The company that I am writing about is Phillips State Prison. The prison has been around for many years. I am currently an employee of this company. The company is operated by the Department of Corrections which is a security organization. The prison is a male facility and consists of 10 living units, each with two dormitories. The number of units with two-man cells is seven and a half while the remainder is a combination of two single-man cells. The combination two-single man cells houses MH/SM offenders. There are a total of 100 isolation/segregation cells. The Phillips State Prison Transitional Center has 200 beds.
The mission of this facility is to ensure public safety and effectively house offenders while operating a safe and secure facility by housing offenders who have had management problems at other prisons or centers and those who could pose a risk if housed elsewhere. It provides all levels of Mental Health service to include Level IV, Crisis Stabilization. (Sex Offender Release Site) Host facility for Davis PDC and Phillips TC.
The company’s strengths are preventing escapes and providing the proper accountability to count and track inmates in every move they make. The first strength that I would like to discuss is preventing escapes. The company does an excellent job in preventing escapes. They have great staff that works together as a team to come together to track the inmates. They have an accountability roster to sign each offender in and out. On this roster they have the location and building that the inmate is located in. If the offender is not signed in and out then that means they are in their cells. The second strength is that they have a count system which is called a double count. How it works is you put the inmates online and make them stand in front of their cell. One officer goes and count whiles the other officer stand and watch. Once the first officer is finished counting the next officer stands and watch while the other officer counts. The count procedure is done this way to ensure that both officers come up with the same exact number of inmates. They also conduct the same exact count procedures every two to four hours throughout the shift. They have census counts and they have official counts. So it makes it hard for an offender to get away.
The first weakness of the company is the lack to control contraband in the facility. To minimize the problem I feel that they need to fire the officers that are helping the inmates. Also they should have officers other than the tower officer outside of the prison to ensure that the contraband isn’t being thrown over the fence. When coming into the prison we are checked and searched before we enter the building. Some officers that work the front bunker don’t check as well as others do. Those officers should be fired as well.
The second weakness would be that they don’t have any structure. They let the inmates pretty much does what they want to do in order to keep down riots and confusion. To minimize this issue I feel like they should follow a paramilitary structure and stick with it. They might try and start the structure for a minute, but it eventually goes back to the inmates doing what they want to do. I see how they try to please and keep these inmates happy all the time. They tell us to give orders to the inmate and when we do, we are the ones who are looking crazy, because at the end of the day the higher officials take the inmates side.
The first opportunity that the organization is facing would be that we have been in demand for more officers to work for the facility. Now there are more officers being interested to work for the department of corrections and we are hiring more than ever now. We are more manned with security power so the prison can be operated as discussed.
The second opportunity that the organization is facing is a raise. The organization hasn’t had a raise in over eight years. Now they are actually talking about giving us an increase in the salary. Did you know that the county prisons make eleven thousand dollars more than a prison facility? We deal with inmates that are convicted in the court of law and they deal with inmates that have not been convicted or will not be convicted. So that’s a good thing.
The first threat to the company is officers quitting due to the poor management and how they treat the fellow officers when they come to work. Showing appreciation to the fellow officers that risk their lives every day is a big deal. First of all if the prison didn’t have officers to keep the prison running then the prison would shut down and everyone would be out of a job. Instead of treating the officers like crap they should praise them and lift them up oppose to putting them down. We already have to come to work for twelve or more hours and deal with hostile inmates. Who wants to come to work and deal with the higher officials or management treating you some kind of way?
The second threat is upkeep of the prison. If the management does not make sure that the upkeep of the prison is properly maintained. Then the prison will be shut down and codenamed. The inmates would become sick and have to be shipped somewhere else while the prison itself would be closed putting everyone out of a job. Not to mention the officers it would become sick. If the officers become sick then they could transfer the sickness to their family. We already have to deal with the different illnesses that come with the inmates. Keeping the institution clean as possible is very important.

In conclusion, in order to capitalize the opportunities in the organization increasing the salary of officers whose lives are in danger would greatly help making officers want to come to work making their morale higher and the job easier to commit to. To neutralize the threats in the organization treat the officers with respect and showing them appreciation instead of bashing them and putting them down would eliminate officers from quitting and finding another job. As stated above if the officers already have to deal with hostile inmates, why do they need the same treatment from the employers. Lastly, I would like to say that staying safe, healthy and respected will carry a lot of weight when working in a prison.