Good morning or good afternoon to everybody. We'll be starting in just about 2 min.



Hi everybody, about the minute and a half before you get started, if you want to work on testing your chat feature by, by chatting what your position is, what institution you're at, and what the weather is like, that would be great. Appreciate it.



Like it's about that time everybody. So we'll go ahead and get started and hopefully more folks will continue to join as we progress. Alright, hello everybody. My name is Christopher Smith, and I and I'm a National Programs advisor with the National Institute of Corrections or the NIC. On behalf of the NIC, I would like to welcome you to our emergency management and practice.



Exercises and readiness across correctional workforce webinar. This is the 1st episode in our everyday correctional emergency Management webinar series this year. Hopefully it will go well and we will have the series next year as well. The everyday correctional emergency management webinar series is a virtual training program designed to enhance correctional agency's provi.



Preparedness and operational resilience. Each session features expert led discussions that translate strategic emergency management concepts or translates strategic emergency management concepts into practical everyday application across correctional and correctional operations and leadership.



This episode is hosted by the business Division of the National Institute of Corrections or NIC, and on behalf of the prison's division of prison's division and the NIC, I would like to welcome you to our presentation. Alright, so today correctional leaders and staff need to be prepared to respond to any number of emergencies, whether it be a fight on the record yard.



Or a staff member having a heart attack in HR, or a hurricane bearing down on your institution. The best way to be ready for emergencies is to properly prepare for emergencies. Today we will be looking at how a vibrant exercise program will aid not only our correctional staff, but also hopefully encourage us to build relationships.



With our partner emergency management agencies. So when an emergency does strike that in an emergency that requires us to reach out from mutual aid, that the relationships will already be there and established. Okay, I can already hear some of you thinking.



We already do exercises, and maybe even you're thinking we did a hostage scenario five years ago in an exercise, and we even invited the local sheriff's department to it. To those thoughts, I would say awesome.



Or great job. I have NO doubt that as correctional professionals you all help lead or participate in your institution's emergency exercises. What I'm suggesting here is that 1st, we can improve or do better in most areas in our lives.



Preparing and conducting emergency exercises is NO different. And second, I would say what I'm suggesting here is that if your emergency exercises that you're currently doing at your institution are like a high school or college level weightlifter, that is great and that is that is great that you're doing it.



And you guys have a plan, but what we will learn today and and what you can learn in the future by taking advantage of some of the information we're giving you is that you'll learn how to take yourself from the high school or college level weightlifter to be, to be a participant in the world's strongest man competition.



So what we hope to do is help you build upon the information and the plans that you already have to help to encourage it to expand. So, alright, before we begin today's session, I'd like to cover a few important housekeeping topics. This webinar is scheduled to last approximately an hour and the session will be recorded once the.



Recording has made five away compliant, it'll be put on our website. This is a listen only event, meaning participant microphones are muted. However, we strongly encourage engagement through the Webex chat function. Please use the chat function and the Q and A function to share your thoughts, ask questions or request technical support. Our speaker will address as many questions as possible through.



About each portion of the episode. To practice the chat function if everyone could please answer the following question in their chat. As we move into summer, what is one act for one activity that you're looking forward to doing? One that you haven't been able to do in the fall or winter. So if you can, go ahead and type that into your chat real quick so that we know that, that you know that your chat function is working.



Alright, I see a camping going back to the beach, voting, couple of golfs, by myself at some point we'll be going to see some family this summer I'm really looking forward to that. On a personal note I'm also not I'm looking forward to not having to worry about all those.



That's where it's particularly cold are the pipes gonna freeze and have to address that. So that's just me personally. Alright, those are some great answers everybody. Now that we've had our moment of fun, as you continue to answer, I'm gonna go ahead and move forward. Let's, let's get back to the subject at hand, which of course is preparing for exercises.



Please allow me a moment to reflect on operational security. As this is a public webinar that will be recorded and put on our public website, please be mindful of what you post in chat. Please do not use specific names, dates, locations or specific facility tactics or other sensitive or law enforcement only information.



We are here to learn more about emergency preparedness and response and how we can apply employ it in our facilities. So let's not put out sensitive information about our or other facilities. Thank you very much for your consideration this area. Now, if you experience any audio difficulties, we recommend you connect.



The webinar via the via the webinar audio via the telephone using the number provided in your registration confirmation email. Throughout this series, we want to hear from you. You can always email me Chris Smith. I'm the webinar series program manager. Any questions, comments, concerns or ideas?



For future events, either with this series or or others. So please email me at CM Smith@VOP.gov. We'll put that in the chat from time to time as well. So I and my team from NIC will also be adding some other great information into the chat.



During the presentation, so be on the lookout for that information. If you have any questions, please type them into the chat and we will answer them as we go. Next slide please. So speaking of putting information in the chat, one of the people that will be doing so is miss Mary Koffman. Mary Koffman is from our information center and today she's going to be giving us a little information about the information center NIC has in Aurora Colorado. Mary?



Hello, and thank you for having me Chris. It's exciting to tell you there are four librarians on staff that will help you with your corrections related questions and interests that you might have.



The best way to get a hold of us is to email us at support@NICIC.gov. I'll put that in the chat. We're here Monday through Friday from eight in the morning to 04:00 P.M. and that's mountain time. We welcome any questions you may have about our website or about the Learn Center because you can go on our website at NICIC.



Dot gov and take free trainings. On our website, you can also get on free webinars like this one and we will be posting this webinar in about six weeks. We also have free books and audio books, so if you want to find out more about that, just come to our website and we can help you sign up to read things for free. Thanks Chris.



Thanks Mary. I hope you guys take advantage of this. I can speak from somebody who has an employee of NIC still works with the information center. They are super helpful, super friendly, and they are there to provide the information that you have.



So, there you go. All right. So now, next slide. It is my pleasure to introduce mr. Alex Tran. Mr. Tran is a seasoned emergency management professional with extensive experience.



Across the preparedness cycle and multi agency operations. He is a certified public management professional through the project management Institute and a master exercise practitioner through FEMA. Alex has led statewide preparedness programs advanced training initiatives, and coordinated complex emergency operations.



And from a personal note, I've also taken one of his HCP training programs, which was fantastic. So on a personal note, I've seen him elsewhere as as a correctional professional. So Alex is a 22, as a 2022 graduate from Christopher Newport University. He completed a bachelor of arts and political science and criminology.



And in addition to his undergraduate education, he interned with the school's office of emergency management in Canada Virginia. Throughout his four years at CNU, he was he was involved Greek life campus tour guide, and class president. In his professional career, he has also completed the FEMA national emergency Management Basic Academy.



He has a 2024 graduate UVA Sorenson Institute of emerging leaders. Known for his ability to engage stakeholders and manage diverse teams under demanding condition. Alex combines hands on operational experience with advanced training and leadership product project management and public administration. Now before I hand it over to Alex, I just want everybody to know remind everybody if you get questions.



Please add them as we go. And from time to time, even though Alex will be presenting, you'll you'll hear or see me because I'll be helping to contextualize everything in corrections, so on that note, Alex, please take it away, sir.



Alright, good afternoon all Chris, thanks for that introduction. It's always funny listening to your bio being read out loud in a while. Chris like Chris mentioned, my name is Alex Tran. I'm with the Virginia Department of emergency Management.



One thing I always like to know especially when I'm talking to different functional groups is that I'm not a directional professional. I do not do what you all do day in and out. I recognize and appreciate the hard work they all do, and my goal is to kind of balance the holistic emergency management approach and assure that you all are able to trans.



Related into your respective applicable field and incorporated into your day to day operations.



Chris kind of already highlighted my background. I started in emergency management when I was a student at Christmas Newport University which is located in Hampton Roads Virginia. Luckily when I was a student, I was right during COVID, so I was tasked with various projects as well as response to supporting public health campus vaccination.



In contact tration and a special event and planning. That's really where I got started. I was also part of our on campus emergency response organization and supported a local jurisdiction virtually in Central Virginia. Currently at Virginia Department of emergency management, I serve as our radiological training exercise coordinator where I manage our preparedness program for our two commercial nuclear power plants. Prior to my time within our radiological.



Emergency preparedness branch. I served as a regional exercise project coordinator where I led every exercises throughout the entire Commonwealth averaging about 60 exercises a year as the project manager for that. In addition to my preparedness responsibilities, I've also deployed to a variety of different disasters.



As well as planned events to include Hurricane Helene, the 60th presidential inauguration and recently returned from a deployment to Alaska for Thai Food Halong, which was through our emergency management assistance compact where states can deploy each other resources to other states to support them.



Chris already talked about my two certifications, the master exercise practitioner credential through female is the top exercise credential recognized throughout the country. And then the project management professional is a standard business certification that highlights the ability to conduct project management and an off.



Efficient manner. So the biggest thing when it comes to preparedness, is that the federal government has put a lot of money into making sure that we take a coordinated approach. Like Chris mentioned before, you all probably do individual preparedness like activities.



At your respective facilities, but the one thing we realize is that a lot of these are often siloed where maybe you are doing something as a standalone facility, but you don't involve your offsite partners, whether it's the sheriff's office, the police department, the fire, the rescue, the EMS agencies. And we understand that preparedness.



This is a team sport. As respective entities and organizations and functional areas, you all have your own staff. You have your own equipment, you have your own training, you have your own plans. That is great for your day to day standard operations, but also for your critical incidents that you all could in theory handle on site.



In house without any additional problems. The standard stuff that we do day in and out is great. We train to it, that's the basic, we know it. What we don't spend enough time is on those types of incidents or situations that exceeds your internal capacity to handle it. Whether you've exceeded all on site capabilities, you don't have that rest.



Perspective capability, when it comes to bringing on additional stakeholders to play in your sandbox, that's what it really means to be prepared where you're able to one handle it for yourselves, but also when you need to start bringing in other players into your sandbox. So the 1st thing that came to mind that the federal government specifically Fema put together.



Is the national preparedness goal, and that's a really long document that basically says this is what we need to do as a nation to ensure that we are prepared for whatever may come. And the best way to think about that respective document is what do we wish to achieve? And that's everything from, we want to make sure that we're interoperable and we're able to talk with each other. That's everything also includes where.



Able to set up a unified coordination structure, but that was built also with direction from presidential policy directive eight, which really sets up what does what do we want to do as a nation? A lot of this happened right after.



09:11 where we realized as a nation, we are truly not prepared for that one big incident that is a career defining moment. They thought they got it all together, but then in 2005 happened in hurricane Katrina hit. And we truly saw how ill prepared we were as a nation, as a country, as a locality, as the state.



With that they realized that we needed to split up preparedness into four separate functions. The system is how are we gonna get there and that's what I'm gonna talk about, but also the national planning system, we'll touch on that a little bit about what products are we putting out? The stakeholder assessment or thyro, which is the threats hazard identification and risk assessment, how well are we doing? And then finally, the whole community is who do we engage?



We realized that if we don't have all four of those components to preparedness, then, it doesn't work out well. And if we want to translate it back to an individual facility, when you think about the system is what program management is going on at your facility to strategically outline or.



What trainings, what exercises, what briefings, what grant cycles, what performance periods, if we don't have a strategic way to coordinate all those individual items, then nothing's gonna get done or it's not coordinated and it's just gonna be in its individual silo and it doesn't connect anything. So making sure that you have a.



System in place, whether it's a simple spreadsheet that coordinates when is the training gonna happen, when is that exercise gonna happen? When is a facility audit gonna happen or anything like that? If you don't have a coordinated way to do that, you are losing one of those key elements to making sure you are prepared. Other thing is also making sure is what plans are in place, how often are those.



Plans updated, are agreements in place? Who's writing them? Are them, are they applicable, do they make sense to the booths on the ground staff that are in charge of implementing it? So when we're looking at plans, it's everything from your facility action plans, your emergency operation plan, incident action plans, job specific training.



Guys or whatever. But we also want to make sure that we are preparing for things that make sense to us. So if I'm a facility in Colorado, I probably should not be concerned about a hurricane, but if I'm on the east coast, where I'm prone to hurricanes, I should probably do that. So that's also looking at if we do the same type of scenario, we're probably good at that. We don't need to do the same hostage scenario always. There's other stuff for us to be working about and making sure that just because it maybe a cool, interesting threat or hazard to practice or train to.



We also want to make sure we're focusing on different parts. If you look at someone who's working out, they don't want to just exercise one specific muscle on their body. They also want to make sure that they're exercising the whole muscular system.



Then finally, they want, we want to make sure that we're engaging everyone. I always consider a correctional facilities, a city within a city. You all have your own staff, you all have your own communities, you have your residents, you have your medical facilities, you have your IT infrastructure, so you all are a city within a city.



But knowing that you have different players in that sandbox from your locality, your jurisdictions, your municipalities, we need to make sure that everyone's included because everyone has a piece and a fight, and if you don't know what they're bringing to that worst day.



Then you're already behind. So when we think about preparedness, we really need to make sure we look at it from those four very high level strategic perspectives. So again, we built this out to where the national preparedness system recognizes that you don't always need a.



Exercise. We want it to be aware it's a progressive approach to where you truly are enhancing your capabilities at your level to meet the mission that you all are assigned to deal with. A lot of times we see people just wanna do the fun flashy stuff just cause it's fun and flashy and it looks great.



But sometimes it requires taking a step back to really see, is this something that I really need to prepare for? Does it make sense for me to be doing the same threat or hazard every year just because it's easy or do I need to go do something that keeps me up at night or what are my priorities for this year?



Year to knock out because we realize that everyone's busy and if you don't coordinate your preparedness efforts, then you're not gonna be prepared. You're just gonna be running around trying to keep up with everything when you don't take that time to strategically outline when are we doing the training? When are we gonna do the exercise, when are we gonna.



View what we've done well to then influence how we train, how we exercise and what policies, procedures we need to update. So taking that step back using this preparedness methodology allows you to be more deliberate with how you deliver your preparedness activities. The best way, and this is just one way to do it, obviously it'll be different, but.



Fema has laid out 32 core capabilities, and each of these capabilities relate back to something that you all do every day. Some of you all may just be correctional professionals. Some of you maybe also the radio person for your facility. Some of you maybe the medical staff.



What Fema's done for these 32 core capabilities is split them up into five different mission areas that span every different type of threat and hazard, whether it's a hurricane, a cyber attack, flooding, tornado, terrorism. It's best to kinda group it.



Into these five different areas because it kind of allows you to kind of see where you're at within that lifespan of that threat or hazard. The five different areas are prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery. Just with this maybe the 1st time you're being introduced to these mission areas in the chat, go ahead and put which mission area do you think that everyone feels.



Is the most comfortable in operating under, I see prevention, I see response, I see response, I see mitigation. Interesting.



And Alex while they're inputting their thoughts, let me just add in here that this this hopefully this training will provide the opportunity.



For folks to maybe take a step back and consider things that they haven't considered before. Have, have meetings with, if your leadership, have meetings with your staff, invite the agencies that surround you, your fire department, your police department, your local office of emergency management, and they can help you build as much as you build relationships with them. They'll think about things that we haven't thought about. So.



Awesome, thanks Chris. Thanks Alex. Alright, I really like the diverse amount of answers and the best way to kind of think about these different mission areas, if you are former military veterans, thank you for your service, but oftentimes you either heard of left of boom or right of boom. And if we want to think about boom being the big, bad and ugly, whether it's a tornado hits your facility.



Assault on a staff member or something like that. If we want to think about it that way, where our left of boom activities are that prevention, protection and mitigation. And that's kind of where y'all may operate in especially at a correctional facilities where day to day it's a standard you have your respective customers within the facility, you're doing your regular checks and stuff like that, but you're also doing different preventative actions, whether it's checking out your facilities, interacting with the residents.



Doing sweeps and all that stuff, enhancing facility safety and security or mitigating by doing sweeps or moving folks around to mitigate any potential threat and hazard. But when that tone drops, the radio calls out when we transition to rightal boom, where incident happens, your training kicks in, you have to respond.



And then after you respond obviously doing any recovery aspects, whether it's an investigation, the paperwork basically accounting for what happened and all that, that's our right of boom activity response and recovery, so typically everyone likes the response stuff in the outside world cause that's the fun stuff. That's where the firefighters.



They're gonna put water on the hot stuff. The police they gotta find the bad person, stop the bad person, keep things going. So ifwater rescue team gets to save the dog out of the tree. Response probably in a correctional facility. You probably don't want to respond to much stuff because then it's a really busy day. So definitely and it's a great way to put it in y'all's kind of feel that prevention, protection, and mitigation that left the boom stuff is what you all deal with more day in and out. So really good exercise on that.



So, within each of these mission areas, we take those 32 core capabilities, and what we kind of do is split them up to what's applicable in each mission area, and as we go through each of the mission areas I want you all to kind of see which kind of core capabilities.



Expand over each mission area because there's three consistent core capabilities that you'll see in each mission area. And that's kind of important because especially as either leadership within your facilities or if you're trying to be more deliberate about how you prepare for stuff.



Focusing on one mission area is not important. You need to make sure you're spending time in all of those different mission areas just because you don't know when something bad is gonna happen. And just like when you exercise, if we only focus on one muscle and we don't do enough recovery exercises or we don't do any training for response.



That's where we don't do any training for mitigation, you're gonna see where when something does happen, you're lacking in that one specific area, so it's there's stuff that's consistent across the board that we need to know that we have capabilities, whether it's in prevention, protection mitigation, response or recovery.



So when it comes to prevention, this is the FEMA definition, but obviously the goal of this is to translate it back to you all as correctional professionals. So while Fema sets the framework at a 20000 ft view, it's designed to where it's be as.



Open ended for you all to translate to what makes sense in a correctional lens. So while the FEMA definition is to prevent avoid or stop at imminent threatening or actual act of terrorism, obviously in your facility, you wanna prevent any hazardous conditions, you wanna protect the folks that are.



There and all that fun stuff. So when it comes to the capabilities associated with prevention, that planning one is 1st and that's making sure you have the appropriate plan for how is your facility gonna operate? Does it make sense, does we need to update it? Anything of that nature?



But also, the next capability in this mission area is public information and warning. We live in a time where we are more connected than ever at the tips of our fingers and understanding what is your facility's plan in this phase.



Of preparedness especially when it comes to prevention, is what are you putting out to the public? What are we able to put out to make sure that they are being informed in a timely and accessible fashion, whether it's just having an updated website, having a standing media plan for media inner.



Interface. Do you know who your media stakeholders are so they know how to work with you? And the 3rd one also in this mission area is operational coordination. Are your people who are in charged with this respective mission area? Are they able to work with each other? Are you're on the boots on the ground correctional officers able to integrate with.



Your medical team when there's a medical emergency. Are you able to integrate with your offsite partners to work in that coordinated structure? Because if we can't work together, just like any sports team, you're gonna lose the game. So making sure that we're able to work in a coordinated structure, but also when it comes to this mission area, intelligence and information are probably important stuff that you all deal with. What's that process for sharing it? If you know that you have a potential threat.



In a facility within your state, but you also have a sister facility to your north. What is that avenue for sharing that information up, down left and right? Do you have a system in place to also stop that so when you get the information, how are you interdicting it and stopping it? Searching and screening and then forensic attributes to that?



So again, high level stuff, but hopefully by now you're able to see what does that capability look like in your facility? Do I have a public information officer? Do we have regular training to where I get to work with different components of the facility? Do I have a mechanism to share information with each other?



A lot of this is stuff that you already have. It's just grouping it in a way that makes sense at a high level perspective. And this is also really important when it comes to future grant requirements especially anything coming out of DHS where they're really looking at trying to put it in this umbrella term that you're able to translate it over to the national.



Preparedness system way of thinking. Moving to the next mission area, protection, and this one is protect our citizens residents visitors, assets against greater threats, hazards in a manner that allow our interests and aspirations of way of life to thrive. Again, we have our three common capabilities that.



Across all of the mission areas. That's planning public information or warning and operational coordination. Again, that's really important because if you don't have a plan, then or you're not documenting how you are to do something, then it's not written down and it doesn't make sense and it's just someone going off of what they feel like doing. So making sure that it's doc.



Documented whether it's in a position specific reference, job aid, standard operating procedure, whatever it is, that's really what it means when it comes to the capability of planning. Same deal with public information and warning. The public demands more from us especially as government officials. So you need to make sure you have a coordinated meeting.



Mechanism of distriminating public information or warning. Now, is that to assume that every single facility out there has a designated public information officer? Probably not, but you should also know who is allowed to communicate with the public and the media for your respective facility. Same deal working with each other in a coordinated structure. Now, as you can see, some of these core capabilities also are similar to prevention and protection.



But just keep that in mind that it's all this fun specific tactical stuff, whether it's how do you track intelligence once you hear it? How are you sending information? How are you controlling access into your facility? All this different stuff is also important, but another one to think about is supply chain integrity.



Yes, you all will do drills for a hostage situation or an assault on a staff, but what's gonna happen if you have to, if you lose water to your correctional facilities? What is gonna happen if you lose your vendor?



To your food services, last two years ago in Richmond where we had a region wide water outage during winterstorm, some of our local jails did not have water for almost four days. Did they have plans policies in place? Maybe, maybe not.



But we also want to think about stuff outside of what you all might deal with day in and out. Do you have a plan for what are you gonna do if you don't have water on your facility for 72 h? Do you know what's gonna happen if you don't have your contractors or if your contractors are unable to come onsite to deliver water or food?



So when we're thinking about protection, it's really looking at it holistically. Yes, you have the active threat within your industry as correctional professionals, but also these are places where people are residing. So making sure that the basic needs are met and are accounted for as you are preparing for. So if.



When it comes to your exercises doing analysis and looking back at these capabilities and thinking, you know what, we already do a good job of intradicting and disrupting any potential nefarious behavior. We have a pretty good relationship with sharing information.



But you know what we haven't talked about yet is what are we gonna do if we're in a supply chain situation where we don't have resources for 72 h? So that's on you all as professionals within your facilities to figure out and do that internal analysis to say, hey.



Which where are our gaps in our capabilities and what do we need to do to close those gaps? We're pretty strong in access control. We just got a new system and we're doing really good with that, but you know, we haven't talked about our cyber security plan yet or what are we gonna do if we have a denial service that impacts our ability to operate our facility?



So instead of let's always do that fun disruption exercise where we practice reclaiming the facility after civil unrest, that's great. We do that every month. How about we open up the plan for our cybersecurity response to see how are we gonna handle a cyber attack on our facility?



So again, it's being more deliberate but also being willing to take that in depth review of your facility and where you actually stand within your capabilities. Mitigation, this is again the stuff that sometimes is not.



As fun as responding to you or protecting or preventing. When you think about outside of a correctional facilities, we think a lot in the emergency management world of coastable erosion, how are we gonna minimize the impact of flooding? Do we need to tell people you shouldn't buy here anymore? Do we need to change?



Land use agreements to not allow folks to develop in the area that's prone to flooding or work with someone to say, hey, your 911 center has flooded four times in the past year every time it rains more than an inch. Maybe it's time to move your 911 center. Probably in a correctional facilities you probably want to think, you know, if this one item that we give out in the common.



Area has been causing problems, we probably want to get it off the line just because we want to mitigate any problems that may occur. So it's really important to think about that from mitigation is what can you do to reduce the loss of life and property by lessening the impact of future disasters? And that's everything again, maybe it's changing your flow pattern for how groups move around the facility. Maybe it's actually looking at see what's new in our facility.



Maybe you all just put solar panels on top of a building and understanding what are those potential downstream impacts of having solar panels on your facility. So look at your new threats and hazards or let's say if there's a lot of development outside of your neighboring community.



You probably want to see how are those potential impacts falling downstream to you or your impacts falling downstream to them. Finally response, a lot of this again is the stuff that you all do day in and out. How are you gonna handle a mass fatality situation? How are you gonna handle transportation needs? Do you have a mass.



Mechanism to get buses on site to do a full D evacuation. We all have radios, are they able to talk to each other? So if I'm a sheriff's deputy coming onto your site to integrate with your COs, are we able to talk to each other or do we have a system in place for me to get buddied up with your CEOs?



Or move to that interoperable channel or a cash radios. That's when it comes to responses, all those different things. Do we know how we're gonna request for additional resources? Are you able to work with your local emergency management organization to get resources from them during a hurricane or do you have to go through the federal government? Do you have.



Have to go through the state. Understanding those and having those relationships in place to know how to request for additional resources is probably gonna be important when it comes to response, so you wanna respond quickly, save life, protect property and the environment and meet basic human needs in the aftermat or a catastrophic incident. So again, it's looking at all that's.



Stuff when it comes to response, and the reason why I'm taking the time to go into how do we split up preparedness is understanding this and setting up this foundation will make your lives easier when it comes to identifying the training that you want to do, developing the exercises that you want to do, working as a group, fostering.



In those relationships. I mean, if you have a good foundational knowledge of how to divide up overall emergency preparedness, the better equipped you are to selecting the right capability preparedness activity to do to close out your capability gaps. The last if I can add in a thought.



Real quick here for for the corrections folks. Hey folks, this is where I know a lot of institutions I've been at. You have one or maybe two people like the obsolute tenant or one specific lieutenant who works evening launch, who is the guy or the guy who's in charge of of doing the emergency plans or running the the exercises or in in in multiple areas fall within that one.



One person. What Alex is saying here and the way we can adapt it is by taking it out of the hands of one per one person. He's shown us ways that we can compartmentalize it to where we can split up the responsibilities and the duties and the challenges into multiple people. And then you can meet as a group, you take those multiple people and you meet as a group so that you're building off each other and not just having this all in the shoulders.



To one person. By having it spread out, you equalize the load between a few people instead of just the one. So this is I think a way we can apply this to what we're already doing.



That I recommend to prioritize your preparedness efforts. The 1st one is to engage with your senior leadership early and often. Those are the folks who are signing your paychecks. They're the one who are signing the checks for your contracts or whatever it maybe. Get in front of your leadership to make sure you get their marching orders.



I was mentored by a retired kernel and he always says, if you don't have your commander's intent, you should not be doing anything. And knowing what your commander wants, that will help drive your efforts to make sure you are meeting the mission vision mission, vision, and values of your organization. So get with whoever's in that kind of leadership perspective doing.



See what do they want done? Next one is also making sure that you're prioritizing your your preparedness efforts to stuff that's applicable to your facility. Again, if you're in the Midwest, you shouldn't be worried about hurricanes, you should probably be worried about tornadoes.



If you've done that same hostage situation year after, year after year, it's probably time to change it just because we're good at hostage situations. You wouldn't be doing it if you weren't good at it. So you maybe want to move on to a different threat and hazard just cause it's easy and you could just replace the exercise.



You're doing yourself a disservice and your facility and your staff if you do the same exercise year after year just because it's easy to change the year, in your documentation or whatever you're doing. So make sure that you are exercising and trained into stuff that makes sense. If you don't have that capability, maybe you don't need an exercise. You might need to sit down and just workshop it.



With your folks to see how do you want to close that gap? The next thing is you also want to review what are your regulatory standards? What are you required to do by either code of federal regulations? What's in your contract, what's are you needed to do to meet accreditation standards? Because that will give you a set guidelines of.



You know, whatever guidance requires me as a facility leader to facilitate one tabletop a year, great at a minimum, I know that by law and by regulation I need to meet one exercise a year. Taking it back to Virginia standpoint, our code section has laid out what exercises are required for us.



So depending on where you work, you may have a required standard that requires you to do an exercise, and that is serves you twofold. If you have a leader that maybe doesn't want to do an exercise, but you know having something written in regulatory standards really doesn't give that much excuse me, wiggle room, but also it requires you to have staff, so Chris, is there any standards out there that requires your facilities to do some form of exercise annually?



Yeah Alex, so most of the time everybody you're well aware that each of our states are gonna have different laws in place and then beyond that, our agencies are gonna have requirements, and then below that you'll have your institutional for the bureau for us it's program statements, but your, but your rules that have been set in place by the individual agency. And this might be a good time to add to that.



Had it in my head and lost my train of thought, I apologize. This is a good time to remember. Look at your look at your emergency plans. Is there a not a one in front of the date on the top of those emergency plans?



Is the wardens that signed it two or three wardens ago. You know, part of this plan is, is Alex touched on is we need to get together routinely, not just a once a decade or every couple of wardens or or superintendents. We need a regularly review, not just the Warden and the AW or the superintendent.



Any associate superintendent, but bring in subject matter experts so we can dive into what plans have changed, what things are used to be thought of as an emergency and which things that we'd never even thought of before, like like Alex mentioned a minute ago, like cyber threats that are nowhere near our emergency plans. So we need to periodically regularly assess not only the plans that we have and.



Update them as necessary, but also what things are we looking at that used to not be considered emergency and that we don't have plans for and what it is now like if you look at your COVID plans, I bet if you followed, you probably one didn't have a COVID plan before COVID hit, but you probably had some sort of infectious disease plan. I know the institution I was at, we'd have had horrible results if we would have followed the infectious disease plan. So sometimes you have to adjust an emergency, but we have time when we don't have an emergency to make those adjustments. So this is, this is one of the areas we can do what Alex is talking about here. So.



Thanks Chris. Two other things, you also want to look at after a real world instant occurs, whether you just had a water outage, a loss of power or whatever it maybe, what went well, but also what didn't went well and that should drive how you prepare, and then finally.



Only any external source requirements maybe the new jurisdiction that your facility in has a new chief and they want to make sure that your folks know how to work with each other or there might be a grant. So you want to take a look at all five of those to help prioritize your efforts.



So, when it comes to preparedness efforts, we want to categorize it into five distinct areas, and you kind of already saw this when it came to capability core capabilities, but there's an easy acronym to use to remember that because if you pick one of these.



That's typically the best way to bucket or categorize how we prepare for whatever missionary but also whatever threat and hazard it might be. So the 1st letter in the acronym is P, which is planning. Next one is organizing equipping training, and exercise or poetti.



When it comes to planning, that's everything that we've already talked about. You have your strategic plans, but you also have your tactical plans. How often are those updated? Chris already mentioned, is it still the active ward and, is it old, outdated, whatever it might be? Or maybe it's just walking through the plan because just cause you wrote it on Microsoft Word.



At late at night, but when it actually happens at 03:00 P.M. on a Sunday, does that make sense? Is it applicable or are there any friction points or do we need to update it based off of the reality of the response? So making sure we have updated planning efforts.



And Alex.



But your your emergency.



See group that you have to to review and build your plans, they may know the plans perfectly and your rules may allow for you for folks in an emergency to look at their plans. I know, I know in the bureau we can look at the plans through an emergency, and that's great that your, your, your crew that is building it knows what it is and your executive staff, but.



Does the officer in the housing unit know what to do in that particular emergency? Does the recreation specialist out on the yard know how to do that? Does the officer who's in charge of the how of the visitation room know how to handle the emergencies that might occur there? So it's not just about the key personnel and leadership knowing it. It's also about making sure.



Thanks Chris. That kind of segues well into next two and I kind of go behind them. When it comes to organizing.



And then also do you have the proper tools to meet the objectives? Is there enough? Is it sufficient? And then also when it comes to your equipment and your organizing, are your folks properly trained? If I just bought a new detection device for my facility, it's brand new, it's shiny, but if I haven't trained my phone.



How to use it, it's probably the most expensive paper waste and fraud waste and abuse. So if you get something new or you got a new piece of equipment, are you training your folks on how to use it? If you're expecting your folks to establish an incident command system, are they all taking the appropriate training at their respective level to conduct that? There's a lot of different training out there. Chris mentioned you took a class that the state was hosting where I was instructing. So I strongly encourage you all when you.



For any of them. The only thing you have to pay is your own time to be there. So your employer has to, you know, find your backfill or something, but all these trainings are free, especially anyone from any of the dhs's training providers. You should never have to pay for any of these trainings out of pocket. If a contractor is trying to sell you that, they are not getting you an official certificate. So biggest.



Thing when it comes to any of this training especially the incident command system training, you should never have to pay for it. They were designed and built off of federal grant funding, which requires them to be delivered for free. So just keep that in mind as you are looking for new training that a majority of the training that DHS Fema has put together is free.



That is issued and just carried on both at the federal state and local level. So the next big one that I'll kind of spend some time talking about a little bit more is exercises, which is my bread and butter.



I could safely say that most exercises that folks do are not following the right mech mechanism. They aren't thoroughly planned out, they aren't truly testing capabilities, and it's really important that you do take the effort to plan it appropriately because the biggest thing you want to do is spend three months maybe planning an exercise.



For it to just be something simple and not to really stress and test capabilities. So exercises are where you hit the rubber hits the road where you actually get to see action and reaction based off of the scenario as you inject it to them. The best way to plan that exercise is back in O two DHS put together what's called the Homeland security exercise and evaluation.



Program. This is essentially a process for you all at whatever level, to design and develop and conduct and evaluate and exercise in a formal manner that is consistent, scalable, and flexible. There's NO such thing as HCP consistent. So if you taken this class before, prior to 2019, they used to say, oh, you need to follow every single thing by the book. That is not the case.



Technology allows for you to truly test your capabilities, capture what you saw in the exercise but then have a continuous improvement cycle. They have over 96 different documents in the HC program for you to design, develop and conduct your exercises all the way from the start of planning.



To the end. You just do a simple google search, you'll find all the documents, and then you're able to customize it to whatever makes sense for your respective facility. But this federal government DHS has put a lot of money into ensuring that this program is scalable and flexible.



For anyone to incorporate at all levels, whether you're a small correctional facility or you're the largest facility or you're a one person shop or you have a team of 20. This is truly a flexible program that allows you to deliberately plan out your exercises and it makes sense. It, you lays out every single thing you need to do all the way from.



We talked about our threats and hazards. We talked about how do we set up our priorities. We talked about the different preparedness elements. We're making sure that we have a plan, making sure that we're organized, making sure we have the right equipment, making sure we're trained to use that, and then making sure we know how to use that in an exercise format.



But that also requires to after the exercise is over, we're looking at it from a evaluation standpoint. How are we continuously improving? Were our plans adequate? Do we have the right relationshipships in place? Do we have the proper equipment? Are we trained to do it? Or do we need to go back to the drawing board? And that again goes back into that overall.



National preparedness cycle. We already talked about capability based exercise. Chris, go ahead while I get to the next slide.



Yeah, and let me add in too that the nice thing about that exercise cycle everybody is it allows you to, as Alex said earlier, if you've got an area that you've done routinely done, like maybe you do a housing unit fire, you do it all the time.



Your staff is great at it, very responsive. They know what to do. That's great. You don't have to, you don't have to do that one as often. You can work it in your cycle where you don't do it as often, and you can build up areas that you maybe not as refreshed at or you have a new emergency plan and you need to need to do it more. It also, it also allows you to not always have to do a full blown exercise where you.



To bring other agencies in. You know, if it's an if it's a new emergency plan, then start it off as a tabletop or a discussion and you go through the cycle and then you build upon. So the brilliance of the HCP and the cycle system is it allows you to the flexibility to build up where you need to be built up and, and, and rest in areas that you've already got a square foundation on. So that's the beauty of that HCP in the cycle system.



Thanks Chris. So the way HC breaks down is there's formerly seven types of exercises, and this is something that is classically misunderstood in the public safety field. Most of the time you just call it an exercise, you call it a drill, but words matter, because it's important that we properly account for what kind of exercises so you get the right groups involved.



And you want to kind of think about it as two types. You have your discussion base and your operations base, and on this continuum, you kind of see discussion base are looking at the concepts versus operations base or the actual boots on the ground actions happening.



You also want to think about it as you have your strategic group and then you have your action/reaction group. So discussion based, when you think about a seminar, that's more of introducing a concept to your groups, whether it's, we, we have a new screening tool, we're gonna host a seminar on it to introduce the concepts.



Next thing is a workshop, that might be, hey, you know what? We have a new emerging thread of drones coming in. Let's have a workshop together to where we bring all of our smart folks to the table to see how do we want to address drones or UAS as a group. Next way is a workshop's also that opportunity for you to develop a plan.



Or just to create a concept of operations. Your tabletops, that's where you gotta talk through that plan in a strategic fact function. Games are kind of war gaming it, but it's a different way to break up any of that. The really important thing especially for your boots on the ground folks, is there's three different types of operations based exercise, and this is really important because as you start to bring out more stakeholders and you start to do the planning, each one of these requires more layers of coordination.



So your drills, that's really focusing on one specific functional area in that area only. Easiest way to think about it is let's say you do your annual fire drill, in your school. You hit the fire alarm, people evacuate the building, go to their rally point and take accountability.



That's it. The beauty with the drill is you're able to do multiple evolutions. So you know what we need to practice our fire drill process for all three shifts during the day. We're just gonna run the same scenario twice or three times to make sure that all three of our shifts are good to go from initial notification to accountability, that it.



Doing resources. They're more doing this magic to get those resources to be ready to step off, but they're not actually stepping off to put out a fire. Your full scale exercise, that's cradle to grave. Boom to whenever you decided to stop. So again, if you, anything you take from this presentation, it's categorizing your exercises appropriately.



If anything else, you don't want to take anything away from my presentation today, but doing the effort to categorize your exercise appropriately. If you take that away from today, I'll be a happy camper. But making sure that you properly categorize it, makes your life easier, but also the stakeholders that are coming to the table know what they're getting into.



Because if you say, hey, I'm gonna go to this drill, and then you ask for the warden to come, but you're really just expecting people to kick down doors. Well, the warden will probably enjoy kicking down doors, but that person's probably not the one gonna be kicking down the door when boom hits. So by capturing it and claim naming it the right activity.



You make sure you got the appropriate stakeholders at each one. If you want to learn more about how to design an exercise the right way, FEMA has developed what's called the national standard exercise curriculum. So at the bottom level is level one, which is that awareness level introduction to exercises. Those are all self paced on your own through the fema.



Training website, which is currently shut down right now due to the lapse of funding, but that is available, for folks to take virtually and it's self paced. Next level is which the class that Chris took, that's the LO 01:46 that is hosted variously all throughout the country with state and local federal.



Best working your way up this pyramid, all the way up to the master exercise practitioner level. CISA also has free resources for you all, so let's say if you need to do a tabletop for your facility, they already have a lot of the documentation built out, so it's kind of like a choose your own adventure book. You get updated to your appropriate facility, but they've already done some of the legwork. Just Google that and you'll see their products.



Fema has some similar processes too, some different threats and hazards that they have. So two things, I know we're wrapping up on time, so I'm gonna just give you one of the examples.



But this is a recent exercise series that we did where the locality identified a need for active threat training. They coordinated with our criminal justice agency at the state level for active threat training as well as rescue task force training, and they realized that after they've got the training, they're ready to do the.



Walk walking process where they wanted to do a drill, where they got the fire, the rescue, the law enforcement, the school staff together. As a result of that drill, they realized that they need additional training for incident command systems, so now their corrective action is to make sure that all staff are taking the appropriate ICS courses at their respective.



Level. So as you can see right there, a simple example of how we did that within Virginia where a local jurisdiction identified their need of better training for when it comes to active threat environment, whether it's because we're operating in a hiding threat environment or their leadership told them, you know what, our priority is making sure that our schools are safe for all their time. They did the training.



Once they got the training, they did the exercise. Once they did the exercise, they've reviewed what went well, what didn't went well, and then they started that cycle all over again. That's my contact information. Like Chris said, feel the slides are gonna be shared afterwards, but if you want to learn more or if you need help getting connected with your state or local emergency management.



Yeah, I, I got a couple of a guy I have a couple more slides to go over as well. If you guys have questions, feel free to type them in. I just wanted to while we're on this slide, I wanted to just tell you, I really appreciate everybody attending our webinar. I know you are guys are busy, you're correctional professionals, you're working.



And so anything that takes away from that needs to be worth it, it's weight and gold. So hopefully you guys take some value out of this, and making your areas better prepared in your commun in your correctional emergency management efforts. And one last thought I want to say about the presentation itself and and and Alex is certainly a part of this, you don't have to know.



All this information today or by yourself or be able to handle it all on your own. There are, like Alex said, there are federal state and local training opportunities. There's also subject matter area, or subject matter experts or area, both with a state level department of emergency managements, your local or county office of emergency managements.



At your fire department, there are people that know this information that will be more than happy to work with you and help build you up. So take advantage of all the resources both nationally, statewise, and in your local area while you're building your program up. Alright, doesn't look like we have any.



Questions Alex, if you could go to the next slide for me.



Time. Now, I, I would also like to take a moment to express my teams and mys appreciation about the NIC and BOP directors. Mr. William K Marshall the 3rd is the director of the Federal Bureau Prisons, and mr. Patrick Mirandy is the NIC director. We cannot do what we do every day without the unwaivering support of the directors of the BOP and NIC.



Working in tandem to strengthen our nation's correctional system. National institute of corrections provides attentional training technical assistance and research that directly improves safety, efficiency, and public security within our facilities, including federal state and local prisons and jails, the work helps to ensure that your crucial efforts in maintaining order and upholding justice.



Before you guys leave, we have an evaluation that we would greatly appreciate. If you could fill out, you'll see there is both a link and a QR code that's also in your chat as well. If you could use one of those to let us know how we did, we'd greatly appreciate it. It does it won't take you about a few minutes to answer the question. So we would greatly appreciate if you could fill it on your way out.



Nothing additional Chris, thanks for the opportunity.



Yes sir. And on behalf of myself and the IC and the BOP. Alex, thank you very much for your your coming and telling us this information. Hopefully we all gained some information from and can continue to build our our correctional emergency management practices.



Again, thank you everybody for attending, and I hope you have a great correctional day.