Bill Lowe (left) talks with staff in the guard room in Unit Eight at Hawkes Bay Prison.
Bill Lowe is the Manager of Unit Eight at Hawke’s Bay Prison. His days are filled with issues such as improving drug detection, dealing with suspected stand-overs and encouraging prisoners to talk rather than throw a punch. Bill’s been a unit manager for ten years; before that he was in the military for 21 years.
He ensures the prisoners in Unit Eight know that he and his staff are in charge and "own the compound".
A visit to the guard room is the first thing Bill does when he gets to work every morning. He receives a full brief of new prisoners, any incidents since he was last on-site. This can take 10 minutes or an hour, depending on what’s happened.
Then he sits with the principal Corrections officer to go through any issues.
"This could be anything from a prisoner wanting to call their mum, to gambling, to suspected cases of prisoners using standover tactics against other prisoners. Or we might suspect someone’s starting a ‘shop’ - in other words, stealing stuff from other prisoners and selling it back to them," says Bill.
Twice a week he walks around the entire unit compound.
"This way I get the temperature of the unit. I check cell standards, talk to the officers and get a feel for what’s going down for them. Prisoners will fl ood me with requests.
"My first question to each prisoner will be ‘What has your case manager said?’. I’m there to act as back-up for my Corrections officers, not to deal with every issue myself."
To help manage prisoners’ requests, Bill and his staff have set up a system of having the guard room open for only one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon to deal with prisoners’ issues.
"It used to be open all the time, but now prisoners have to think about things before they come to us, rather than just reacting. I make sure they get a fair hearing if they do come up - it can’t be cursory."
The system’s working well; Unit Eight staff have fewer issues to deal with and prisoners in Unit Eight hardly ever have valid complaints to the Ombudsmen or inspectors.
If an incident does occur and Bill feels he needs to talk to a prisoner, he has them brought to his office.
"For example, if we’ve had to do a Control and Restraint I may feel I need to speak to the prisoner involved. I also play a role in settling the other prisoners down, checking that staff are OK, writing a report on what happened.
"Most of the prisoners don’t understand consequences, so we’re always trying to settle them down and get them to talk to us."
Unit Eight holds most of the identified drug users in the prison. It is also a "feeder" unit which holds 60 low-medium or minimum security prisoners for a few months to assess them before they’re placed in programmes or jobs.
"We want to see long-term good behaviour. Unit Eight is what we call an open environment - it’s more relaxed compared to the main part of the prison. If they don’t behave they go back to the main jail," says Bill.
In terms of drug detection, Unit Eight is doing very well.
"We can’t eliminate drugs, that’s unrealistic, but at the moment our random drug tests show that last month nine percent of our prisoners tested as having used drugs (compared with the 16 percent national target)," says Bill.
The Unit used to have a big problem with outsiders throwing drugs over the wire. As Unit Manager, one of Bill’s jobs was to show staff that the drug problem wasn’t insurmountable.
"My role was to show them we could win - and we are winning. For example, cells were getting cluttered so we upped cell standards to make them easier to search and harder to hide things in."
"What we’re getting now is ‘pepperpotting’ - prisoners’ friends and families smuggling in tiny little bits, just enough for the one prisoner. This has meant we’ve started catching guys who’d never been caught with drugs before, because they used to get others to hold onto it for them. But now it’s too precious - they hold onto it themselves and we catch the real users."
Interestingly, Unit staff have had a lot of positive feedback from prisoners, many of who have never had such a drug-free lifestyle before and who are appreciating having a clear head.
A major part of any manager’s job is leading and supervising staff, and in such a potentially volatile environment a manager has to listen well and know his or her staff through and through.
"I spend a lot of time with staff in the guard room. Any initiative I’ve got I discuss with them. If they’re on board then the job’s done."
For example, food is a great source of power in a prison. So Bill made a rule that all prisoners must eat their evening meal in the communal dining room, rather than going off to eat in their cells. They were also not permitted to give food away or receive food from other prisoners. He says initially the staff didn’t like it because they thought it was unreasonable. This meant they were monitoring it in a haphazard manner.
Bill went through the issues with them - prisoners were standing over others and forcing them to hand over their food; prisoners were getting thinner and asking to be segregated, but they wouldn’t say who was taking their food; prisoners were using meals to gamble with.
"Now the staff are behind that rule and we know that all prisoners get an evening meal," he says.
Bill is clear about what sort of person he likes on his staff.
"Good Corrections offi cers don’t like aggression and can listen. They have good life skills and use the top six inches."
"We own the compound and staff have to believe that," he says.
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ISSN 1178-8453