Embrace less ambiguous and more easily achievable goals and downplay or sacrifice others; attempt to alter (usually lower) public expectations by rehearsing agency problems; express pessimism and resignation about the public value of the agency's work. Where the executive management of a barbed-wire bureaucracy is concerned, these three common responses to goal conflict and technological uncertainty represent three deadly sins. It is true that corrections commissioners who have responded in one or more of these three ways have won short-term benefits of various kinds. They have stimulated newspaper editorials about the commissioner's "new realism"; they have activated fresh or invigorated old internal and external allies from the ranks of those who support the goal (or subset of goals) the commissioner has embraced (or who favor shrinking the number of people under correctional supervision). Within a year or so, however, the latent costs of these responses invariably come home to roost. The commissioner confronts litigation and public criticism concerning inhumane warehousing conditions behind bars (where the commissioner's favored goals are punishment and incapacitation), or charges of coddling and "letting the inmates run the joint" (where the favored goal is rehabilitation); or a loss of public confidence and a fall from political and judicial grace for both the agency and its leader; or lower staff morale, higher turnover rates and, in many jurisdictions, an increase in the use of disability leaves and absenteeism by line employees.
There are, however, three coping strategies that appear to have served past and present corrections commissioners in good stead under all circumstances. The primary strategy has been to act as the even-handed custodian of all four vague, controversial, and self-contradictory purposes of corrections-punish, deter, incapacitate, rehabilitate-by translating them administratively into two or three operational goals. A good illustration is the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
As noted earlier, the BOP was created at a time when the nation's prisons were under severe criticism. The agency's first three directors gradually institutionalized a management system that stressed inmate discipline, work, and recreation. Between 1970 and 1987 the agency's fourth director, Norman A. Carlson, formally advanced an agency mission statement emphasizing three goals: safety, humanity, and opportunity. Safety meant the incidence of things that threaten the physical and emotional well-being of inmates and staff and place the public at direct risk- assault, homicide, suicide, escape, and so on. Humanity meant the incidence of things that might make for decent living conditions behind bars-good food, clean clothes, and exercise opportunities. Opportunity meant the incidence of things that might improve the inmates' later life prospects-programs in remedial reading, job training, and so on.
In testimony before Congress, in dealing with the press, in response to court orders, and in virtually every aspect of its internal management, the director of the BOP kept himself and his staff focused on these three goals, forever implying, though rarely stating explicitly, that they were operational embodiments of the ultimate ends of corrections, or as near to such as one could get. Especially interesting in this regard was his blending of opportunity with rehabilitation in a way that held out the possibility, but not the promise, that offenders would return to the community as law-abiding citizens and that promoted the agency's public value as a facilitator rather than as guarantor of this outcome. In a typical bout of public questioning, the director once stated:
Mr. Chairman, I must say that I have changed my attitude over the past few years, based upon [my reading of work by leading] scholars in this field. . . . I still think, however, as I said in my testimony, that inmates can and do change. Why they change I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. But as I indicated, about half the inmates released from custody today stay out of trouble. The change has to come from within the inmate himself. ... I think we can facilitate change, but we certainly cannot coerce it.
This commissioner of corrections, building on the organizational themes and innovations of his predecessors, managed his agency around these three performance-based goals in a way that made it possible for him and his agency to absorb shifts in legislative sentiment, changes in public and "expert" opinion, new court decrees, and so on, without exposing his office to severe criticisms or exposing the agency to sudden, radical, and demoralizing upheavals. Corrections commissioners in several other agencies-from the Texas Department of Corrections to the Pennsylvania Bureau of Corrections-have also managed their agencies around a few such operational ends. Between 1962 and 1972 in Texas, Dr. George Beto dubbed the agency's aims as "obedience, labor, and self-improvement"; between 1953 and 1970 in Pennsylvania, that bureau's first commissioner, Arthur T. Prasse, styled their goals more loosely as "instructive labor, educational, and moral training."
Not surprisingly, there has been a cross-fertilization of administrative ideas among commissioners who have attempted to manage their barbed-wire bureaucracies around such operational goals. Certain traits are common to penal executives who have taken this approach. Generally speaking, they are versed in the latest penological theories but profess to be swept away by none of them. They have strong, well-articulated personal views about corrections (usually traditional-punitive-custodial ideas mixed with progressive-reformist ones and weighted in favor of the former) which they advance in deference to their sense of professional mission as "the hands and feet" of important public values. Also, they are absolutely relentless in trying to interest important outside actors- judges, legislators, journalists, and others-in the workings of their agency. As one of the longest-reigning commissioners in the history of corrections observed:
You have to pursue all the goals all the time. People want retribution and rehabilitation... Embodying all the goals in your institutional routine is difficult, but you get there by focusing on safety and programs… The commissioner doesn't own the prisons, and so he must interest others in their quality of life.
There are at least two other coping strategies that have been employed successfully in the management of barbed-wire bureaucracies. First, commissioners have consciously sought to project an image of themselves that is appealing to a wide range of people both inside and outside of the organization. For example, Dr. George Beto of the Texas Department of Corrections earned the nickname "Walking George" for his practice of showing up at the prisons every day, usually unannounced. A tall, lean Lutheran minister and college-president-turned-prison-chief, Beto was as comfortable with a prison manual as he was with a Bible; he could quote the classics one minute and chew out a subordinate the next. Beto made himself popular with powerful state leaders, developed a reputation for omniscience among his subordinates, and retired while he was at the height of his powers and popularity. To inmates, Beto was "the preacher man with a baseball bat in one hand and a Bible in the other." To staff he was a bigger-than-life figure who would reward loyalty and good performance but be ruthless in punishing errors and insubordination. To state leaders he was an exceedingly talented, politically sensitive, tireless, and competent executive who could be relied upon to run the prisons well and cheaply.
Second, commissioners have adopted technical and managerial innovations in order to create a sense of progress and generate favorable press: computerized cellblock-monitoring devices; sophisticated inmate-classification systems; reports by high-priced and credible outside management consultants; revamped staff recruitment and training programs; and so forth. Often, commissioners have made such innovations despite their belief that the results would be marginal at best. As one commissioner observed:
Here's a field that's controversial. There's a sense in which, by definition, we can't make progress. It's stagnant. So every once in a while, you have to do something to stir the pot, motivate people, create some sense of visible, tangible progress-new hardware, new reports, new forms. None of it may amount to anything in the end, but you get inmates, your staff, and the news people to recognize that you're alive, that you're trying. In this business, all we can do is to try, experiment, keep at it.
