WITNESS
Patrick McManus served as Assistant Commissioner of Corrections for the State of Minnesota from 1974 to1979 where his responsibilities included corrections officer training, academic and vocational education programs for inmates, parole and probation services and the initiation and administration of Minnesota's Community Corrections Act. He was then appointed by the Governor of Kansas to serve as the state's Secretary of Corrections in 1979, a position he held until 1983. In his capacity as secretary, Mr. McManus oversaw the department's 1,400 employees, a $40 million annual operating budget and 3,000 prisoners housed in five major institutions and five smaller institutions.
Over the years Mr. McManus has served as a court appointed special master and court monitor in a number of cases, working to ensure compliance with settlement and consent agreements and providing guidance on prison administration and construction in cases litigating a range of prison issues. He has also appeared as an expert witness on a number of occasions. Early in his career Mr. McManus was a school principal and a juvenile court probation officer.
Mr. McManus received his B.A. from the Saint Paul Seminary of the University of St. Thomas; a graduate degree in theology, summa cum laude, from the Gregorian University in Rome; a Master of Arts in Education Administration from the University of St. Thomas; and a Certificate in Strategic Management in Corrections from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
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STATEMENT
…While I believe that "modeling" appropriate behavior and imposing sanctions for infractions can reduce prisoner abuse, I am less sure that teaching a "code of ethics" section in a training class has a similar impact. Certainly it is important that new (and current) employees know their ethical obligations, but perhaps we need to do more. Staff members who abuse prisoners, or cover for those who do, usually know that what they are doing is wrong. Might training, then, have any additional role in addressing this issue?
The goal of such training might be to lower the perceived wall between officers' interests and inmates' interests, rather than trying to eliminate or even diminish officer loyalty, which in most ways is a valuable and useful trait. …Thinking about the corrections officer's role from a human rights perspective can do that.
I am not advocating here that we change what a corrections officer does. Rather I am suggesting that changing the way we (and they) think about the officer's role may affect the way we train officers and may even ultimately change some officer behavior. At present, if we think at all about the jail and prison officers' role we are influenced by the uncertain and sometimes conflicting "mission" that society assigns to the prisons and jails themselves. These institutions, we are told, should incapacitate, deter, punish and rehabilitate prisoners, preferably all at the same lime; they are to be unpleasant but still safe and healthy, and most of all they are to keep the rest of us safe from crime. That uncertain call leads to a working definition for corrections officers that lies somewhere between a cop and a social worker, a conflicted hybrid not designed for success.
Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission
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