Tuesday, May 18, 2010

No Deposit, No Return

Dick Lumb and I recently conducted a workshop with correctional officers who work in Cumberland County. These are the men and women who work in the county jail, the correctional center and the Youth Center. The workshop focused on resilience. Given the level of turnover of staff in these facilities, the focus was clearly on the resilience of staff with some discussion of how these skills and attitudes could be applied to the rehabilitation of inmates. Dick and I were both impressed by the level of dedication and commitment of the participants in the workshop. Because these individuals are charged with caring for the human beings that our society throws away, they often do not receive the respect and support of our society. Like the sanitation worker who carries away the material garbage of our society, corrections officers are often paid a similar wage and their jobs are rated as equally undesirable. Hopefully, this will change some as corrections moves toward a rehabilitation philosophy again rather than a punishment philosophy. Corrections officers, like other public servants, e.g., sanitation workers, perform a vital function in our society and deserve respect and support.

Ron Breazeale, Ph.D.
Author, Duct Tape Isn’t Enough
www.reachinghome.com

What Do We Value?

In a capitalistic society such as ours, the answer is pretty easy. Money. We tend to reward those who make it with more money and tend to penalize those who don’t with less money. And the rewards and punishments tend to come fairly quickly. Unprofitable stocks get sold and often, but not always, CEOs of failing companies get fired. This, of course, was not true for many of the folks on Wall Street who recently got huge financial bonuses for exceedingly poor performance. Tradition, tradition.
So as a society, we may talk the talk, e.g., the importance of education, the need to feed the hungry and house the homeless, etc., etc., but as a society, we have been very poor at walking the walk. Where we put our money tells the tale, not our words.

Ron Breazeale, Ph.D.
Author, Duct Tape Isn’t Enough
http://www.reachinghome.com/