Our Work
Join us in Ohio
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Join us for our 4th
Innovations in Corrections Webinar with
Annette Chambers-Smith, Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC)
Ohio’s Reintegration Units (ORI Program) deliver results, and you’re invited to see how!
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✔ Seeking innovative solutions and best practices for your facility?
✔ Staffing retention and recruitment challenges?
✔ Struggling to decrease your recidivism rates?
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Don’t miss this exclusive look at one of the nation’s most effective normalcy programs.
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Dr. Lisa Clements is going behind the bars to join Director Annette Chambers-Smith and her team for an unscripted conversation with staff and residents about the unexpected successes and lessons from their normalcy unit.
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Missouri
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Join us for our 3rd Innovations in Corrections Webinar as we sit down with the
Director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) Rob Jeffreys.
Director Jeffreys has 28+ years of experience in Corrections in Ohio, Illinois, and Nebraska.
Director Jeffreys will be joined by Dr. Lisa Clements of the Clements Initiative, and Christopher Poulos of the Center for Justice and Human Dignity, the Executive Director for Arizona’s Department of Corrections Rehabilitation & Reentry.
Look forward to a discussion around:
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Leading well within the Corrections Industry
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Reentry 2030
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TRANSFORM Nebraska
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Advice for other leaders in Corrections
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Tom Clements Academy for Excellence in Corrections
The Academy for Excellence in Corrections is designed to accommodate up to 144 trainees as they learn, practice and prepare for their career in an authentic environment.
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A first of its kind training facility for correctional officers in the home of a former Cameron, Missouri, prison was unveiled to the public with a grand opening ceremony.
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Prison cells that once housed inmates at the Western Missouri Correctional Center have transformed into dorm-style living areas for officers in training at the new Academy for Excellence in Corrections. Missouri Department of Corrections.
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“We’ve known for a long time that we need to improve the quality of our training and really our environments are so unique, there’s not a lot of other environments that train people to work in prison,” Missouri Department of Corrections Director Trevor Foley said.
“We were training people to do that in the classroom. So the opportunity to be able to use a former prison and turn it into the academy so that our environments where we train will mirror the environments where we work.”
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The academy is designed to accommodate up to 144 trainees as they learn, practice and prepare for their career in an authentic corrections environment, simulating the settings of the department’s correctional facilities as well as aspects of its two probation and parole transition centers.
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Join us as we sit down with the Executive Director for the Arizona Department of Corrections Rehabilitation & Reentry, Ryan Thornell. ​
Dr. Thornell was appointed in 2023 and his team has been reimagining corrections for the State of Arizona ever since. Hear the challenges his team is facing, his vision for the future, and how they are creating innovative and systemic organizational changes that will result in safer prisons and communities.
For this live conversation, we sit down with Commissioner Randy Liberty, the Maine Department of Corrections, Dr. Lisa Clements of the Clements Initiative, and Chris Poulos of the Center for Justice and Human Dignity.
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Join us behind the walls of
Maine’s Department of Corrections
Join Randall Liberty the Commissioner for the Maine Department of Corrections, Dr. Lisa Clements, and Chris Poulos live via webinar as they discuss the Maine Model of Corrections and how Maine has implemented innovative changes to their prison systems, resulting in safer prisons for both residents and staff.
The Maine Department of Corrections is
- Decreasing resident incidents
- Solving staff shortages
- Increasing educational opportunities available to residents
- Providing a safe environment for residents to live and staff to work
Hear how they’ve done it, the data that proves it works, and how you can apply some of their techniques to make your correctional system better
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Little Scandinavia
:a project that is a part of an academic study on better preparing prisoners for outside life located at the State Correctional Institution Chester facility within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
For most of his 33 years of incarceration, Joe Spinks’ life was micro-managed by the state Department of Corrections. The prison system cooked his meals, did his laundry, and dictated where he was every minute of the day.
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But about five years ago, that abruptly changed for the better.
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Spinks, who is serving a life sentence that began when he was 20 years old, became one of the founding residents of a new unit at SCI Chester. The unit has been dubbed “Little Scandinavia,” named for its innovative approach to incarceration that mirrors that of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.
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Those incarcerated in Little Scandinavia order their own groceries and cook their own meals. They do their own laundry, can paint and furnish their single-occupancy cells and are given much more freedom of movement to plan their days in the unit’s common areas.
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“This gives you a chance to be responsible,” said Spinks, something which men who were imprisoned at a young age often never learned.
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“It’s a whole different vibe,” Spinks said, chatting with a reporter outside Little Scandinavia’s kitchen.“It’s more of a community. Racial barriers are broken down here,” Spinks said. “It’s great for the staff, too. They’re not so uptight in here."
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Little Scandinavia started in 2019 with support from a research project headed by social scientists at Drexel University, attempting to replicate Scandinavian prison principles of normalcy into an American prison.
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The Scandinavian prison format has been widely credited with the Nordic countries’ low recidivism rates; Norway’s is as low as 20%, compared to the 65% of Pennsylvanians who re-offended within three years of leaving a state prison, according to the DOC’s most recent study.
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The core question for researchers is if that can be replicated in the United States, which has a more adverse set of social circumstances. The Scandinavian countries have much lower rates of poverty and violent crime to begin with; gun violence is rare and gang activity is a fraction of what is seen in America.
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Correctional Leaders Association:
Innovation in Corrections
Tom Clements Award
Celebrating Executive Directors who are nominated
by their peers for their impact in the field of Corrections
State of Colorado:
Excellence in Public Service
Tom Clements Award
Celebrating excellence and innovation in
public servants across the Colorado state government
