The roles of custody and treatment staff, once sharply delineated must continue to meld. The corrections profession, once the sole purview of white males, has made significant progress in the past decades. The richness, creativity, innovation, and multiple viewpoints generated by a diverse workforce must continue to be encouraged and cultivated. The next ten years will reveal whether the privatization of prisons will succeed. In the end, the profit margin and public opinion may be the determining factors on how much of the corrections profession will be outsourced to for-profit providers.
Corrections can no longer languish in the backwaters of government.
Our ever-growing budgets mandate greater accountability. As communications, information technology and networking make our agencies more and more accessible to the general public, we can expect a greater degree of interest in our profession. Taxpayers and other stakeholders will demand a greater role in how we conduct our affairs. Technology is having a significant impact on our industry. Computers are replacing hand written files, typewriters, microfiche, offender and staff records, and much more.