SCENARIO #9

Stolen Speaker

You have just completed a baptismal service in the Worship Centre.  The sixteen clients in attendance have been escorted back to the Minimum Area dorms.  You are busy debriefing the service with your volunteers, when the escorting officer comes back into the Worship Centre carrying one of the speakers from the TV cart.  Apparently one of the clients had quietly taken the speaker and brought it back to his dorm.  The guys in the dorm were very upset and returned the speaker to the officer immediately, without fingering which client had done it. The officer wishes not to pursue the issue, because he had been at fault for not patting down the returning clients. 

Citing specific guidelines, describe what you would do in this situation and why.

I looked at my attendance list and saw that only two clients came out of the dorm in question.  The next day I went to that dorm and spoke one at a time with the two involved.  I told each one that I was not asking them to rat the person out.  I just wanted to tell them I was disappointed by this occurrence.  I also reminded them how this kind of thing causes grief for Chaplaincy and could have our programs cancelled.  The first client I spoke with agreed and said that is why the speaker was given out immediately.  The dorm did NOT want that kind of “heat.”  The second client heard me out and then confessed to having taken the speaker.  I thanked him for his honesty and stressed how lucky he was that nothing was being done. 

 GUIDELINE #2: KNOW YOUR INSTITUTION

  • 2.1 (Know the Policies and Procedures: e.g., health and safety first) - There was a major breakdown in security here, for an inmate to get back to the dorm with a speaker. We are very fortunate the clients in the dorm were honest and did not want to run the risk of bringing attention to them.
  • 2.4.4 (Know the Policies and Procedures: e.g., vigilance in programs) - Clients do steal stuff from us.  Batteries in remote controls are often the target of theft.  The tactic is for one or more clients to distract, while another client goes in for the theft.  Anyone leading a program or service needs to be vigilant.  It is embarrassing that this happened in one of my services.

GUIDELINE #3: THE LARGER / OLDER YOUR INSTITUTION, THE LONGER ITS MEMORY

  • 3.2 (Build your rapport with staff) - I chose to be “solid” and follow the officer’s lead in how he wanted to deal with this. If I reported this in a morning meeting or to someone in management, it would get the officer in trouble. This all worked out fine, so there was no need to bring attention to what happened.
  • 3.3 (Build your rapport with clients) - To ask the clients who attended the program to reveal who stole the speaker would be asking them to break a cardinal rule in prison: Never “rat someone out”.  By my telling the two clients the broad implications of this occurrence, the guilty person spoke up on their own.  There was no need to escalate the situation.