Active management is the interaction between staff and prisoners, where every contact is viewed as an opportunity for positive influence. It’s component parts include:
In all interactions between staff and prisoners, staff model ways of behaving, whether they are aware of it or not. Following the principles of active management will give guidelines to help you to model the behaviour you want to foster in the prisoners.
In your role it is important that you do not collude with prisoners and their pro-criminal attitudes in any way. At the same time, you can use active management to demonstrate by your behaviour the integrity and empathy for others that you want to encourage.
An understanding of the principles of active management and how they apply is crucial to achieving effective offender management. Besides modelling pro-social behaviour, active management will help you to recognise opportunities for assisting prisoners to achieve offender plan activities.