Mack Jarvis, former Secretary of Correction

Jarvis 1
:37 .wav file

Jarvis 2
:26 .wav file

Home

Franklin Freeman, former Correction Secretary

Mack Jarvis, former Correction Secretary

Jeff Schwartz of LETRA

Agenda

Class

Photos of ceremony

Correction Manager's Training Program
June 3, 1999 graduation of first class

We began looking at a type of management program that was dedicated just to North Carolina. We did not want to go out and get a generic training program. We could get those anywhere across the country. The Governor had mandated that we streamline government. He wanted us to make government more business like. As I recall, there was a large news article in the papers around North Carolina that we were going to be more customer friendly. So we decided to get with some folks and see what we could come up with.

The objectives we wanted to set forth were:

• create an intensive and comprehensive management development program that is NC Correction specific
• include newly appointed managers or people who were going to be in the department for another 10 or 12 years. We wanted to have a cross pollination of ideas and experiences so we could pull people together. One thing that we tried to do starting about 1994 was to pull the Department of Correction together. We had probation and parole officers. We had prisons. We had prisons in judicial districts and the Superintendent did know who the Judicial District Manager was. So we tried to pull a cross section of people together.
• have three distinct and separate mentoring experiences for participants
• insure the future success of NC DOC by having managers who were prepared to manage and lead. Franklin and I talked about having small prison units with 85 to 100 inmates and 25 to 30 staff. As we started into this building program, (we built 15,000 beds from 1993 through 1998) our prisons changed. Green County was a good example where we had a small prison unit and we ended up with 700 inmates. Columbus County was one of those areas where we started with a small prison unit and ended up with 700 or 800 inmates and 250 to 300 staff. Also in that period of 1993 and 1994, Jimmy Harris, former Director of Probation and Parole, Theodis Beck and Robert Guy and some other folks were helping reorganize the Division of Adult Probation and Parole (now the Division of Community Corrections). and we set it up along judicial districts. We were putting people into new kinds of positions. That's one of the things we tried to deal with in this training program.
• We wanted to bring managers in and develop managers who would be proactive. We wanted managers who would take a risk. We wanted them to take wise risks. We wanted them to take business-oriented types of risks. We did about $77 million last year in Correction Enterprise. A lot of folks don't realize when they drive up and down the highway and they see all the signs and the yellow and white paint, all that is done with inmate labor. One thing we have been real proud of in the last two or three years is the optical plant that we opened up. We are now able to make 100,000 pair of glasses a year. About 90,000 of those glasses go to Medicare patients in this state. The other 10,000 are made for inmates assigned to the Department of Correction.
• institutionalize a management development program that is accredited and sanctioned. We wanted it accredited so that it would carry on once this administration or the secretaries that have been in this administration are gone.

I want to give credit to a number of folks for getting this thing started. One of them is Governor Hunt. He has supported this from the start, the very first. Franklin, who is a close and dear friend. Franklin, thank you for your support and your vision and your help on this. There was Michael Williamson who we met with early on at the Institute of Government. Mike Smith, the director of the Institute of Government and Dick McMahon and Tom Thornburg, there were a lot of folks. We didn't just sit down one night and decide that we were going to have this program and it would be done. Joe Chandler ran across the state from Currituck County to Haywood County. He talked to employees in probation and parole and prisons and brought back information on the kinds of things employees would like to see us include. Then in our first meeting with Jeff Schwartz and Cindy Berry, they grasped this right off that we were serious about this and they wanted to help us. They have been such great support and help in getting this started. Then there's Mike Evers. He has worked hard.

The people we need to thank most of all are the 22 of you who are graduating, the ones who came down here. You left home on Sunday night, got down here for classes. You got calls from your facilities and operations and you were able to endure this. Nine months is a long time. I know most of you have families and certainly have a difficult job. You are to be congratulated.