders and managers to perform their basic functions more
effectively and define their aims? The state of anonymity is no
longer possible for correctional officials given some of the issues
that I will address later regarding democratic values, prison
effectiveness, and societal expectations. Additionally, in the
21st century prison, the oversight function will be a new way of
holding prison officials accountable. This will be a new
challenge for prison leaders and managers. No longer will “out
of sight, out of mind” be the norm for prisons. Anonymity will
become passé in the modern correctional system.
Transparency and accountability will become normative as
legislatures and some “publics” become more informed and
demanding of prison leaders. The confluence of democratic
values, questions of prison effectiveness, and societal
expectations will force transparency and oversight will be
critical to not only how prisoners are treated, but in addition, to
how prison leaders and managers are judged.
Prison
leadership will become more salient and the degree to which
oversight defines prison aims will be of tremendous assistance
to beleaguered correctional administrators.
Prison Oversight and Democratic Values
Justice Louis Brandeis once stated that “[s]unlight is said
to be the best of disinfectants.”7 Such is the case with prisons.
The prison is, for the most part, a public concern and requires
public oversight. I will not try to address the topic of prison
privatization and its relationship to prison oversight, even
though it is an important part of any prison oversight
discussion.
Others have already addressed this topic
thoroughly.8 In most countries, various forms of correctional
privatization have been present over the past two hundred
years.9 The question is how does prison oversight enhance

7. LOUIS D. BRANDEIS, OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY, AND HOW THE BANKERS
USE IT 92 (On Demand Publishing 2009) (1914).
8. See S. CAMP & D. DAGGETT, PRISON PRIVATIZATION: FINANCIAL AND
ADMINISTRATIVE CONCERNS, IN MANAGING SPECIAL POPULATIONS IN JAILS AND
PRISONS (Stan Stojkovic, ed., 2d ed. 2010); Alfred C. Amen, Jr., Privatization,
Prisons, Democracy and Human Rights: The Need to Extend the Province of
Administrative Law, 12 IND. J. GLOBAL LEGAL STUD. 511 (2005).
9. THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE PRISON: THE PRACTICE OF PUNISHMENT IN

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democratic values, and how are democratic values a
constraining element when it comes to prison operations?
These two questions reflect differing perspectives on prison
oversight and democratic values.
The issue of prison
transparency and attended democratic values are enhanced
when we have effective prison oversight mechanisms in place.
The objective is transparency, nothing more, nothing less. The
essence of democracy is that sunlight can get into institutional
settings, especially those that have a history of being hidden.
Operating from a position of transparency, prisons are seen
with all their faults. This awareness by itself is of value, but
awareness without action is meaningless in the context of the
prison. Prison transparency allows for many opportunities for
improvement to occur as well. I once knew a prison warden
who was a bit of a maverick when it came to public access. He
viewed the public as discrete entities with differential levels of
power and influence. He wanted the influential publics to have
access to his prison. These were persons and entities in the
public who either controlled decision making in the legislature
or had access to resources that could be directed to the prison.
He viewed them as leveraging points to assist him in running
the prison.
This contrarian view (transparency) was viewed by many
of the prison warden’s correctional colleagues as not only
problematical but almost heretical. He told me that the
transparency allowed him to get to people “who mattered” and
forced the state to do something about deplorable conditions in
the prison. By being anonymous, he was left in a defensive
position vis-à-vis the courts.
This was a position that
eventually led to failure at many levels.
His opposing
viewpoint at the time did not engender many supporters,
especially among his professional peers, and some in the
legislature even labeled him as a “pain in the ass.”
Notwithstanding the latter view of this warden, he was
being a correctional leader. He recognized that the old ways of
doing business (circa, 1985!) were not working for him as a
correctional leader.
He, in addition, defined correctional
leadership as the ability to use democratic institutions to his
benefit, not his detriment. The courts, for example, were not
WESTERN HISTORY (Norval Morris & David J. Rothman, eds., 1995).

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the enemy. They could be used to move a recalcitrant, and
sometimes, defiant legislature to act. A similar view was
recently expressed by Reginald Wilkinson, the former Director
of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, at a
prison oversight conference.10 Mr. Wilkinson was able to use
the courts positively to make effective changes in his
department’s operations. In effect, prison transparency, and in
this case, the use of the courts and other relevant parties, had
definite benefits for prison officials.
Additionally, prison transparency serves to constrain
prison officials. In this way, the transparency allows outside
people to see correctional operations and to comment on their
appropriateness.
Often times, appropriateness is defined
relative to some standard of conduct expected of prisons.
Organizations like Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of
Torture (“CPT”),11 the International Committee of the Red
Cross (“ICRC”),12 the United Nations proclamations against
torture,13 Amnesty International,14 and Human Rights Watch15
all have expressed standards regarding codes of conduct for
prisons.16 Again, a discussion on the aims of imprisonment
becomes important here.
10. Statement made at the Prison Oversight Conference, LBJ School of
Government (Apr. 2006).
11. See
Council
of
Europe,
About
the
CPT,
http://www.cpt.coe.int/en/about.htm (last visited Mar. 31, 2010).
12. See ICRC, Strengthening Protection and Respect for Prisoners and
Detainees,
http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/detention?opendocument&l
ink=home (last visited Mar. 31, 2010).
13. See, e.g., Press Release, General Assembly, Convention Against
Torture “Next Generation Treaty” that Places Value on Prevention Over
Cure, Third Committee Told, U.N. Doc. GA/SHC/3955 (Oct. 20, 2009),
available at http://www.un.org/News/Press/ docs/2009/gashc3955.doc.htm.
14. See Amnesty International, Detention and Imprisonment,
http://www.amnesty. org/en/detention (last visited Mar. 31, 2010).
15. See David Fathi, Custody vs. Treatment Debate: Addicted to
Punishment,
HUM.
RTS.
WATCH,
July
1,
2009,
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/01/custody-vs-treatment-debateaddicted-punishment.
16. See Michelle Deitch, Annotated Bibliography on Independent Prison
Oversight, 30 PACE L. REV. 1687 (2010). These standards serve as minima
criteria upon which prisoners are to be treated, yet unanimity on these
standards is much more problematical. Governments differ on what these
standards are and how imprisonment is viewed.

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For many countries, human rights standards are critical
and the deprivation of liberty is taken very seriously. In the
United States, the importance of the deprivation of liberty has
waned as a central value when assessing the aims of
imprisonment. This is ironic given the democratic traditions of
the United States. How did the deprivation of liberty issue
become relegated to an unimportant issue within the political
discussions of the United States regarding the aims of
imprisonment? This topic cannot be adequately addressed
here. Others, again, have examined this important question.17
Typically, prison oversight meant litigation as the mechanism
to force prisons to be accountable to the laws of the land, yet we
have seen a massive retrenchment in the laws to hold prison
officials accountable over the past ten years, largely due to the
passing of legislation that limited prisoner access and prison
oversight.
As noted by S.F. Hanlon, the most significant piece of
legislation that has limited prisoner access and prison
oversight in the United States has been the Prison Litigation
Reform Act (PLRA).18 Passed under dubious circumstances
and limited congressional debate, no other piece of legislation
has altered the landscape of prison oversight in this country as
much as the PLRA. Not only did the PLRA limit prisoners’
abilities to litigate the conditions of their confinement, it also
allowed prison administrators to evade their leadership
responsibilities. In my words, they could sustain a condition of
anonymity when transparency was what they needed to
adequately function. Instead of speaking out against PLRA
and other legislation that actually worked against their
17. See, e.g., The Role of Litigation in Correctional Oversight: Written
Testimony Before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons,
Feb. 8, 2006 (statement of Alvin Bronstein, U.S. Bd. Member of Penal Reform
Int’l
(London)),
available
at
http://www.prisoncommission.org/statements/bronstein_alvin_j.pdf
[hereinafter The Role of Litigation] (exploring the progression of civil rights
and civil liberties in the post-World War II era).
18. The Role of Litigation in Correctional Oversight: Written Testimony
Before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, Feb. 9,
2006 (statement of S.F. Hanlon, Partner, Holland & Knight), available at
http://www.prisoncommission.org/statements/hanlon_stephen_f.pdf
(discussing the impact of the PLRA on prison conditions). See also Prison
Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Pub. L. No. 104-134, § 801, 110 Stat. 1321,
1321-66 (1996) (codified as amended in scattered titles of the U.S.C.).

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correctional interests, prison leaders and managers were, for
the most part, silent on these changes.
The net effect has been that prisons have become less
transparent and prison leaders, in many cases, have become
less effective in what they do. The benefits of transparency and
prison oversight were lost during the 1990s, and when it comes
to democratic values, there were no longer brakes being applied
to correctional practices that harmed prisoners and citizens
alike.19 Transparency, like other democratic values such as
freedom and liberty, are not divisible. You cannot be halftransparent. You are either transparent or you are not
transparent. Legislation in the 1980s and 1990s in America
worked against not only prison oversight, but in addition, for
the purposes of this paper, actually worked against the ability
of correctional leaders to effectively lead.20 As a result, on
many levels, American society became less democratic and
correctional leaders and managers became less effective. No
effective prison oversight, with its requisite transparency, and
no effective correctional leadership.
Prison Oversight and Prison Effectiveness
What are the aims of imprisonment in America? The
answer to this question has been discussed and debated for
centuries. The lack of consensus and some degree of unanimity
has created both conceptual confusion and practical difficulties
for the public and prison officials.
For the correctional
administrator, the rule has always been: do what you have to
do to maintain the prison. This meant security, security, and
more security.
Lofty notions of rehabilitation, effective
intervention, and meaningful skill development among
prisoners were given short shrift by correctional professionals,
largely because they did not have a clue on how to achieve
these aims. Ironically, while the country was headed toward
19. See TODD R. CLEAR, IMPRISONING COMMUNITIES: HOW MASS
INCARCERATION MAKES DISADVANTAGED NEIGHBORHOODS WORSE (2007).
20. This legislation includes, for example, “Three Strikes and You’re Out
Laws” and mandatory minimum laws, as well as a host of federal and state
legislation designed to incarcerate drug offenders, beginning with the AntiDrug Abuse Act of 1986, tit. I, subtitle A, Narcotics Penalties and
Enforcement Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-570, 100 Stat. 3207.

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an “imprisonment binge” through the 1980s, 1990s and into the
21st century, social scientists were developing more knowledge
about what interventions were efficacious with what
prisoners.21
At the same time, politicians were touting societal
protection, deterrence, and retribution as the aims of
imprisonment. These latter aims led toward the largest lockup
of men and women in our country’s history, replete with a
myriad of unintended consequences, such as the
disproportionate incarceration of people of color, especially
African-American and Latino-American citizens. Coupled with
an ill-conceived “drug war,” the stage was set for the wholesale
incarceration of millions of people.22 The United States has
over 7.3 million people under correctional supervision, with
over 2.3 million people incarcerated.23
Moreover, the net effect of such a strategy was to make
prison oversight more difficult. As previously stated, under
such strained conditions, correctional administrators have
traditionally sought a position of anonymity. Quite ironically,
this view, again, actually made things worse.
Without
adequate oversight, correctional problems compounded. Issues
like correctional health care, prison crowding, prison violence,
and the management of prisons became almost impossible to
address. Correctional administrators, pursuing a position of
anonymity, actually retreated behind their walls. This is not
the first time in correctional history that this has occurred.
James B. Jacobs documented how perceived illegitimate
intrusion by the courts in the 1960s and 1970s forced
correctional professionals to retreat to the walls. Feeling
abandoned by society’s institutions, especially the courts,
21. See Conversation with Edward Latessa, at the American Society of
Criminology Meeting, in Ont., Can. (Nov. 22, 2005) (This conversation noted
the growing body of evidence showing the importance of assessing offenders
by their risk and need levels and matching them to appropriate
interventions.).
22. See JAMES AUSTIN & JOHN IRWIN, IT’S ABOUT TIME: AMERICA’S
IMPRISONMENT BINGE 5, 7, 59 (3d ed. 2001). This work, more than any other,
makes a convincing claim that America’s penchant for incarcerating large
numbers of people is misdirected, overly expensive, and counterproductive to
any reasonable penal aims.
23. HEATHER C. WEST & WILLIAM J. SABOL, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE,
BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, PRISONERS IN 2007, at 6-7 (2008), available at
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p07.pdf.

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prison officials hid behind the walls and favored anonymity
over transparency to address the perceived threat to their
autonomy.24
The modern day correctional leader has, for the most part,
done the same thing. He or she has pursued a strategy of
anonymity at a time when transparency would be more
beneficial. Why is it more beneficial to pursue transparency
over anonymity? The answer to this question lies in prison
effectiveness. If we only expect prisons to feed, cloth, and
watch-over prisoners for the length of their sentences, we
cannot even say that this is being achieved. I used to discuss
with correctional administrators through the various training
sessions I have given that if a prisoner came out of prison no
worse than when he walked in we were successful. Set aside
this minimal aim, can we with certainty say this is even being
achieved in many of our correctional institutions?
If we answer this question honestly, I think we would
conclude that prisons, on the dimension of effectiveness, have
failed prisoners and society. How is this tied to prison
oversight? The fact of the matter is that prison oversight can
have tremendous benefit in allowing us to gain resources and
bring to the table other actors who can assist in the
management of prisons. The nature of correctional problems,
whether they are conceptual or practical, requires generating
other perspectives for solutions. Steven Luke has argued that
many public problems require leadership that moves outside of
a simple organizational domain.25 This is true of prisons given
their stated aims. Prison effectiveness will never be possible if
we do not recognize this important fact.
Prison oversight mechanisms provide correctional leaders
and managers other ways to view their problems and aims. I
have stated in public hearings and before various legislative
committees that the current prison suffers from too much
tradition and very little innovation. Unless there is change in
how we understand correctional effectiveness and ways to
24. JAMES B. JACOBS, STATEVILLE: THE PENITENTIARY IN MASS SOCIETY
(1978). This work is a classic in the penology literature and a must read for
anyone interested in understanding the changing nature of incarceration in
American society and how prison systems evolve.
25. JEFFREY SCOTT LUKE, CATALYTIC LEADERSHIP: STRATEGIES FOR AN
INTERCONNECTED WORLD (1998).

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address it, prisons will continue to fail to achieve any aims,
except being simply places of incapacitation. Later in this
paper I will show how this aim is unacceptable from a societal
perspective. For now, the contemporary prison has to redefine
itself in a way that makes prison effectiveness possible. Prison
oversight mechanisms provide one opportunity for prisons to
become more effective.
Prison Oversight and Societal Expectations
The shifting sands of public expectations for prisons can be
a correctional administrators’ nightmare.
For many
correctional professionals trying to figure out what the “public”
wants or expects of prisons is as laborious as Sisyphus rolling
the proverbial rock up the hill. Nevertheless, I believe there
are some core beliefs and values held by many in the various
publics that should help correctional officials to see what
societal expectations are regarding imprisonment.
These
societal expectations are more varied and complicated than
what is espoused by elected officials. Many elected officials
overstate the imprisonment aims of retribution, deterrence,
incapacitation, and societal protection when discussing public
attitudes toward prisons.
The empirical reality is more
complicated than expressed by many politicians.26 Imagine
that!
The evidence shows that most publics support the
traditional aims of retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and
more recently societal protection, yet the mosaic of societal
expectations for prisons is more diverse and rich and moves
beyond these traditional aims. In fact, the evidence indicates
that most of the citizenry additionally expects prisons to do
something with prisoners. By this I mean promoting some type
of change among prisoners so they do not return to prison. I
stated earlier that if one were honest, it is not clear that
prisons do well in achieving the traditional aims of
imprisonment. How can we expect that they would fare any
better in achieving a treatment or rehabilitation agenda with
many prisoners, especially when the correctional history of
America has been replete with examples of not only failure in
26. See The Role of Litigation, supra note 17.

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this area but abject failure, and in some cases, under the rubric
of treatment, prisons have actually brutalized prisoners?27
So, while there may be some publics who want more
intervention and rehabilitation programming for prisoners, the
evidence has been scant that correctional professionals actually
can achieve such an aim. Additionally, setting aside the
epistemological question of the state of scientific knowledge on
changing, for the most part, intractable prisoners, how do you
in a practical sense make this happen? I am always amazed
when I look at some of our prisons and wonder how anything
gets accomplished in them at all. Take, for example, the
California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California. It is a
prison hospital for all intents and purposes, serving thousands
of prisoner patients. Would you go to a hospital with three to
five thousand other patients? What type of medical coverage
do you think you would receive?
This is not to denigrate the excellent staff at this
particular facility, but the fact of the matter is that we have
structured a prison system in this country to fail in achieving
many of its aims. Notwithstanding some good scientific
evidence that some treatment programs work well with some
prisoners, a process of matching offenders to appropriate
treatment interventions, the reality is that most correctional
institutions are not staffed nor equipped to meet the treatment
needs of prisoners.28 For most prisoners, prison serves as a
respite from the harsh reality of the streets. Many of them get
no worse and many get no better in prison. In prison, they get
nothing!
What is the role of prison oversight given these realities?
By again, illuminating these realities, prison officials can work
with prison oversight monitors to aid prisons on two levels.
First, they can begin the long and difficult discussion of what
we, as a society, can reasonably expect from prisons. In this
way, the prison oversight function provides debate within and

27. See DAVID J. ROTHMAN, CONSCIENCE AND CONVENIENCE: THE ASYLUM
AND ITS ALTERNATIVES IN PROGRESSIVE AMERICA 18-20, 122, 388 (1st ed. 1980);
DAVID J. ROTHMAN, THE DISCOVERY OF THE ASYLUM: SOCIAL ORDER AND
DISORDER IN THE NEW REPUBLIC 86-89, 239, 287 (1st ed. 1971).
28. See Francis T. Cullen & Paul Gendreau, From Nothing Works to
What Works: Changing Professional Ideology in the 21st Century, 81 PRISON
J. 313 (2001).

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among the various publics regarding what reasonable
expectations for prisons are. This will be a difficult discussion
since there are many interests that will seek to define this
debate to their advantage. For example, there could be private
prison vendors who seek to define societal protection as the
primary aim of imprisonment, with the net effect of more
people being incarcerated. In addition, political figures may
want to define this discussion so as to highlight rehabilitative
programming as part of a political agenda. I faced this in one
state when a former Secretary of the Department of
Corrections sought my opinion on a name change of the
department from the “Department of Corrections” to the
“Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.” I did not
support this proposed change. My reasoning was that to
believe that the Department of Corrections would be able to
address the rehabilitative needs of tens of thousands of
prisoners and parolees was an unrealistic expectation. I held
this view because the state was not able or willing to invest in
the department in a way that would make the aim of prisoner
rehabilitation possible. Moreover, for most prisoners, the issue
of personal change reaches well beyond the borders of prisons
and includes family, friends, employment availability,
educational opportunity, and a host of prisoner reentry issues.
In short, the department cannot own the rehabilitative aim
alone.
By accepting the name change, the department was
explicitly accepting the responsibility for the treatment and
rehabilitation of offenders. It could accept some of this
responsibility, but not all of it. Under current structural
arrangements within the prison system, the department was
being set up to fail, with its most ardent critics waiting to
pounce when the department failed to achieve this aim. Why
own something, in totality, when the outcome rests with
multiple societal institutions? Prison oversight, however, can
assist in the discussion about what prisons can reasonably
accomplish and what they cannot reasonably accomplish.
Additionally, the prison oversight function begins creating
awareness among those relevant actors in the various publics
that responsibility for achieving the aims of imprisonment
rests with many societal institutions. This awareness also
begins the discussion about how prison aims will be addressed

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and what entities are responsible for the multitude of outcomes
when assessing prison effectiveness.
Second, prison oversight serves the purpose of defining
societal expectations relative to legal and human rights
standards. Through prison oversight, we keep correctional
leaders and managers on their toes. Prison oversight serves to
hold correctional officials accountable for their actions not only
within the legal realm of society but within the moral realm as
well. This point was brought home in the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal and continues today regarding the operations of the
detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.29 Questions of
legality aside, the moral compass of the United States was
clearly out of kilter with the expectation of its own citizens and
other citizens of the world when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.
No reasonable person can accept the practices of the United
States military or the Central Intelligence Agency in this case.
It is only through oversight that such aberrant behaviors can
be put in check. In a democratic society, prison oversight
provides the checks needed to control unyielding power, and
without it we have fewer effective prisons and a less free
society.
Concluding Comments
My purpose in this essay was to highlight the connection
between prison oversight and prison effectiveness. I showed
this nexus by examining three important issues: prison
oversight and democratic values, prison oversight and prison
effectiveness, and prison oversight and societal expectations.
The correctional leader and manager of the 21st century does
not have the luxury of being anonymous. A greater emphasis
on democratic values, prison effectiveness, and societal
expectations regarding imprisonment aims has forced prison
officials to change how they lead and manage their prisons.
29. Even though the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay is run by the
United States Military, the importance of prison oversight is still relevant
and important. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548
U.S. 557, 631-35 (2006), that the U.S. military was in violation of
international law and U.S. law and thus could not deny specific rights to
detainees, most notably the right to be treated humanely in accord with
Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

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2010]

OVERSIGHT AND LEADERSHIP

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The glue that ties these issues together is prison oversight.
Prison oversight, in its varied forms, will be the norm for prison
leadership and management in the 21st century prison.
For correctional professionals, the only question remaining
is how they will adjust to this change. They can decide to fight
oversight, but this is a losing battle for the reasons that I have
explicated in this paper. Instead, it is better that prison
leaders and managers embrace the oversight function that best
serves their interests. I have tried to show that this involves
greater transparency on the part of prison officials and that in
the long run this will be in the best interest of improving prison
effectiveness and maintaining the democratic values that we
cherish as a society.
The challenges facing the prison
administrator will be daunting in the years ahead. With an
effective prison oversight mechanism in place, these challenges
will be better addressed to enhance the aims of imprisonment
and to hold prison leaders and managers accountable to the
democratic values of a free society.

http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol30/iss5/6

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