Empowering Correctional Officers: Training for Excellence in a Complex Environment

ICPA Staff Training and Development Network Webinar: 21st Century Prisons Officer Training: The Need for Staff Specialisation, Support and Training: Empowering Correctional Officers: Training for Excellence in a Complex Environment by Doug Dretke.

Authors

Doug Dretke

Director, Office of Comparative and International Education and Leadership, College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), United States

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

Professor of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, United States

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.

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