0:00:00.792,0:00:04.785
We're seen as the organization that is[br]the bucket for failed social policy.

0:00:04.785,0:00:07.767
I can't define who comes to us or how long they stay.

0:00:07.767,0:00:10.343
We get the people for whom[br]nothing else has worked,

0:00:10.343,0:00:11.941
people who have fallen through all

0:00:11.941,0:00:13.594
of the other social safety nets.

0:00:13.594,0:00:15.927
They can't contain them, so we must.

0:00:15.927,0:00:17.520
That's our job:

0:00:17.520,0:00:19.927
contain them, control them.

0:00:19.927,0:00:22.594
Over the years, as a prison system,

0:00:22.594,0:00:24.415
as a nation, and as a society,

0:00:24.415,0:00:26.035
we've become very good at that,

0:00:26.035,0:00:28.060
but that shouldn't make you happy.

0:00:28.060,0:00:30.051
Today we incarcerate more people per capita

0:00:30.051,0:00:32.267
than any other country in the world.

0:00:32.267,0:00:34.011
We have more black men in prison today

0:00:34.011,0:00:36.621
than were under slavery in 1850.

0:00:36.621,0:00:38.421
We house the parents of almost three million

0:00:38.421,0:00:40.115
of our communities' children,

0:00:40.115,0:00:41.825
and we've become the new asylum,

0:00:41.825,0:00:44.862
the largest mental health provider in this nation.

0:00:44.862,0:00:46.493
When we lock someone up,

0:00:46.493,0:00:48.304
that is no small thing.

0:00:48.304,0:00:51.522
And yet, we are called the[br]Department of Corrections.

0:00:51.522,0:00:53.085
Today I want to talk about

0:00:53.085,0:00:54.795
changing the way we think about corrections.

0:00:54.795,0:00:56.664
I believe, and my experience tells me,

0:00:56.664,0:00:58.373
that when we change the way we think,

0:00:58.373,0:01:01.477
we create new possibilities, or futures,

0:01:01.477,0:01:04.413
and prisons need a different future.

0:01:04.413,0:01:07.305
I've spent my entire career[br]in corrections, over 30 years.

0:01:07.305,0:01:08.925
I followed my dad into this field.

0:01:08.925,0:01:12.052
He was a Vietnam veteran. Corrections suited him.

0:01:12.052,0:01:15.083
He was strong, steady, disciplined.

0:01:15.083,0:01:16.860
I was not so much any of those things,

0:01:16.860,0:01:19.279
and I'm sure that worried him about me.

0:01:19.279,0:01:21.622
Eventually I decided, if I was[br]going to end up in prison,

0:01:21.622,0:01:23.273
I'd better end up on the right side of the bars,

0:01:23.273,0:01:25.028
so I thought I'd check it out,

0:01:25.028,0:01:27.007
take a tour of the place my dad worked,

0:01:27.007,0:01:29.561
the McNeil Island Penitentiary.

0:01:29.561,0:01:30.811
Now this was the early '80s,

0:01:30.811,0:01:32.588
and prisons weren't quite what you see

0:01:32.588,0:01:34.680
on TV or in the movies.

0:01:34.680,0:01:37.065
In many ways, it was worse.

0:01:37.065,0:01:39.754
I walked into a cell house that was five tiers high.

0:01:39.754,0:01:41.329
There were eight men to a cell.

0:01:41.329,0:01:43.657
there were 550 men in that living unit.

0:01:43.657,0:01:45.480
And just in case you wondered,

0:01:45.480,0:01:48.686
they shared one toilet in those small confines.

0:01:48.686,0:01:50.429
An officer put a key in a lockbox,

0:01:50.429,0:01:52.421
and hundreds of men streamed out of their cells.

0:01:52.421,0:01:54.400
Hundreds of men streamed out of their cells.

0:01:54.400,0:01:56.763
I walked away as fast as I could.

0:01:56.763,0:01:59.361
Eventually I went back and[br]started as an officer there.

0:01:59.361,0:02:01.158
My job was to run one of those cell blocks

0:02:01.158,0:02:04.319
and to control those hundreds of men.

0:02:04.319,0:02:06.164
When I went to work at our receptions center,

0:02:06.164,0:02:09.077
I could actually hear the[br]inmates from the parking lot,

0:02:09.077,0:02:11.384
shaking cell doors, yelling,

0:02:11.384,0:02:13.318
tearing up their cells.

0:02:13.318,0:02:15.422
Taking hundreds of volatile people and lock them up,

0:02:15.422,0:02:17.346
and what you get is chaos.

0:02:17.346,0:02:20.349
Contain and control: that was our job.

0:02:20.349,0:02:22.069
One way we learned to do this more effectively

0:02:22.069,0:02:23.730
was a new type of housing unit

0:02:23.730,0:02:26.193
called the Intensive Management Unit, IMU,

0:02:26.193,0:02:28.206
a modern version of the "hole."

0:02:28.206,0:02:30.538
We put inmates in cells behind solid steel doors

0:02:30.538,0:02:32.819
with cup ports so we could restrain them

0:02:32.819,0:02:34.630
and feed them.

0:02:34.630,0:02:36.497
Guess what?

0:02:36.497,0:02:38.241
It got quieter.

0:02:38.241,0:02:40.738
Disturbances died down in general population.

0:02:40.738,0:02:42.189
Places became safer

0:02:42.189,0:02:44.439
because those inmates who[br]were most violent or disruptive

0:02:44.439,0:02:46.104
could now be isolated.

0:02:46.104,0:02:47.825
But isolation isn't good.

0:02:47.825,0:02:50.424
Deprive people of social[br]contact and they deteriorate.

0:02:50.424,0:02:52.359
It was hard getting them out of IMU,

0:02:52.359,0:02:54.912
for them and for us.

0:02:54.912,0:02:56.881
Even in prison, it's no small thing

0:02:56.881,0:02:59.367
to lock someone up.

0:02:59.367,0:03:01.921
My next assignment was to one[br]of the state's deep end prisons

0:03:01.921,0:03:05.226
where some of our more violent[br]or disruptive inmates are housed.

0:03:05.226,0:03:06.880
By then, the industry had advanced a lot,

0:03:06.880,0:03:08.758
and we had different tools and techniques

0:03:08.758,0:03:10.895
to manage disruptive behavior.

0:03:10.895,0:03:13.280
We had beanbag guns and pepper spray

0:03:13.280,0:03:15.001
and plexiglass shields,

0:03:15.001,0:03:17.465
flash bangs, emergency response teams.

0:03:17.465,0:03:19.209
We met violence with force

0:03:19.209,0:03:21.042
and chaos with chaos.

0:03:21.042,0:03:23.607
We were pretty good at putting out fires.

0:03:23.607,0:03:26.498
While I was there, I met two[br]experienced correctional workers

0:03:26.498,0:03:28.264
who were also researchers,

0:03:28.264,0:03:30.795
and anthropologist and a sociologist.

0:03:30.795,0:03:32.955
One day, one of them commented to me and said,

0:03:32.955,0:03:35.183
"You know, you're pretty good at putting out fires.

0:03:35.183,0:03:38.647
Have you ever thought about how to prevent them?"

0:03:38.647,0:03:40.764
I was patient with them,

0:03:40.764,0:03:42.393
explaining our brute force approach

0:03:42.393,0:03:44.081
to making prisons safer.

0:03:44.081,0:03:45.734
They were patient with me.

0:03:45.734,0:03:47.501
Out of those conversations grew some new ideas

0:03:47.501,0:03:49.627
and we started some small experiments.

0:03:49.627,0:03:51.798
First, we started training our officers in teams

0:03:51.798,0:03:55.094
rather than sending them one or two[br]at a time to state training academy.

0:03:55.094,0:03:57.670
Instead of four weeks of training, we gave them 10.

0:03:57.670,0:03:59.627
Then we experimented with an apprenticeship model

0:03:59.627,0:04:03.430
where we paired new staff with veteran staff.

0:04:03.430,0:04:05.713
They both got better at the work.

0:04:05.713,0:04:08.323
Second, we added verbal deescalation skills

0:04:08.323,0:04:10.213
into the training continuum

0:04:10.213,0:04:13.025
and made it part of the use of force continuum.

0:04:13.025,0:04:15.624
It was the non-force use of force.

0:04:15.624,0:04:17.266
And then we did something even more radical.

0:04:17.266,0:04:19.606
We trained inmates on those same skills.

0:04:19.606,0:04:21.642
We changed the skill set,

0:04:21.642,0:04:24.893
reducing violence, not just responding to it.

0:04:24.893,0:04:26.277
Third, when we expanded our facility,

0:04:26.277,0:04:28.504
we tried a new type of design.

0:04:28.504,0:04:30.642
Now the biggest and most controversial component

0:04:30.642,0:04:34.719
of this design, of course, was the toilet.

0:04:34.719,0:04:36.398
There were no toilets.

0:04:36.398,0:04:38.749
Now that might not sound[br]significant to you here today,

0:04:38.749,0:04:40.504
but at the time, it was huge.

0:04:40.504,0:04:42.247
No one had heard of a cell without a toilet.

0:04:42.247,0:04:44.745
We all thought it was dangerous and crazy.

0:04:44.745,0:04:47.602
Even eight men to a cell had a toilet.

0:04:47.602,0:04:50.459
That small detail changed the way we worked.

0:04:50.459,0:04:52.189
Inmates and staff started interacting

0:04:52.189,0:04:55.463
more often and openly and developing rapport.

0:04:55.463,0:04:57.296
It was easier to detect conflict and intervene

0:04:57.296,0:04:59.085
before it escalated.

0:04:59.085,0:05:02.336
The unit was cleaner, quieter,[br]safer, and more humane.

0:05:02.336,0:05:04.451
This was more effective at keeping the peace

0:05:04.451,0:05:06.048
than any intimidation technique I'd seen

0:05:06.048,0:05:07.949
to that point.

0:05:07.949,0:05:09.648
Interacting changes the way you behave,

0:05:09.648,0:05:11.774
both for the officer and the inmate.

0:05:11.774,0:05:14.924
We changed the environment[br]and we changed the behavior.

0:05:14.924,0:05:16.477
Now, just in case I hadn't learned this lesson,

0:05:16.477,0:05:18.547
they assigned me to headquarters next,

0:05:18.547,0:05:21.473
and that's where I ran straight[br]up against system change.

0:05:21.473,0:05:23.632
Now, many things work against system change:

0:05:23.632,0:05:26.421
politics and politicians, bills and laws,

0:05:26.421,0:05:28.919
courts and lawsuits, internal politics.

0:05:28.919,0:05:30.989
System change is difficult and slow,

0:05:30.989,0:05:32.811
and oftentimes it doesn't take you

0:05:32.811,0:05:34.544
where you want to go.

0:05:34.544,0:05:38.236
It's no small thing to change a prison system.

0:05:38.236,0:05:40.910
So what I did do is I reflected[br]on my earlier experiences

0:05:40.910,0:05:44.164
and I remembered that when we interacted[br]with offenders, the heat went down.

0:05:44.164,0:05:46.155
When we changed the environment,[br]the behavior changed.

0:05:46.155,0:05:47.944
And these were not huge system changes.

0:05:47.944,0:05:49.699
These were small changes, and these changes

0:05:49.699,0:05:52.005
created new possibilities.

0:05:52.005,0:05:54.997
So next, I got reassigned as[br]superintendent of a small prison.

0:05:54.997,0:05:56.876
And at the same time, I was working on my degree

0:05:56.876,0:05:58.957
at the Evergreen State College.

0:05:58.957,0:06:01.099
I interacted with a lot of[br]people who were not like me,

0:06:01.099,0:06:02.640
people who had different ideas

0:06:02.640,0:06:04.496
and came from different backgrounds.

0:06:04.496,0:06:06.622
One of them was a rainforest ecologist.

0:06:06.622,0:06:08.392
she looked at my small prison and what she saw

0:06:08.392,0:06:10.278
was a laboratory.

0:06:10.278,0:06:13.203
We talked and discovered how prisons and inmates

0:06:13.203,0:06:15.115
could actually help advance science

0:06:15.115,0:06:16.744
by helping them complete projects

0:06:16.744,0:06:18.555
they couldn't complete on their own,

0:06:18.555,0:06:20.873
like repopulating endangered species:

0:06:20.873,0:06:24.046
frogs, butterflies, endangered prairie plants.

0:06:24.046,0:06:25.687
At the same time, we found ways to make

0:06:25.687,0:06:27.320
our operation more efficient

0:06:27.320,0:06:29.153
through the addition of solar power,

0:06:29.153,0:06:32.933
rainwater catchment, organic gardening, recycling.

0:06:32.933,0:06:35.182
This initiative has led to many projects

0:06:35.182,0:06:37.095
that have had huge system-wide impact,

0:06:37.095,0:06:38.614
not just in our system,

0:06:38.614,0:06:40.447
but in other state systems as well,

0:06:40.447,0:06:42.573
small experiments making a big difference

0:06:42.573,0:06:45.475
to science, to the community.

0:06:45.475,0:06:49.172
The way we think about our work changes our work.

0:06:49.172,0:06:51.823
The project just made my job[br]more interesting and exciting.

0:06:51.823,0:06:53.780
I was excited. Staff were excited.

0:06:53.780,0:06:56.019
Officers were excited. Inmates were excited.

0:06:56.019,0:06:57.773
They were inspired.

0:06:57.773,0:06:59.529
Everybody wanted to be part of this.

0:06:59.529,0:07:01.418
They were making a contribution, a difference,

0:07:01.418,0:07:03.657
one they thought was meaningful and important.

0:07:03.657,0:07:05.513
Let me be clear on what's going on here, though:

0:07:05.513,0:07:07.526
inmates are highly adaptive.

0:07:07.526,0:07:09.158
They have to be.

0:07:09.158,0:07:11.689
Oftentimes, they know more about our own systems

0:07:11.689,0:07:14.096
than the people who run them.

0:07:14.096,0:07:15.851
And they're here for a reason.

0:07:15.851,0:07:18.607
I don't see my job as to punish them or forgive them,

0:07:18.607,0:07:20.058
but I do think they can have

0:07:20.058,0:07:22.893
decent and meaningful lives even in prison.

0:07:22.893,0:07:24.490
So that was the question:

0:07:24.490,0:07:27.055
could inmates live decent and meaningful lives,

0:07:27.055,0:07:30.520
and if so, what difference would that make?

0:07:30.520,0:07:33.107
So I took that question back to the deep end,

0:07:33.107,0:07:36.212
where some of our most[br]violent offenders are housed.

0:07:36.212,0:07:37.843
Remember, IMUs are for punishment.

0:07:37.843,0:07:40.127
You don't get perks there, like programming.

0:07:40.127,0:07:41.927
That was how we thought.

0:07:41.927,0:07:44.075
But then we started to realize that if any inmates

0:07:44.075,0:07:46.237
needed programming, it[br]was these particular inmates.

0:07:46.237,0:07:48.643
In fact, they needed intensive programming.

0:07:48.643,0:07:50.881
So we changed our thinking 180 degrees,

0:07:50.881,0:07:53.334
and we started looking for new possibilities.

0:07:53.334,0:07:55.842
What we found was a new kind of chair.

0:07:55.842,0:07:57.608
Instead of using the chair for punishment,

0:07:57.608,0:07:59.498
we put it in classrooms.

0:07:59.498,0:08:02.063
Okay, we didn't forget our responsibility to control,

0:08:02.063,0:08:04.639
but now inmates could interact safely face to face

0:08:04.639,0:08:06.405
with other inmates and staff,

0:08:06.405,0:08:08.004
and because control was no longer an issue,

0:08:08.004,0:08:10.050
everybody could focus on other things,

0:08:10.050,0:08:12.761
like learning. Behavior changed.

0:08:12.761,0:08:14.382
We changed our thinking

0:08:14.382,0:08:15.967
and we changed what was possible,

0:08:15.967,0:08:17.802
and this gives me hope.

0:08:17.802,0:08:20.613
Now, I can't tell you that any of this stuff will work.

0:08:20.613,0:08:23.155
What I can tell you though, it is working.

0:08:23.155,0:08:26.624
Our prisons are getting safer[br]for both staff and inmates,

0:08:26.624,0:08:28.368
and when our prisons are safe,

0:08:28.368,0:08:31.383
we can put our energies into[br]a lot more than just controlling.

0:08:31.383,0:08:33.295
Reducing recidivism may be our ultimate goal,

0:08:33.295,0:08:35.230
but it's not our only goal.

0:08:35.230,0:08:36.726
To be honest with you, preventing crime

0:08:36.726,0:08:38.695
takes so much more from so many more people

0:08:38.695,0:08:40.428
and institutions.

0:08:40.428,0:08:43.476
If we rely on just prisons to reduce crime,

0:08:43.476,0:08:45.804
I'm afraid we'll never get there.

0:08:45.804,0:08:47.289
But prisons can do some things

0:08:47.289,0:08:49.325
we never thought they could do.

0:08:49.325,0:08:51.013
Prisons can be the source of innovation

0:08:51.013,0:08:52.531
and sustainability,

0:08:52.531,0:08:56.086
repopulating endangered species[br]and environmental restoration.

0:08:56.086,0:08:58.415
Inmates can be scientists and beekeepers,

0:08:58.415,0:09:00.485
dog rescuers.

0:09:00.485,0:09:02.678
Prisons can be the source of meaningful work

0:09:02.678,0:09:04.635
and opportunity for staff

0:09:04.635,0:09:07.256
and the inmates who live there.

0:09:07.256,0:09:09.190
We can contain and control

0:09:09.190,0:09:11.563
and provide humane environments.

0:09:11.563,0:09:14.364
These are not opposing qualities.

0:09:14.364,0:09:16.165
We can't wait 10 to 20 years to find out

0:09:16.165,0:09:17.942
if this is worth doing.

0:09:17.942,0:09:20.596
Our strategy is not massive system change.

0:09:20.596,0:09:22.430
Our strategy is hundreds of small changes

0:09:22.430,0:09:26.165
that take place in days or months, not years.

0:09:26.165,0:09:29.562
We need more small pilots where we learn as we go,

0:09:29.562,0:09:32.633
pilots that change the range of possibility.

0:09:32.633,0:09:34.422
We need new and better ways to measure impacts

0:09:34.422,0:09:36.303
on engagement, on interaction,

0:09:36.303,0:09:38.429
on safe environments.

0:09:38.429,0:09:40.499
We need more opportunities to participate in

0:09:40.499,0:09:43.131
and contribute to our communities,

0:09:43.131,0:09:45.055
your communities.

0:09:45.055,0:09:48.374
Prisons need to be secure, yes, safe, yes.

0:09:48.374,0:09:49.837
We can do that.

0:09:49.837,0:09:51.478
Prisons need to provide human environments

0:09:51.478,0:09:53.335
where people can participate, contribute,

0:09:53.335,0:09:55.101
and learn meaningful lives.

0:09:55.101,0:09:57.047
We're learning how to do that.

0:09:57.047,0:09:58.520
That's why I'm hopeful.

0:09:58.520,0:10:00.691
We don't have to stay stuck[br]in old ideas about prison.

0:10:00.691,0:10:03.425
We can define that. We can create that.

0:10:03.425,0:10:05.675
And when we do that thoughtfully and with humanity,

0:10:05.675,0:10:07.362
prisons can be more than a bucket

0:10:07.362,0:10:09.331
for failed social policy.

0:10:09.331,0:10:12.301
Maybe finally, we will earn our title:

0:10:12.301,0:10:14.236
a department of corrections.

0:10:14.236,0:10:16.396
Thank you.

0:10:16.396,0:10:18.927
(Applause)