personnel in charge of running prisons and jails with large populations of Hispanic inmates must comprender what the inmates are saying.
”There is a demand now really in a lot of places for officers who are bilingual,” explains Ken Kerle, former managing editor of the American Jail Association and the author of a number of books about jails. ”What if you’re a correctional officer running a cell block and everyone is speaking a language you don’t understand? You have to have people linguistically capable of understanding what they are talking about, particularly in an institution.”
This is especially true for states like Texas, Arizona and California. But that doesn’t mean they are the only ones who value bilingual corrections officers. Kerle adds, “Even here in Kansas, our Hispanic population continues to grow.”
Robert Hurst, the public information officer at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, says it is “absolutely” helpful for officer safety if officers are bilingual. Hurst says his team is always looking for skilled bilingual employees, throughout the entire department.
Friday, February 21, 2014
'The Rising Need for Bilingual Corrections Officers'
Via Ozymandius, citing a new paper from the journal Crime and Delinquency:
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11 comments:
Every business in the service industry is in need of bilingual employees. Probably one of the most desired of all qualifications one looks for on resumes and would be a great thing for the prisons to teach to reduce recidivism.
I think we should worry about getting more staff period. Our Unit won't get half it's crap done after the cameras come in.
Spanish is the lingua franca in TDCJ. How could anyone function without being able to speak it?
America is an English speaking nation. All a prisoner needs to do is shut up and obey, no need to communicate anything. Indeed, I think our jails and prisons should enforce 24 hour a day silence.
We are trying to rehabilitate these people. Not further their degeneration.
And, besides, the USA does not have an official language anyway.
What an ignorant comment.
This would not so much be for the good of the inmates as it it would be for the good of the staff. It's just a reaction to a factual situation that is impossible to change. So realism.
I know, I know, Tea Partiers and similar folks prefer some kind of idiotic idealism in which teenagers don' t have sex and everyone is able to take care of themselves, but hey, we live in the real world. ;-)
When I was an Officer of Corrections with the TDCJ, I had a great time since the population, both grey and white had no idea that I was bilingual. I picked up a lot of intel.
TDCJ also needs to understand that if inmates are bilingual in languages other than Spanish, their families probably are too, and would communicate in writing in that other language. I know of people who have been told they cannot communicate in German because no one in the mailroom could read it.
Texas really needs to appreciate that the rest of the world has moved on from 1950.
Well I think that's a low blow to the state as a whole. There are plenty of people out there with those language skills....they just don't want to work for TDCJ. Which is an understandable sentiment. TDCJ seems to be on the absolute bottom of the totem pole.
Give a jack-booted thug a curb stomp that they can understand.
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