Prison staff work in highly complex settings, and with society’s most vulnerable and injured people. Unfortunately – and despite their central role in day-to-day prison life - prison officers are an occupational group whose skills and commitment have so often been underrated and unnoticed. In various ways, prison officers’ contribution to making ex-prisoners less likely to commit crimes is constantly undermined. This is a sad state of affairs, since the uniformed prison officer is often the only positive role-model a prisoner sees. Professionalization is directly related to the quality of staff morale, recruitment and retention of the ‘right’ staff. In this webinar we are going to focus on these priorities – the working lives of prison officers and their training characteristics and we will try to respond to the following questions:
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What is 'enough'?
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What should it look like?
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How can we best deliver it?
Date and Time
Tuesday, October 29.2024
8:00 PM-9:30 PM Bucharest, Romania
7:00 PM-8:30 PM Oslo, Norway
12:00 AM-13:30 PM Houston, Texas, USA
10:00 AM -11:30 AM, Sacramento, California, USA
Speakers
Dorin Muresan - Moderator, ICPA Staff Training and Development Network. Dorin Muresan is a former senior prison officer, who at the end of his police career was active as Prison Governor and acting Deputy Director General of the Romanian National Administration of Prisons. He holds a bachelor’s degree in the field of Law and Administration, as well as an M.A. in the field of Criminal Justice. His knowledge is based on a three-decade long career in the Romanian Prison Service. With 32 years of professional experience of which 30 years of experience in corrections in the last 18 years he was involved as a project, management, career and corrections expert/trainer, in various jurisdictions. He is a certified project manager and he coordinates projects of more than Euro 15 million. He also participates as an expert/consultant in 15 projects (rule of law, education, health, IT&C, technical assistance programme). He is a certified trainer of trainers with more than 45 courses organized and delivered (corrections, project, management, personal development). In the field of public management, he contributed to the development of 4 prison strategies.
Kim Ekhaugen has held the position as Head of International Cooperation in the Directorate of Norwegian Correctional Service since 2014. This includes managing the EEA/Norway Grants for prison and probation service projects with a total value of 150 million EUR in 6 European countries – Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic and Bulgaria. He is responsible for a bilateral programme with Russia, and a KDI project office in Ukraine. In addition to the abovementioned, Mr. Ekhaugen has the responsibility for the cooperation with USA through the joint programme with Amend, as well as overall international cooperation outside the given bilateral and multilateral agreements. Mr. Ekhaugen has more than 30 years of experience from the Norwegian Correctional Service. His career includes working on all levels, starting as a prison officer, advancing to various management positions, including being a prison governor in Oslo prison (at that time the largest prison in Norway). Mr. Ekhaugen likes to emphasize the principle of normality in the Norwegian Correctional Service, and is genuinely interested in making a difference to the better for people.
Adrian Neagoe is the Vice-president of the largest prison policemen trade union in Romania (www.snpp.ro), and in this capacity, he organizes the international relation and projects implemented by the trade union organization, being an experienced project manager with a demonstrated history of working in the prison service. The projects implemented targeted social dialogue process, health and safety within prison service, prison officers training, wellbeing and stress management. Since this year he was elected as member of the National European Administration Standing Committee within European Public Service Trade Union Federation (EPSU), the most representative European social partner in central governments. He started his career in the prison service as a sociologist almost 25 years ago and in the last 18 years was involved in accessing and managing projects at the central level of Romanian prison service holding different management position. Between 2006 and 2008 he oversaw training and mentoring more than 80 prison officers in accessing and implementing projects national wide, creating a national network. He was responsible of writing and coordinating the implementation of the first European Social Fund social inclusion project implemented in Romania, the results being recognized nationally and abroad. He coordinated the implementation of more than 10 projects carried out by the Romanian prison administration and was also in charge in 2012-2013 of coordinating the team of experts of the international project „Enhancing human rights-based reforms in Libyan detention system” financed by the European Commission. Currently Adrian is engaged in a PhD program within Quality-of-Life Research Institute, focusing on the factors that influence the prison officer’s activity.
Doug Dretke is the newly appointed Director of the Office of Comparative and International Education and Leadership within the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University (SHSU). He recently retired as the Executive Director of the Correctional Management Institute (CMIT) at Sam Houston State University where he served for the past 17 years. For the past 7 years CMIT with Doug developed and delivered international executive leadership training for senior and executive correctional leader from across the globe, working in collaboration and in partnership with the U.S. Department of State – INL. He received a B.S. in Criminology and Corrections from SHSU and a Masters of Public Administration (with a concentration in criminal justice) from Texas A&M, Corpus Christi. Prior to CMIT, Doug served 26 years with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) beginning as a correctional officer and advancing through the ranks throughout his career. He served in senior and executive leadership positions for over 13 years, appointed to Warden at two different facilities before his appointment as Regional Director, Deputy Director and finally Director of their Correctional Institutions Division (prison division) responsible for over 100 prison facilities across the state. He is a Past president of the Texas Corrections Association and received the Dr. George J Beto Hall of Honor Award in 2009 recognizing his significant achievements to the correctional profession. Doug was recently selected as the 2024 recipient of ACA’s E.R. Cass Correctional achievement Award – their highest honor.
Craig Haney is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Professor Haney received his Ph.D. and J.D. degrees from Stanford University, where he served as one of the principal researchers in the well-known “Stanford Prison Experiment.” Since then, he has conducted extensive, in-depth research on the psychological effects of living and working in prison environments, with the goal of using psychological data to advance the cause of human and legal rights. In the course of this work, Haney has toured and inspected countless prisons and solitary confinement units in the United States and throughout the world, and has interviewed hundreds of incarcerated persons about the psychological impact of their experiences. The author of numerous articles and several books, including Reforming Punishment (APA Books, 2006) and Criminality in Context, APA Books, 2020), Professor Haney has served as an expert witness in many landmark legal cases advancing the constitutional rights of prisoners, including the United States Supreme Court case, Brown v. Plata (2011). In 2012, he was appointed to a National Academy of Sciences Committee studying the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States and also testified at an historic hearing before the U.S. Senate examining the nature and effects of solitary confinement.In addition, Professor Haney’s work has an international focus as he has delivered invited lectures on prison and solitary confinement reform to the Irish Prison Service, the Norwegian Correctional Service, the World Health Organization (WHO), and testimony in hearings on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) held in Geneva, Switzerland. Over the last decade, Haney has also helped to direct an international correctional exchange program that brings U.S. correctional officials to Norway, to be trained in more humane correctional practices, including the radical reform of the use of solitary confinement.
Registration
This webinar is complimentary for ICPA members. Please register through the link provided below. You will receive a confirmation email upon registration. Shortly before the event, you will receive the Zoom link via email.