File: 033727 --- Archie Weatherspoon IV: Hello and greetings to everyone joining us from the various time zones around the country. My name is Archie Weatherspoon IV, and I'm a national programs advisor with the National Institute of Corrections, and I'm also serving as today's webinar executive producer and host. And I would like to thank you for participating in NIC's webinar. Providing Safety and Security: Managing Women in the Criminal Justice System. Now before I turn things over to today's moderators, there's just a few things that I want to go over, like some housekeeping items. So first, I just want to let you know that this webinar is scheduled to last for approximately 2 hours and this webinar is being recorded. Once the recording is captioned and made 508 compliant, the recording and the presentation slides will be posted to the National Institute of Corrections website. All registered participants will be notified via the email or via email when the recording is available on our website. Secondly, this is a listen-only event. Throughout the webinar, you are encouraged to communicate with us and ask questions using the Webex chat function. And at the end of today's presentation, we'll answer as many questions as possible before we conclude. Lastly, if you're experiencing any audio or or any audio issues during the webinar, consider dialing and using the phone number provided in the registration and then the reminder emails. I'd also just like to share that the National Institute of Corrections is a federal agency established to provide assistance to strengthen states and local correctional agencies by creating more effective, humane, safe, and just correctional services. Presentation materials were prepared and delivered for this event by the academy division of the National Institute of Corrections US Department of Justice. The materials and the presentations represent the points of view and opinions of the presenters and facilitators and do not necessarily represent. official opinions or policies of the US Department of Justice. Now what I would like to do is I would like to turn it over and introduce Benjamin Hunter with the National Institute of Corrections Information Center, and he would like to share with you about some valuable information and a great resource from the National Institute of Corrections. Benjamin Hunter: Good morning, everyone. As Archie said, my name is Benjamin Hunter, and I work at the National Corrections Academy, NIC Information Center, and we're located in Aurora, Colorado. So if any of you have ever visited the academy in Aurora Colorado for some in-person trainings, either with NIC or our sister our sister branch MSTC. You've been to the academy, and you may have visit us in-person. We are here at the library/information center from 08:00 a.m.. To 04:00 P.M. mountain time because we're in Colorado. If you can't make it out to Colorado, you can reach us via our website. That website is NICIC.gov. And there you'll see the NIC website where we have tons of information, NIC publications, trainings, e-books, all sorts of stuff. So I'll just touch on a few of those things really quickly and then I'll give it back to Archie. So the first thing we have here is the help desk. That is a. There are four yeah we've had some reduction in force and we're adding new people, so currently we have four staff librarians that are here to help answer any questions you have. Just go to NICIC.gov, find the help desk, reach out to us and within a business day, we try to get back to you and answer your questions. If you don't know. What your question is, but you know the topic or just a general idea, just reach out to us, start a conversation with us, and we'll point you in the right direction. In addition to the help desk, we've got lots of resources on the website. We have databases you can search if you're doing research on your own and you want to take a look yourself. We have databases you can access through EBSCOhost. We also have trainings. So the Learning Center is where we host a lot of our self guided trainings. If you don't want to attend a webinar or an in-person thing, you just wanna brush up on some leadership skills or frontline work or you need to take Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) training. You can go to the Learning Center and take that PREA training there. Create an account at Learning Center or I'm sorry, learn.NICIC.gov, create an account. It keeps track of all your trainings, print certificates, show that you've done the work and stay on track that way. If you want to. Unplugged a little bit on your own time. We have e-books and audiobooks, so you can cozy up to a true crime novel before bed or if you're doing a commute to work and you want to listen to something, we have audiobooks. So leadership. Corrections-focused, e-books as well. So yeah, we've got all that stuff. Research, e-books, help desk. We're here for you. So yeah, that's about it Archie. If you guys have any questions, you can reach us at email, which is support@NICIC.gov or come to Colorado and see us in-person. Archie Weatherspoon IV: Thank you so much, Ben. I appreciate that. NIC is here for you, and one of the things we want to do is make sure that we're able to provide you with information that will help you do your jobs efficiently and effectively. So without further ado, two folks, two friends, two colleagues of mine, and your moderators for today who are gonna assist in that effort host being a part of today's webinar and running this thing is Jeff Hanson and Belinda Stewart, so I'm gonna turn it over to you two. Jeff Hanson: Thank you Archie. Really appreciate the introduction and and great job Benjamin on introducing the information center. My name is Jeff Hanson. I'm a national programs advisor with the National Institute of Corrections Community Services division. I've been with NIC for about three years, started with Archie in the. Academy division and moved over to community services about six months ago. My background is with the Oregon Department of Corrections for 35 years prior to retiring and coming to work for NIC and one of the areas that I spent a lot of time working on was the implementation of evidence-based practices. And at first when we. We Went down that road, we focused almost exclusively on our male population and as a result, we kind of just ignored that 10, 20, or 25% of our population in the community or in institutions or in jails that didn't quite fit the evidence-based profile that we were working in. As a result of some training that I received and some initiatives within the Oregon Department of Corrections, we began ah a a focus on working with women. And how to do that effectively, we brought in WRNA, focused on women responsiveness. We brought in pathways, a variety of case management strategies and a real focus on how to work with women effectively. And one of the things that really stood out to me from all of that training as we implemented it. It was the opportunities that existed for the criminal justice system to intervene with this population and especially a focus on intergenerational criminality. So as a result, I have spent the last oh well 15 years or so, working on implementing. Effective practices with with this population and after Belinda introduces herself, we'll talk a little bit about how this curriculum came to be and and and really what its antecedents are and and where we're hoping to go with this. So i'll turn it over to Belinda. Belinda Stewart: Good morning. My name, good morning or afternoon, as the case may be, I forget Jeff and I live in the Northwest part of the country, so it is still morning here and I sometimes forget about the audience that we are speaking to. I am a national programs advisor in the prisons division of the National Institute of Corrections. I have worked in the field of corrections for 45 years. 31 of that was spent with Washington state and that's when I really started to dive into having passion around the things that are possible for us to do with women in our system who are incarcerated. I had the privilege to serve as the superintendent of the Washington Corrections Center for Women for six and a half years. I also worked in the space of being the administrator of Women's Services. As a part of my job as a pro as the program, administrator for that agency. Jeff and I, I will say we're really proud of the work that we have done and will give you more explanation about how are the two, we started out having two different. Programs that we have merged into a hybrid program that we are very proud of, but I am so pleased to see so many people, online this morning who have an interest and a passion in how we are able to change the lives of women in our system, which in essence changes. the lives of everyone else they're connected to, especially their children since most women in the system are mothers to minor children, I feel like that issue is really, really important. NIC has been and continues to be the leader in this space. Back in the early 2000s, the first documents that really came out about strategies. Concerning working with women in the criminal justice system were generated by the work of some great professionals and and NIC sponsored them in getting that work done. And so we are really proud of what we've done in this space. And we look forward to all the new tools that we're gonna be able to develop in the future. So we're able to we're, we're pleased to be with you today to share the work that we've done with this program. I also just wanna say by way of information. I have been having a struggle all week. With my audio on my laptop, and so I will mostly be off camera because at some point, my message starts to get really garbled and I want to make sure that that does not become a distraction, and so we are so looking forward to sharing our information with you. Jeff. Jeff Hanson: Thank you, Belinda, and and just for everybody on, on this one welcome and and I I echo what Belinda said. I do forget on the west Coast that there are other sides of the United States, so I say good morning to everybody when it's 10:00 here, so sorry about that. I also just want. Wanted to say that Belinda deserves all the kudos in the world for shepherding much of the work that has been done over the last several years around working with women and without her, it would not be where it's at today. So special thanks to her for the work that she has done. It is wonderful to see the number of folks that we have in attendance here and it says to me that there's a recognized need in the system for how we can effectively work with women or more effectively work with women. And so we're gonna talk about some of those things. We're gonna talk about the curriculum. One of the things though that we wanted to make sure was available to you as webinar participants is a real world example of how this has been trained and implemented and so after Belinda and I get done. And walking through a little bit of the curriculum and just a little bit of the background on this subject. We're gonna turn it over to some folks from the Oregon Department of Corrections Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, to talk about where they are. Talk about their facility, talk about the training that they went through. And really focus on how they're gonna implement and and where they see this going in the future. So we're very excited that they were willing to do this and be a part of this because we see a great future for this training and we see a real opportunity to make a significant difference in how the criminal justice system manages this population. So as Belinda said, this curriculum is a hybrid of two prior curriculum. Many of you may be aware of safety matters, which was a curriculum that was developed decades ago now. Great curriculum for what it was at the time. It was really focused on PREA implementation, built up some skills around how to work with women, but it had become a little dated. So that was one piece of the curriculum. second piece was a curriculum that was developed. Several years ago called working with women. And what we realized after implementing both curriculums was that we could actually combine skills from safety matters with the information from working with women and come up with a very effective three-day curriculum. That could meet the needs of jails prisons, and community services. So as a result, we built a hybrid curriculum and depending upon the location in which we train prison jail or community service. The curriculum will be tailored towards that location. So, just for an example, in the community we maybe talking about community referrals, community partners, how to do an appropriate home visit, those kinds of things, whereas in a jail or prison, we may spend a lot more time on disciplinary processes and and those kinds of things. But we're gonna talk about some of the central threads that go throughout this curriculum. And as we talk, if you think of questions that you have, if things come up that that that stick in your mind, please put it in chat. We are gonna have a section here at the end for Q and A and to to help folks if they do have any questions. So, feel free to do. That, otherwise, anything else, Belinda, before we kind of dive in? Belinda Stewart: I would just like to give them a little bit of history Jeff, on how we got to where we are, where we are. Okay. Back in May of 2023, we held a two day gender responsive summit. And that came about because we looked at there was a gender responsive strategies document that was developed way back in 2005 and people were saying to us. The information looks great, but we feel like it's dated. And so we pulled together a group of about 20 people. They were practitioners in the field. They were researchers who have worked on doing work that is evidence- and research-based. There are probably people. On this phone who probably know Dr. Emily Salisbury. She was one of the people who was a part of that summit. We had community stakeholders and then also NIC staff. And we worked two days looking at the work that we had done, but also saying moving forward, what are the biggest needs we have in the. And as a result of that, we created an action plan. And at the top of that action plan was to develop some kind of basic training information on who women in the criminal justice system. Who they are, and we developed with the help of a cooperative agreement holder, we put out a scope of work and we developed the two day program working with women one oh one. We also in that action plan, there were other, also other things like. To start a network where individuals who do this work, we give you a place to connect with each other, to share information, to share best practices, and we still want to, we want to revive that network. And so if at the end of this, that's something you might be. Interested in being a part of Jeff and I are gonna put our contact information up at the end and we please ask that you email us and let us know that you have an interest. But that is the basis for how we created. What we now call, providing safety and security Managing Women in the Criminal Justice System. And when Jeff and I looked at the two programs side by side, we figured out there was a lot of redundancy in what we were teaching, and so we combined those. Those two curriculums together and and and also there's a train-the-trainer train-the-trainer component that's a part of that, but we're really proud of the product. Jeff? Archie Weatherspoon IV: So, so Jeff, I know that you were talking about depending on which kind of delivery they might be coming from, either jails, prisons or community corrections or community services, it might tell it how you deliver the questions. So let's go to our first poll question here and let's find out from the folks what type of agency they are actually coming from. So in the chat, you're gonna see a poll question come up. We'd love for you to respond to that. What, what type of agency do you work for? So are you coming from a local city, a municipality, agency? Are you coming from a county agency? Are you with the state agency? Are you coming from a tribal agency or are you with the Federal Bureau of Prisons? Go ahead and just respond to the chat and let Jeff and Belinda know where you're coming from. You can go ahead I'm sorry, I said chat. The poll question. I apologize in the poll right here. We're gonna leave it up for just about 15 more seconds. So go ahead and take your time, find that poll question, go ahead and let us know where you're coming from. Alright, so that poll is gonna be closing in 10 s. Again, what type of agency you work for? 54321, and that poll is closed. Looking at the poll looks like we have about. 4 % coming from like a local or city agencies, 45 or sorry, 44 from state, 5 % from FBOP, but a majority of our folks today are 47 % are coming from county agencies here Jeff. Jeff Hanson: Excellent. And, and we're gonna ask some additional poll questions because we want to tailor some of this presentation to the folks that are here. It's always interesting to come to webinars from our perspective, we want you to leave with information that has value to you. So that's why we're doing some of this drill down to just get a sense of of who we're talking to and so don't be surprised when our team comes. Goes in and we have some additional questions for you. It is interesting when I first started this work. With agencies around this population. Most of the agencies that I was working with were state departments of corrections. However, both Belinda and I have been since we created this curriculum, have found that. One of our biggest partner bases is, is county sheriffs and and desire to learn how to work with this population in a more effective way, at that local level. Archie Weatherspoon IV: And that Jeff, that second question is up in regards to what type of corrections so just allowing for ten more seconds for people to respond to that, but it looks like right now it's kind of a tie between community corrections and prisons, but it looks like community corrections might be. Taking taking the lead here, so about five more seconds, I'll end those results here, but we do have 11 % coming from others, so that's something outside of jail's prisons and community corrections. But, that sheriff's department with the jails that's coming in at about 10 % in that poll is closing now. So 9 %. From jails, 36 % coming from prisons and community corrections is at 50 % with 8 % coming from, another type of corrections. And then the last, the last poll question. That we have for you all, before Jeff speaks about the curriculum is going to be What challenges are you facing in your institution or your field? So what's the lack of female specific programs and interventions? Is it the lack of training on how to work with women effectively? Is it a one-size-fits-all approach for women and men being supervised in the same fashion? Is it a lack of policy procedure that's specific to women? Is it classification or risk assessment tools not being specific for women or is it others? So go ahead to. Take your time into that chat and I'm gonna let Jeff segue into the curriculum that he and Belinda have worked so hard to put together and that polls in the close in 15 s. So again, what challenges are you facing in your institution or your field? That's closing five. 4321. And with 86 votes, it looks like we have 28 % saying just a lack of specific programming for females, a 14 % just a lack of training on how to work with females effectively. 3 % lack of policy and procedure, specific to women, 10 % on classification and 12 % or other, but 33 %, just a third of everyone here said it's a one-size-fits-all approach for women and men being supervised in the same fashion. So Jeff, what are your thoughts about that? What do you, what do you, what do you take away from these responses in the poll? Jeff Hanson: Thank you Archie. Well, I'll tell you what I take away is that we're all in the same boat and and I know that doesn't help, but it does normalize it a little bit. One of the things and and I'll ask Belinda to chime here in just a section, a second is one of the things that we found nationally is that because this population is relatively small in comparison to the male population, that typically it's an afterthought to most corrections systems. And it only becomes a major focus of correctional systems when it's problematic, and usually that I hate to say it, but it's around PREA, that it becomes a major focus. And, so many times it it just disappears. Years Until it can't be ignored any longer and and I understand that we've all worked in the systems for a very long time and we understand that that the majority of the population is where we're gonna put our energy resource and time, but we can no longer ignore this population. One of my other duties with NIC is around working with veterans that are impacted in the criminal justice system and. For a long time, we have frankly ignored female veterans because they just weren't the numbers. I just recently visited a county sheriff's agency that has a robust veteran system and they have a. Separate units for males, separate programming for males, but just not the population to work with the women, so they're trying to do it on an individual basis. Unfortunately, that's can be hit and miss and can, can lead to treating those that population. And those women the same way that the males are treated. So it doesn't surprise me and typically resources aren't put. Prisons, jails, and community service community corrections agencies for women because we're focused more on the male population and and and that the risk associated with that population. So it's not a big surprise, but Belinda, anything stand out to you? Belinda Stewart: You know, I think the whole piece about, and I wrote it down, someone named Kelly said it first and every then I saw a whole bunch of people in the chat say one-size-fits-all. And that's often the way that states have thought about that, even the states that we were affiliated with, but we were able to make a case to say there's research, there's evidence that supports the fact that if you deal with these women differently, the outcomes can be different. And, you know, it, you have to push. Back, a lot of the paradigms that we have in corrections, the one that used to just get me all this time was firm, fair and consistent, that women are different. And so if you're applying that. Firm, fair, and consistent because most prisons, most corrections deal with the male model, then you can't even espouse that and have it be true. And so the other thing that I heard that is heartening to us that we made the right decision. It's the number of people that said lack of training resources. We often expect people to come in and do a job and be effective that we have not trained them adequately to do. And so that's one of the reasons why we believe this curriculum is one of the things it is not a be all end all, but it gets people engaged; it trains people. To start wanting to learn more and do more in terms of how we handle this population. Thanks Jeff. Jeff Hanson: Excellent. So, we're gonna take a high level view of the curriculum now. It's meant to be delivered over three days and it is a pretty full three days in the in the agencies that we have delivered this in, we've delivered it for prisons, jails, and community services. In varying locations across the United States from Texas to Wisconsin to Rhode Island. And so we've had a lot of opportunity to test this out. And one of the things that we found, and I'm sure Belinda can speak to this as well, is. As you folks know, anytime a new training, a new initiative comes in, it, it runs this the gamut and the spectrum of acceptance of the idea of new training. One of the things that I've seen though, time and time again with this particular curriculum is folks that are reluctant when it begins. Or aren't necessarily thinking they need to work with women in a different way. As the training goes on, they very quickly start to realize that this isn't about excusing behavior. It isn't about giving an excuse to the woman. It's about how do we explain the behavior and how do we effectively intervene? And Belinda's point about the training, I can tell you from personal experience and I'm sure many of you on this webinar can attest to this as well. Well, I received no training around working with women before, before being thrust into the role of of working with women and basically was told to treat them the same way you treat the the male population, and it went about as well as you might expect. And so as as we have rolled this out and. Talked with folks, we've gotten a lot of great feedback and there's been a few epiphanies in the training which from a trainer's point of view is something you love to see. Oh, it is designed to be delivered over three days. That is a big commitment for an agency, and Belinda and I understand that. However, the fact is if we're going to work differently with this population, we're going to have to put. Resources, time and energy into the staff who are working with them and provide them the opportunities to get this training and to operationalize it. And so, when we talk about three days, I get it pulling people off the line in a jail or a prison setting or even a community correction setting. The work still needs to get done, but, we want to make sure that agencies are able to operationalize and implement this in a way that it's sustainable. So as we talk about the three days, the first day is basically who is the. Population. What are we working with? What are the theories that surround it starting the discussion about trauma-informed care, just an overall profile of the population. The beauty of this particular curriculum is that the individuals in the class build the profile. Based on their agency. We'll provide the national perspective, the agency provides their own perspective and it starts to draw out the conversation about, we really haven't looked at this population, we really haven't looked at numbers and in order to do this well, we're gonna have to, to do some things differently and think about data. Data in a different way. Day two starts to segue into the more operational side of working with women. It it continues the discussion about effective practices with women working specifically with the population. It rolls in the medical and mental health pieces, which can sometimes. To be an uncomfortable discussion for male staff, right? When we start talking about perimenopause menopause, some of those kinds of, of things, most male staff have no experience with that or understanding of it. And so talking about symptomatology, talking about how that can present itself to staff and how they can work with it. It is incredibly well perceived. We're not trying to turn staff into counselors, right? We absolutely understood, not enough time for folks to to become experts in this field. What we are trying to do is build awareness and provide skills so that they can work with it. Knowing what it is and and I believe knowledge is half the battle, so if we give them the knowledge, we give them the skills, they can move forward. We'll talk more about the skill building piece of this. I am a firm believer training without skills associated with it, basically. Doesn't accomplish a whole bunch, so I'm a firm believer in every training there has to be some skill that people leave with. And it has to be a skill that can be easily used. And so as we talk about that and and we'll talk about it later. That it's an important part of this curriculum, and last, we spent actually several hours talking about implementation and operationalization. My, as a trainer, as someone who's been doing this for a very long time. I never wanna leave an agency or a unit and know that it made no difference that three days I just spent with people. I want them to feel like they have a plan, that they feel like there's a way that they can move this forward within their agency. And so as we. We talk about this curriculum and operationalizing it, you're gonna hear from both Belinda and I This requires a commitment on of agency leadership to implement in a way that's gonna make sense. And when we talk to Coffee Creek's representatives, you're gonna hear that they have a strong commitment from their leadership to implement. And now I'll turn it over to Belinda. Belinda Stewart: Thanks Jeff. The one thing that I will say is that we do not do this work in a vacuum either. The states that have asked us for technical assistance to say, we want you to come in and assess what's going on with our women. And and help us figure out the next steps. That 99 % of the time, 75 %, just to be safe, that results in Jeff and I being boots on the ground, will go to the state, will do a site visit, we'll spend time with the administration. And we also spend time walking and talking with the adults in custody. We also talk to staff at all different levels of the facility just to get a feel for the culture, where staff are, where the population is, because it's important. For us to assess that. And there have been times when we've said to states, the first thing we need to do is educate your leadership and then educate staff. And so we are trying to be methodical. And so when we walk in to do training in these various states. We already know something, some things about the state which we incorporate into this training that we are getting ready to talk about. So on on day one, the first module is about understanding the differences between men and women in corrections. And, you know, we're gonna talk about this enough to make you want to send a TA or send a email and say, we want this training, but I just want to let you know a little bit about it. So the objectives for this particular module is to identify the differences between men and women. In the correction system to identify the typical profiles of women in the system and then to start talking about how we effectively communicate with women in the criminal justice system as we go on with our talk today. So much happens or doesn't happen around staff's ability to be able to effectively communicate with the population. And we, we hope to help the staff gain a deeper understanding of the unique challenges and needs. Faced by women in the system. It focuses on identifying the typical co profile of who these women are. We look at their backgrounds, we look at their circumstances that brought them into the criminal justice field. And as Jeff said, this class is very interactive. We, we are not just talking heads. During the course of the program, you are involved in a lot of group work, you're involved in a lot of individual work, but we spend a lot of time drilling down the concepts. That eh I mean, people usually start having all these light bulbs going on about had I known this sooner, I would have been able to do a better job. And so that's just a little bit about understand the differences between men and women. Jeff, is there something you wanna add? Jeff Hanson: I, I I think this is the, the beautiful portion of, of the training because it allows people, one of the things that Belinda and I, wanted to make sure in this curriculum was that it wasn't. We're not trying to convince anyone. We let the information convince people and the reality is, this module is perfect for that because it allows people at their own pace to have that light bulb moment and that aha moment and. It sounds silly to say what are the differences between men and women in corrections. We all know there's a ton of differences, but this actually articulates it in a way that makes sense to people and and it leads to those ah moments. The next module is really around pathways and theory theories of what bring women in the criminal justice system. For those of you who are familiar with the path. Pathways model, it's it's not a new model. It's a gender-neutral model. It actually applies to both males and females, but it's especially powerful in this training because it starts to set the stage. If I'm a corrections officer in a unit or a deputy correction, a deputy corrections officer in a. Well, I'm not going to be focused on discovering what the pathway is, but the more I understand what the antecedent behaviors are, where this behavior is coming from, the more I'm able to understand working with women in an effective manner. So. So many of our, our women in the in the system exhibit behaviors that are survival traits, and they carry those survival traits with them into the institutional environment or community corrections office. And because of that. If folks understand what the behavior actually is, they can effectively intervene or or leave work with a better mindset about working with this population. So this one is really focused on how do you work with folks, what does it. What does it look like, why are they here? And then participants being able to identify it in real world situations. So keep in mind this is, this is for them to actually gain a skill and be able to move it forward. Anything else on that, Belinda? Belinda Stewart: No, I think that was great. And Jeff in the chat, someone asks the easy questions we can answer now is this virtual or is this in-person and it is an in-person training program. We actually come to the state and deliver the training on site. Yep. Jeff Hanson: And I, we tried during COVID to deliver portions of this training basically safety matters virtually, and it was an abject failure. And and the reason it was an abject failure is that many of the agencies we're working with, sometimes are struggling with this population for a variety of reasons and staff. In a virtual environment where they cannot feel safe about imparting information about their agency plain and simple. We, we didn't get any information and so we made an executive decision that this curriculum will not be delivered virtually because we just didn't get the kind of that, that this requires. Anything else on that, Belinda? Belinda Stewart: No, Jeff, and you're garbling a little bit, so you might wanna take yourself off camera? Jeff Hanson: Good. Thank you? Thank you. Belinda Stewart: So my next is the next module and we dropped from three to five in case anybody's counting because we convert, we combined a couple. The next module is working specifically with women and what we, the objectives that we aim to cover in this one is to identify strategies for working specifically with women to review the principles for working with women in the criminal justice system, and we do the. This piece on recognizing the ten truths that matter when working with women in the criminal justice system. It this module provides a comprehensive understanding of working with women in the system, emphasizing the importance of women of a well, a woman specific, a women. Specific approach and you'll review key principles designed to support and support and and empower women in this context. And, and that also, there were I saw people on here who were talking about rehabilitation and reentry, and that is the goal to help them be a. Able to reenter society successfully. I was also encouraged by the number of community corrections or community supervision entities that responded. I think it's that whole cradle-to-grave concept that everything we do with that we do with women, it needs to stop. Start from the time that they enter our system, even in jail and follows them all the way out into the community where we're able to do wrap around services. So at any entry point we have resources or case plans that can support these women and I believe as. As just a system nationally, it is something we need to do better with, but that whole, you know, cradle to grave, we need to follow that woman all the way through the system back out into the community. And so, you know, when we start talking about working specifically with women, we start to talk about some of the strategy. That have been shown to be successful in getting that done. Anything to add Jeff? Jeff Hanson: Well first let me do a mic check. How's my voice? Belinda Stewart: It's great. Jeff Hanson: Okay, no, nothing really to add to that. I did see a an interesting question in chat. I think I'll leave that though until after it's around. Do you think it's fair and the leniency towards women compared to men when it comes to crimes and crimes injustice? We'll, we'll address that in in the question and answer. Please keep. Putting those questions in chat though because we do want to get to those and and talk about them here in just a little bit. So the next module, and yes, any mistakes in numbering our minds, so Belinda deserves no. Blame for, numbers not being right. Numbers are hard, especially one through six. But the next module is around medical and mental health and I alluded to that earlier. It it's an area that we typically especially the medical side of things don't necessarily talk to line staff about. Out, but we have to live with it, right? If I'm in a unit and I'm supervising a hundred and eight women on a unit, those medical issues are front and center within that facility. If if a woman is having a hot flash while in menopause and is covering up in a blanket or uncovering in a blanket, I need to understand that dynamic. I I don't have to know the diagnosis. I'm certainly not a dr. or a nurse. But, it's certainly going to affect supervision on a unit and and what that might look like. And the same thing with mental health. We we tend to, and as you folks are aware since you're in the criminal justice system. Most of us are the major providers of mental health services in our locations and a good majority of the women that are coming into our custody and care, have mental health issues. And so. Having an understanding of how that impacts behavior, helps us as corrections professionals work with that in an effective manner. It doesn't mean that we don't work with men who have mental health issues in the same way. It just means that there are some specific skills that we can use with women. Which will, help us avoid some of the issues that typically occur in correction settings with this population. And I think one of the things the Coffee Creek folks are gonna talk about, and it's one of the things that we harp on in this training. Is it's better to spend 5 min now than 2 h later. And so that is not a model that is typically taught in a male prison because conversations and communications are different and. Rightfully so. And so how can I as an officer or a PO have a, have a conversation communicate effectively around these issues or any other issues and avoid spending hours writing up a violation report or a misconduct report and, and what does that look like? Anything else on that, Belinda? Belinda Stewart: So Jeff, I would just say that we have a very frank discussion during this module and I think sometimes it gets people uncomfortable, but I feel like that's part of the problem. In corrections, there are certain things that we're almost uncomfortable to say. We talk about postpartum. We talk about. Menopause which is the gift that keeps on giving. We talk about all the things that happen to a woman on her journey of being a woman so that, you know, I, I think sometimes for male staff. It's like an eye opener. One of the speakers that we have today from Oregon, he, he always says, I'm a, I'm a girl, I'm a girl dad. So I understand a lot of this stuff. Well, everybody doesn't have that distinction of being a girl dad. And so we. Take the time to talk about the hard stuff in this section around medical and mental health. Thanks Jeff, I'm ready for the next. So at this point, using your safety pin is where working with women one oh one or provide where it. Stops for where we interjected safety matters. So using your safety pin is a part of safety matters and this is, it's a three step. Process around using your communication skills to enhance safety. And so each letter of the PIN means something. The P means pause and often we just don't take a minute to gather our thoughts, to think about. How we're gonna say what we're gonna say and who we are gonna say that to. The eye is for is for us to identify, identify what's the topic, what's the issue, what needs to be said, and then to figure out how, what kind of communication are you gonna use? What kind of skills are you gonna use? To navigate that conversation, I I really do. I learned so much just from, for us from us walking through the use of the safety pin. And as Jeff said, a lot of safety matters is around of. Yeah, but it's all about how you effectively communicate with women. And it and that's the key to being able to change your culture is how we communicate with those individuals. Jeff. Jeff Hanson: Thank you, Belinda. And this portion of the training takes up almost a whole day and, and it is skills. It's, how do I put this information I've just learned over the first day and a half to use? How do I implement it? And, and one of the key areas that we talked. Talk about relationships that are a dirty word in the criminal justice system. To say I have a relationship with my client, my inmate, my AIC, whatever terminology you use is a frankly almost a taboo subject. But we're not talking about. Inappropriate relationships. We're talking about those professional relationships that rapport building that moves our clientele to change behavior. And so we, of course, we build relationships, but how do we do that professionally? How do we do that so that it doesn't lead to the other things? And so one of the areas that we focus on is around. Boundaries, which sounds kind of silly, I guess a little bit because we always talk about boundaries. What, what are the boundaries? What we have found in, in training boundaries, what boundaries actually are, what they constitute, what they look like. Almost no one we have trained has ever had training in what boundaries actually are. They get told it, they get told that they need to exercise boundaries, but at the end of the day, nobody ever actually says this is what a boundary is. This is what a time space circumstance boundary looks like. And so, there's been some questions in the chat around the PIN, around the N portion. It stands for navigate. All of the things that we talk about within the safety pin are skills that allow staff to navigate. Whatever when they paused and thought about. Identifying the situation, what are the skills they're gonna use? So it's a, it's a stop and think moment for those of you who worked in in cognitive behavioral, therapy or or with curriculums like that. It's really that moment where I am gathering my information, I'm gathering gathering my thoughts. And I'm figuring out a way forward. What is it I'm gonna use? So as we talk about professional boundaries, huge epiphanies here. Anything else, Belinda? Belinda Stewart: no Jeff I think we're ready for the next one. Yeah. We spend a fair amount of time talking about active listening and motivational interviewing skills and with this section, we do a lot of demonstrations, we do skits. We have, we divide the class up into groups where they, where they work together on being able to, it's about preparing your message. It's about being clear and specific. That with women the approaches that work and how we talk to them should be strength-based. You know, we often in corrections we have all of this jargon that we use in talking to people, and it is really just about. Talking to them in a plain talk manner so they understand we spend time discussing you know the the four core skills for navigating for doing an interview. It's, you know. The the value of asking open-ended questions to be able to do affirmations back to them, to be able to be a reflective listener. And, and when we talk about communications. People often think it's about talking or writing, but as much as anything, it's really about our ability to be able to listen and be able to summarize back to people that so that we have a clear understanding of what the. That that person is actually saying and not us just assuming that we always know. And so we spend a fair amount of time doing exercises in this section. Jeff? Jeff Hanson: We also spend a fair amount of time on de-escalation techniques and effective use of authority. There's a lot of times that we. Make some assumptions that staff bring these skills to the table and we have found time and time again across paradigms, whether it's prisons, jails community corrections, that that may not be a good assumption that maybe folks don't necessarily bring that. skill set to the table. And, as we talk about working with women and taking less time now to avoid a long time in the future, these kind of skills come to the forefront. And how we use our authority, how we communicate with. What does that look like? How can you do it effectively? And we also emphasize nothing in this training is about escaping accountability for, the inmate, the probationer, the parolee. This is we we acknowledge accountability exists. That's there, that's. The reality of it. They need, they've done something, they need to be held accountable for it. That's not in debate. It's how we do it. And so, that has helped us a lot in terms of conversations. And then, last but not least around and I I wanna be mindful of time. The last half of the day, we spend really focusing in on the individual agency around these seven areas, a staffing policy, discipline, clothing, and property, facility design, classification, and reentry. Now, this may sound like it's specific to instance. Institutions, but all of these we use different language in the community, but all of these apply to the community as well. And so we want the staff who are the experts in their organization to work out what this, what this might look like. Granted, 30 corrections officers, 30 parole and probation officers can't make decisions for their executive teams. We understand that. But what they can do is start the process of identifying what are some things, what are some things that are. Are possible, within our system. How, how might it look? And then we help take that forward to their exec team or to the leadership that have asked for this particular training. Anything else Belinda? Belinda Stewart: For states, counties, jails, who are really interested in advancing the agenda around women that are in the justice system. And so with that Jeff, it's time, is it time for you to introduce our great guests? Jeff Hanson: I think it is. We are honored and, pleased that two of the folks that we trained at correctional facility with the Oregon Department of Corrections have agreed to come on and talk about. About their experiences and, and, and their insights into this curriculum and and also their insights into working with this population. I'm gonna let them introduce themselves but I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes. Joy Nelson is a counselor, a correctional counselor. With the Oregon Department of Corrections. I've known Joy since the Coffee Creek opened. We we both were there when the facility first opened its doors and she is one of those folks, those dynamic folks. Who believes in the, in, in the mix of accountability but effective practice and and how that looks with this population. And then Kyle Tallabas, who has been with the Oregon Department of Corrections for a extended period of time. Welcome Joy and Kyle. Archie Weatherspoon IV: See if we can have you guys come off of mute real quick. Hey Kyle, it looks like we lost your audio. Jeff Hanson: What I call a gap analysis, I don't know if it truly is one, but basically look at where the system was at the moment we did that analysis and see what kinds of technical assistance and training that NIC could offer to the facility. Moving forward. And, as Belinda mentioned earlier, one of the things we look at when we do this kind of thing is the commitment on the part of executive leadership around implementation. And what we found was that that there was a lot of commitment to a. In Oregon. And so we did a two day site visit. We spoke with AICs, we communicated with staff, all facets of the, of the institution, and we made recommendations to leadership in the Oregon Department of Corrections. One of the recommendations was, around some leadership training, but. This specific training, we felt was a perfect fit for where Coffee Creek was at that moment. And so we went in, did the training for the first three days, identified 15 or so of those staff. Who showed great aptitude for the training and then conducted a train-the-trainer portion and I'm sure Kyle and and Joy, once the microphone gets fixed, we'll be able to fill in additional gaps on this but. The intent when we do this is that we leave the agency with capacity to deliver the training without us. We're happy to provide any updates or support that someone might need. But, we can't train, we can't continually train the Oregon Department of Corrections over and over and over again. We need them to be able to, to take that burden themselves, and so they have done a lot of work around implementation. Belinda, anything else on? On that technical assistance or. Belinda Stewart: I was remiss in mentioning this earlier when we go in to do those site visits, we have asked the agency for all kinds of information that we review prior to going on site. We ask, you know. The custody level, we ask them to identify the, their custody level. We look at, we look at their disciplinary hearing piece. We look at all kinds of things that help us be able to. Put together a composite of who the women are in the respective state that we are gonna potentially do some work in. So we don't just go there in the blind. We ask for all kinds of information up front to start looking at things that could potentially be a gap. So Archie, did we get the, are we ready? Kyle Tallabas: Hello? Alright go go ahead and go ahead and speak again. I think we can hear you. Kyle Tallabas: Sorry about that, everybody. I'm Kyle Tallabas. I'm the girl dad, so in case there was any confusion there. Joy Nelson: Yes, I'm Joy Nelson. I have one girl and she's a handful, so working in women's corrections definitely helps me. Kyle Tallabas: Navigate that disaster. So we thought we sent a couple slides into NIC, we thought we'd give, kind of an overview of Oregon real quick Coffee Creek really quick just so it was relatable, to you guys. You can kind of compare things to what you do. And while you guys are answering a full question also, I just wanted I I just wanted to let you know that I actually have a dual role here, so I started my career actually as a corrections officer for the first 13 years and now I'm a counselor, so like I'm I'm fortunate enough to be able to kind of speak to both sides. Archie Weatherspoon IV: Perfect, and that polls I'm gonna close here in 5 s 321. So our responses are in Joy and Kyle, that is 46 % line staff or direct staff, just under 30 % for supervisory, 20 % managerial and 5 % executive staff here on, here online. Kyle Tallabas: Awesome. Alright, and the next slide we'll talk about just Coffee Creek and. What makes us special? Yeah, so we were established actually in 2001, the minimum facility opened, the medium opened 2002. We're a multi custody facility, we have minimum to max custody A ICs here, but we're actually three separate facilities. So we have a male intake. A female medium and a female minimum facility. Every person who is sent to prison in the counties comes to us either through male intake or through a female intake process. So, throughout the state, they all funnel here before they're sent out, they're assessed and sent out to their institutions. Our, our campus is on a hundred and eight acres. We have 1795 beds. 713 of those are female beds. They're medium custody female beds. There's 452 minimum female beds. That's the area that I supervise. We have alternate incarceration treatment female beds, there's a hundred and eight of those, and we have 432 beds for the male intake side and our special housing. We have an infirmary DSU special housing and and mental health infirmary. So wanted to share that to give you guys kind of an idea of we're, we're very it's a very dynamic facility. Archie Weatherspoon IV: You should be able to click on something that says Slido. That's gonna open up the option for you to review the poll questions if it's not already showing up on your screen. So go ahead and just find that in the lower right hand corner, and then that poll question should be coming up for you. We really want to take some time to kind of find out. Where people are coming from and how many women are housed. So we're gonna give that just ten more seconds, and if it's not working for you, I see a lot of you are putting that answer into the chat for us so we do appreciate that. But how many women are housed in your facility or are on supervision within your agency? And that poll is closed into 321 with 76 votes. It looks like zero to 25 at 13 % 11 % of 26 to 50 12 % 5118 % one oh one to 3909 and over or just 50 % over 400 women in their agency Kyle and Joy. See. Kyle I'm hoping that we didn't lose you again. Are you there? Jeff Hanson: Just so we don't have any dead air, on those poll results, one of the things that NIC is putting a lot of energy towards. Is working with the smaller agencies that, we, that typically have not been a an area of focus. Not because anyone is, you know, purposely saying, well, I don't want to work with a. Agency that only has ten women just because its economy of scale, right? You you work with the largest agencies, but we've, we realized that there are literally thousands of corrections agencies across the United States that are in rural, frontier or tribal settings. And so as a result. We're looking at ways to implement things like this training, like, these kind of initiatives within those smaller jurisdictions and, and what that might look like. And so if you are a smaller jurisdiction and you happen to be on. To make that work. And for the largest agencies, oftentimes we have the most resources because we are large agencies, but sometimes the implementation piece could be a little tough in those larger agencies just because it takes a while to turn that ship. That being said, that's why, as Belinda. We like to make sure that we don't leave trainees hanging. So we do follow up, we make ourselves available for that kind of thing. Archie Weatherspoon IV: Looks like Kyle, we heard you for a half a second. Can you take yourself back off the mute and see if that audio is coming back on? Beckinney. We can vaguely hear you jeff Jeff I'm not sure if it's just bad for me. Was it very quiet? Kyle, go ahead and see if you can change your audio from your computer to your phone and that should take care of that issue. In the meantime, what we're gonna do is we're gonna ask a poll question that I know that Kyle and Joy were gonna leave, but I'm gonna put it out there to to everyone. We're gonna allow a little bit more time. Also hopefully we can get Kyle back online and joy. Alright it looks like overwhelmingly 63 %. It's substance abuse where we have 4 % prop property violations or misconduct of 4 %, absconding and violent 3 % violations. Disobedience of an order is 24 %, so almost a quarter and being an unauthorized area at 3 %. Kyle Tallabas: If you have the opportunity to turn the volume up. Archie Weatherspoon IV: I think we can hear you. Go ahead and speak. I was glad to hear you again. Kyle Tallabas: Let letting you know that we had that poll question. Well, I think that that's spot on according to the list that we've made. I mean, I'm curious as far as the disrespect or the dis or the disobedience of an order, I know that ours goes under the disrespect and that's that communication piece. Like, is our, as far as programming and sort? On making sure that they have clear conduct. We do have also work based education programs and those are mostly over here at the minimum and I'll let Kyle speak on some of those. But over at the medium facility where I'm located as the correctional counselor, we have the DMV, so most of the prison or a couple of the prisons and. In the intake process, we have mental health that meets with them and figures out basically what, what their level of mental health need, if any is and if there's any cognitive issues going on and then we figure out what programs that they are best suited for. So we do BHS or behavioral health services. It's used as order program, it is facilitated by treatment providers, and we also have trained AICs to assist in that. So the AICs and the treatment providers will do either group sessions or a lot of the time one-on-one depending on I'm assuming I don't have a, a process I don't have any part in this other than a referral. To participate and have relationships with their children depending on their crime and their status, right? Some of some people unfortunately aren't able to reunify with their children, but these individual groups and individual people help. To just navigate the system because if they don't, in here we don't really have, we don't obviously we don't have outgoing phone calls that they have continuous access to, so it's really hard to be able to talk to the courts, talk to, the providers if your child is in any type of. Archie Weatherspoon IV: Well, that's great. So Jeff, I'll hand it back over to you because we're now at that portion, first time for questions and answers. Jeff Hanson: And, and then the next question that I see in the chat, and I don't know if you have this data, do you know what the recidivism rate is coming out of your facility? Experiences with that, that's the national, average. So, so, your guys's experience with. Kyle Tallabas: But, my, my fear was this like people aren't going to adhere to this, this way of thinking. And it's unfortunate because we have so many amazing staff and when we get together and when we can bring out the best in, in our AIC population, then, and we know that we're. I I can see a huge difference in how we look at each other as, as staff and how we are starting to communicate and treat this population. And on the security side, most of, most of the participants, you know, we know how security is, any change. As the three managers, we decided that this was on us, this was our lift, and we were going to keep moving this forward for the administration. So we have our first cohorts in August, 25 August, and then we have another one in September. It's our first training, we're excited. Which we can do that still with accountability. We can still, you know, run our institutions and, you know, keep our, I always joke about keep the lights on and the fences up. That's fundamental in what we do, but how we're interacting and taking that 5 min to to peel back these layers. Like learning what I learned in this class. I'll I'll put it that way, let's put it back to the class. Like, I didn't realize a lot of the things that had to do with the pathways because like I said, I was the, I was the old, you know, the old guy that was trying, like my first day walking in, I asked. But I get what I'll say is like everything and probably everybody's budgets are a challenge and, and where to where to source that that funding. Well, and part of that budget piece too, and the restructuring what we have been able to do with the institution is I saw many comments on here that women are held at a higher custody level. Joy Nelson: So our superintendent has put an influx of AICs that are minimum eligible in our minimum facility. And so we are holding them at a lower custody level. And it seems to be working out so far. And again, like When you you go from one place so our medium facility has these big metal doors that slam shut all day long and then to um when you put somebody who maybe is not that criminal um over there and again with all the PTSD and the trauma informed things that we have you know going on or implemented here this hit this big shift has actually really worked and I think has um made people like been able to come over here and readjust and get ready for that reentry into the community So I think that's part of a a huge piece of us treating people differently because I do think that in our heads when they're over in the medium facility that we're like they're hardened criminals, right? And so we treat them a little bit differently, possibly. So over here it is it's an open dorm experience. Everybody gets to share a yard together. And so like Kyle said there is more of that relational piece. They get to see their friends that they haven't seen for a long time because the medium facility that we're in, it's separated and only two units get to have yard at the same time. So if you're not on a connecting unit, you don't get to have continue that friendship and that is where some of the disciplinary issues come in because that's like it's that trickle effect then they start going in an unauthorized area to meet up with their friends that they don't get to see on a frequent basis Jeff Hanson: Okay, thank you. And I appreciate all the answers. We have additional questions, but we're running out of time and I want to be able to uh share a little bit about how folks can seek out this training or additional information. So um it if we didn't get to your questions and you still want information information on it we'll give you contact information and you can uh either contact Kyle or Joy or Belinda or myself And we'll be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about this webinar. Oh, there we go. So the training itself, if you or your agency has any interest in bringing this training in There are two phases to it. Now this is the actual training itself. There's actually one additional phase that's not technically part of the training. That phase is us speaking with your senior management about what their commitment is, what direction they want to go, how sustainable it is within your agency uh those kind of questions. But the actual training itself is a three-day basic training for up to 30 staff followed. Generally we recommend a pretty good cross-section though of line supervisory middle management and executive staff training staff folks who are going to be uh maybe they won't necessarily move on to be trainers but you need those folks in order to support the training moving forward Then there is a follow-up train the trainer, which is three days, and we take 15 of the 30 original staff that were in the basic training, and we teach them facilitation skills, we teach them the nuances of the curriculum, we provide coaching and feedback, and we really take a deep dive into how to deliver this in an effective fashion. So if you do have interest about this particular training, well I'll ask Belinda, anything else on the training that that we should make them aware of Belinda Stewart: You know, Jeff, the only thing that I would say is that one of the things that we didn't say is at the beginning, the National Institute of Corrections, we are 50 people, the whole agency. And so we can literally be all over the country doing training, but we feel like one of our one of the strongest things that we can do is equip people to make the stuff that we teach sustainable. So when we do the train, the trainers for you And you can go back and teach it yourself inside the agency. You have the ability to touch so many more people than we can. And so that's why with a lot of our programs, we are starting to do the train the trainers. So it helps enhance your agency's ability to continue it once we come in and do it initially. Jeff Hanson: Absolutely, sustainability is king. In terms of uh contacts and uh how to access if you have interest in the training itself, both Belinda and I's contact information is on the screen Please just shoot us an email. We can start the conversation and tell you what the process looks like and how to go about it. If you have questions just about working with women in corrections in general, we're also a resource for that. And I'd be uh won't speak for Belinda, but I'm pretty sure I can on this. We would be more than happy to have that conversation with you. If you have information about the implementation of the curriculum How Coffee Creek is working with it, those kinds of things. We also included Kyle and Joy's information on the screen. And Just so that everyone is aware, this because it was recorded will be made available online And you can access this information. It may take a few days for it to appear on our website, but just be aware that that is an option for you Anything else before we close out, Belinda? Belinda Stewart: I don't think so, other than just to say thank you so much for your interest in the program, but more importantly the interest of the women that you are going to serve. Every little bit of knowledge that you obtain helps you to be able to serve them better. And so we are so thankful that you took a couple of hours out of your day to hear what we had to say. Jeff Hanson: Absolutely. Thank you. And special thanks to Kyle and Joy who took some time out of their day to talk about the curriculum. Archie Weatherspoon IV: Well folks, that concludes our webinar for providing safety and security in managing women in the criminal justice system I have been your host, Archie Weatherspoon IV of the National Institute of Corrections. I want to give a big shout out to Ben Hunter from the Information Center for assisting us in production today. Thank you so much for your time. Please reach out to Belinda or Jeff if you have any questions or to Kyle and Joy and have a great rest of your day.