PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON: STRATEGIC PLAN

Pelican Bay State Prison: Strategic Plan

PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON: STRATEGIC PLAN Pelican Bay State Prison: Strategic Plan Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) is the correctional facility of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The mission statement of Pelican Bay State Prison is as follows: The overarching vision is to end the causes and tragic effects of crime, violence, and victimization in our communities through a collaborative effort that provides intervention to at-risk populations and quality services from the time of arrest that will assist our clients in achieving successful reintegration into society. (CDCR.ca.gov, 2012a). PBSP serves the following population and experiences the fluctuations of inmates and paroled inmates as presented on the figure 1 (CDCR.ca.gov, 2012b) below: Figure 1. Population Served in CDCR

PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON: STRATEGIC PLAN The current population of PBSP is 3,461 inmates. The correctional facility provides the following offices assuring rehabilitation programs to its population: Office of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (OSATS), the Office of Correctional Education (OCE), Office of Community Partnerships (OCP), and the Office of Rehabilitative Program Planning and Accountability (ORPPA) (CDCR.ca.gov, 2012c). OSATSs goals are simple: effective

treatment of substance abuse in order to reduce the number of inmates returning to the crimes after PBSP visit. OCE provides inmates with educational programs to assure their successful reintegration into the communities to be able to reduce recidivism and re-victimization. OCP is needed to strengthen partnerships between key stakeholders and help inmates to reintegrate into communities without issues. Finally, ORPPA specialists believe that Effective rehabilitation helps offenders succeed when they integrate back into their communities so that they do not return to a life of crime. (CDCR.ca.gov, 2012c). Within these programs, PBSP uses California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) program employment of 18 inmates in Laundry; Vocational Programs various crews for inmates to work at; Academic programs - Literacy Program, Adult Basic Education, General Education Diploma (GED), as well as College Courses; and Inmate Support Groups Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Choices for Common Ground, Incarcerated Veterans, and Reaching Out Convicts to Kids. PBSP has the following number of staff members: custody stuff 968; number of support services staff 553; and in total 1521 (CDCR.ca.gov, 2012e). PBSP as any other correctional facility aims to reduce the recidivism and revictimization among the released inmates. Therefore, it is necessary to outline the following organizational objectives for the next 5 years: Reduction of recidivism among former inmates of PBSP; Increase of the number of successfully reintegrated former inmates into

PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON: STRATEGIC PLAN communities; Increase of the employed former inmates; and Increase of the inmates with higher education. Thus, reduction of recidivism will require the following strategy to follow: correctional work with inmates, deep psychological analysis with specialists, and further mandatory supervision and support after the release from PBSP. Various psychological groups should be the tool to achieve this goal. The decrease of recidivists for some period will be a good method of assessing the success or failure of this objective. In order to increase the number of successfully reintegrated former inmates into the regular life of communities, it will be necessary to create support centers outside the facility, within communities that should be able to work with community members and mitigate the negative consequences of such integration. One employee from PBSP for each community would be enough to complete this work. Surveys that will question locals about their attitude to former inmates are a good method to control the success or failure of this objective. The employment of the former inmates should be assured by better professional education programs. Therefore, PBSP should implement new programs of professional education that would provide inmates with opportunity to master a new profession and become a decent member of a community. Simple reports regarding the employment of former inmates will be an excellent method to track the success of this initiative. Finally, it is important to provide more inmates with the opportunity to get higher

education within the walls of PBSP. Therefore, it is necessary to motivate inmates to educate. Special encouraging programs should be helpful. Inmate programs of such kind should provide inmates with benefits, terms reduction, etc. The quality of higher education and the number of such inmates should be tracked and monitored as the method to assess the success of this initiative.

PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON: STRATEGIC PLAN References CDCR.ca.gov (2012a). About CDCR. Retrieved from: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/About_CDCR/vision-mission-values.html CDCR.ca.gov (2012b). Population Reports. Retrieved from: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/P opulation_Reports.html CDCR.ca.gov (2012c). Adult Programs. Retrieved from: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Adult_Programs/index.html#reports_progress CDCR.ca.gov (2012d). Fidelity Unit. http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Fidelity/index.html CDCR.ca.gov (2012e). Prison Facilities. Retrieved from: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Facilities_Locator/PBSP-Inmate_Programs.html