Scenario
You are a fairly well-known warden of a maximum security state prison. In the past couple of years, your facility has demonstrated an excellent record of no escapes, no riots, very few incidents, and good employee morale. You are famous. Newspapers and TV shows have reported on how well-run your prison is and how successful you seem to be at rehabilitating inmates.
During this time, you have provided the full range of services listed below:
• Mandatory prison education (completion of HS, GED, or ABE)
• Vocational training (carpentry, welding, electronics, food service, landscaping, etc.)
• Job readiness training (how to fill out a job application, behave in an interview, etc.)
• Drug and alcohol treatment (abstinence-based, harm reduction, or anything in-between)
• Self-help treatment (Alcoholics Anonymous, Drugs Anonymous, Gangs Anonymous, or similar groups)
• Psychological testing and counseling (to determine the need for mental health services & care for those with mental illnesses); including psychotropic medication (pharmacy/drug care for those with mental illnesses)
• Group counseling (therapies such as transactional analysis, etc.)
• Token economy (rewards, awards, or extended privileges for good conduct)
• Agricultural labor (work on farm, producing beef, swine, milk, and vegetables)
• Industrial labor (work on mini-factories making license plates, furniture, etc.)
• Road labor (work on highways picking up trash, clearing brush, etc.)
• Leisure time activities (intramural sports, boxing, weightlifting, rodeos, etc.)
However, recent elections has replaced many of the elected officials (and following their election, replacing many of the appointed positions with similarly thinking people) and every one of them – the governor, the legislature, the judges, and the director of statewide corrections – is focused on reducing taxes by reducing costs. When looking at the state prison system, they have singled out your facility because of the large number of programs and the associated costs. They are also looking to cut back on what they consider as too many “amenities” that you provide the inmates. They are giving you only 50% of your last year’s budget for your services listed. This is the final decision, and no negotiations will take place.
The public loves you for your successes and they understand that you are doing the right thing to help offenders to re-establish a noncriminal life, but weary of heavy taxes statewide and locally, they support the decisions of the elected officials.
Your staff respects you for all you do, but like all state employees, they have had many of their benefits eliminated or reduced, and they already overworked. Therefore, they cannot pick up “volunteering work” for the any of the programming.
Your Decision
You are stuck with this decision to make: you have only 50% of the budget that you had during the previous year. For the sake of argument, all of the programs cost the same; therefore, you can only keep 6 of the programs (50%).
Which 6 programs will you keep, and why?
Written Assignment Response Guidelines:
• 2 – 4 pages long (1/3 of the text on the last page will not be counted as the 4th page, make it at least 3/4 of the page, title page or references page are not counted towards the required minimum of pages as well). Your submission should include the title page, 2-4 content pages, and a references or bibliography page.
• Typed, double spaced, and using a font of 11 points (Calibri, Times New Roman, or Arial preferred).
• 1 inch margins on all sides
• Use at least 1 academic sources per program. Web sites can be used and cited (Note that a web site is not an academic source, but full reports posted on governmental web sites are considered academic sources).
• Use proper citation and reference in APA Writing Style including references.
• Include references on the last page (Bibliography). All references must be typed in full. Any and all references within your document are first cited in the text; and secondly, the full citation goes at the end of the assignment in the Reference section. Reference page does not count towards the page requirement.
• Make sure to do some research on programs before you decide which one you keep and which one you are eliminating. Use material you learned through the semester! Make an educated selection.
