Risk Management Plan Building
Assignment One: “Risky Business”
Building a risk management plan in a private men’s prison
Background
This exercise is to get you to start to think about managers roles and responsibilities in general and specifically those roles and responsibilities in a private prison. Do you think these are different or can you see the synergies that might exist?
To do this assessment task you will need to a look at week one’s power point notes, listen to week 2’s information on risk assessment + management and read the information on risk assessment, risk management and developing a risk management plan. I think you will need to read more widely than just weeks 2 readings to do well in the task- see the marking criteria for Assignment One.
While it might seem a lot to do I think you may enjoy the task. This is because risk in the criminal justice system has become a huge issue and one that every organisation needs to be cognisant of. I believe that you as future employees or managers will benefit from working on this task so early in the semester. I have chosen a risk issue related to drug use as I think this is the most critical long-term risk facing prisons. You could think of others I am sure as I did especially given what we are facing in terms of COVID 19 – but are these long-term? I hope not.
Scenario
You are a manager in a private prison in Victoria. One of the prison officers in your division has come to you as she found drugs buried in a metal drum in the children’s playground in the Visitor centre. She found these after a routine search of the area after the prisoners had left the area and visiting hours had closed. She said that family visits had closed earlier than usual as one of the prisoners had an argument with his partner. Some of the other prisoners became agitated due to small children being around and the area went into lockdown and all people were removed quickly. The prison officer felt that these circumstances must have led to the drugs being left behind. She says she told the other officers she had found what she thought looked like drugs and was told her to report the incident and take the drugs to you as you would know what to do with them. Risk Management Plan Building
You ask her a range of questions related to the circumstances:
• Which prisoners had visits?
• How many prisoners were there and how many children?
• Who was near the drum?
She says she will consult the book but there were about 15 visits and about 8 children were playing in the play area. The other children were either too young or were adolescents. At different points though some adults who didn’t have children in the play area went outside as it was a lovely sunny day and very pleasant in the sunshine. She had asked the other officers who was near the drum, but no one really noticed that.
You tell the officer that she will need to complete a critical incident form. She must however not discuss this with anyone but forward it to you. You also know that you will have to undertake a risk assessment and develop a risk management plan. You recently completed training and have been given a Risk Assessment and Risk Management model for Safety and Security of prison behaviour. Consult the following documents:
Corrections Victoria’s Strategic Plan 2015-18 https://www.corrections.vic.gov.au/corrections-victoria-strategic-plan-2015-2018-delivering-effective-correctional-services-for-a-safe
(While this is out of date there isn’t a more up to date one available- there is one for DJCS but this doesn’t seem useful for this exercise). If you find something else let me know.
The private prison’s guidelines are the based on Corrections Victoria’s Strategic Plan 2015-18.
The following outlines aspects of this Model that need to be considered for the Assessment task.
1. The mission and purpose of the business? (why does it exist?) Determine which of the mission and purposes are relevant to the Risk Assessment and Risk Management Plan and why – see marking criteria
• Manage and contain prisoners in a safe, secure and humane manner, commensurate with their level of risk.
• Manage prisoner assessment, classification and placement processes using validated evidence-based tools.
• To ensure that prisoners and offenders fulfil the sentences, orders and directions of courts and releasing authorities.
• Engage prisoners to make positive behavioural change – intervention programs, education, vocational education, etc to prepare prisoners to return to the community (Rehabilitation and Reducing Reoffending)
• Deliver a safer Victoria in partnership with the Courts, Victoria Police, Adult Parole Board and the community.
Use references to support your position.
2. How will these objectives be met? Determine which of the objectives are relevant to the Risk Assessment and Risk Management Plan and why – See marking criteria
• Provide sufficient capacity to meet prison bed demand
• Prison physical infrastructure designed to support operational needs and minimise risk
• Improve outcomes for short-sentenced prisoners who will not be eligible for parole supervision. (increase availability and access to relevant programs).
• A strong Community Correctional Services system to ensure confidence of Courts to use non-custodial sentencing alternative, except where the nature or history of offending, or the need for public protection necessitates incarceration
• Create and maintain robust security framework that includes strengthening intelligence systems.
• Improve staff and prisoner health and safety. (Ie systems to reduce prisoner on prisoner or prisoner on staff violence; minimise risk of other harm, including communicable diseases, epidemics, etc).
• Provide the information technology and other resources required for staff in doing their jobs.
• Target recruitment of staff suitable to work with diverse, challenging and complex offender population in accordance with sentencing and rehabilitative objectives.
• Provide ongoing training and in-service education to enhance capability in relation to changes in prisoner population, profile, and emerging evidence of effective methods of management.\
Use references to support your position.
3. Determine what types of risks would impact on achievement of these objectives? And why?- see Marking Criteria
• Financial – insufficient funds to operate core programs or keep pace with growth in prisoner population
• Operational risks – including deficits in planning and management decision making
• Legal – eg legal action against prison authorities for wrongly calculating sentence dates
• Natural disaster (e.g fire destroys part of prison) or malicious event
• Security breaches – escape from a prison, riot, introduction of banned substances into prisons, loss of confidential data,
• Health and Safety – e.g contagious illness makes most of prison staff unavailable for work, or requires hospitalisation/isolation of large numbers of prisoners, preventable deaths in custody, drugs in prison
• Information systems failure
• Supervision: injury or mishap in prison workshop, classroom, recreation space, etc due to inadequate prisoner supervision
• Inadequate staff training to deal with prisoner management contingencies
Use references to support your position.
4. Developing a Risk Analysis Classification Matrix – this will help you develop a Risk Management Plan
NOTE: In some models the most severe risks may be described as Extreme or Catastrophic. These are risks that are mission-critical. (e.g permanent/long term disruption to capability; ruinous impact on community standing). Do any of these apply in this scenario?
Sometimes it will be possible to specify the consequences of risk in financial terms but it is more likely to be in operational impact terms, especially given this scenario.
Make a table as this example and populate it with the key headings to the left and the top related to this scenario
Nature of Risk: What are the risks?
Some selected risks –
You should use all available data to form your judgement, rather than rely on best guess. (Report on Government Services is an invaluable resource –
http://www.pc.gov.au/research/ongoing/report-on-government-services
Issues
It may be that this is not the first time that drugs have been left in the children’s play area. What are the other risks- media – what is the impact? What else?
What is this likelihood – yes or no or unsure Likelihood –
What are the Consequences of the drugs being found–
Potential for serious further offences, major threat to safety of public and their confidence in the system. Major political implications for government of the day. What about the media spot light if this is leaked to the media.
** Of importance here is how can the risks impact on meeting the objectives outlined above
Consider the following:
Community Risks- this relates to the other prisoners + the community in general
Organisational risks
Personal and professional risks
How will the identified risks be managed from this scenario? Think about this in relation to the objectives and mission statement too- see the marking criteria.
Use references to support your position.
5. Developing the Risk Management Plan – see the marking criteria. Having identified the risks, the probabilities, and the consequences the next step is to decide what is to be done.
Amongst the options are:
1. Avoidance/elimination – what does this mean given the scenario?
2. Risk reduction – design new process, system, security platform, upgrade technology, improve built environment, training of staff, etc.
3. Hazard minimisation – what will this involve
4. Transfer/share risk How can this be accomplished?
5. Accept the risk and budget for it or live with it. What does this mean?
You need to use references to support your position.
You also need to think about
1 The probable success of the plan – see the marking criteria
2 The probable failure of the plan- see the marking criteria
**The written content and structure will be marked, and you must use a range of relevant references – see the marking criteria. I have identified that each area needs references.
Remember risk assessment involves critical assessment of all of the risk issues and there are many in this scenario. Read the Kemshall (2007) extracts but also think about the prison mandate.