Speaker 0 00:00:00 Exercise 1, 2, 3, 4.
Michael Cantrell 00:00:08 Welcome back to another episode of The Basics. All right, titled Today's episode, get Hands On, because I've seen a real lack of effort by staff lately to have hands-on inmates. So what I'm gonna talk about today is why it's so important, why it's important that we put our hands on the inmates. Now, as a supervisor, when I would visit other institutions or other units, one thing I would always look for is how comfortable the inmates and staff are with hands-on on escorts and searches. Now, I know how things work. I've been around a long time, and when the bosses show up on the unit, everyone starts trying to do, you know, everything correctly, the correct way, but bad habits have a way of showing themselves. And that was one of the ways that I could see if bad habits were being done while I wasn't there.
Michael Cantrell 00:01:03 Because if staff just start at that moment trying to put hands-on an inmate, when they escort 'em, when they back 'em out of the cell, when they're walking 'em to the shower, you're gonna see inmates and they're gonna have a look in their eye like, why are you doing that? Why are you treating me that way today? And that was always a telltale sign that, you know, normally this wasn't being done. And last week I saw a recruitment video for an agency, and it showed two officers walking down a hallway and letting a restrained inmate walk ahead of them down the hall with no hands-on. Now, once again, I know the inmate was probably a role player and they had, you know, dressed up a staff member for that commercial or that video, but it did show what staff was comfortable doing. Normally, if staff had always had hands on inmates, if this was something they did 24 7 when they were escorting restrained inmates, they would be doing it on that recruitment video.
Michael Cantrell 00:02:05 Also, you know, there's several factors to this, you know, being uncomfortable touching another person. And of course, I mean, non-sexual, I'm not talking about sexual touching, I'm talking about non-sexual touching, you know, like a handshake or, you know, a steady hand on the shoulder from a, from a mentor or even a, a slap on the back, you know, a good job. Or back in my day, uh, you could even do a slap on the butt. You know, I grew up in an era where, you know, I was on sports teams or response teams, and if somebody did a good job, it wasn't out of line to give somebody a good pat on the butt and say, good game, you know? So I do understand that a lot of things have changed over the years, but I, I don't even know if you could still get by with a, you know, just a slap on the back.
Michael Cantrell 00:02:54 Hey, good job, buddy. And I don't think people are even comfortable these days with maybe a hand on the shoulder, although I can think of many times during, you know, my career or, you know, just in life where I had someone who I, uh, trusted a mentor, someone who I looked up to that, you know, they put that hand on your shoulder and, and just steadied you for a little bit when you had something going on that day. People don't look at that stuff the same way these days, especially in the workplace. One of the things that hasn't helped this is of course, a generation who's not comfortable with physical interaction between people. You know, and I'm not picking on anybody, but millennials and Generation Z, they tend to not have those types of, of social, physical interactions. They are more comfortable communicating digitally through the phone, on the mobile phone, email, that type of stuff.
Michael Cantrell 00:03:53 And they're not as comfortable with the physical touching that goes on between two people. And there's a lot of studies out there, and we we're gonna see the effects of this, um, whether or not it's good or it's bad, but there's a lot of studies out there that show human touching is a necessary part of development for human beings, and it's long been held up that even inmates, you know, that's one of the arguments for solitary, that lack of human touching, uh, creates inmates who are, who are less emotional and less in touch with their feelings, uh, because of that human interaction, that human contact that we crave. And if that wasn't enough, uh, we just, and I say we're through it, but we're not, it's still ongoing. But Covid really did something to all of us. Um, covid came through and one of the things I immediately noticed with Covid was, was that pat searches and cell searches almost went to nothing.
Michael Cantrell 00:04:55 Uh, people did not want to go places where they thought maybe they could catch covid. They didn't want to touch each other, um, which meant that our officers were not doing pat searches and cell searches the way we were before Covid, and I'm not faulting anybody for this, I did work in a medical center for many years and dealt with a lot of contagious diseases there. We had, we had full-blown TB inmates there. We had positive pressure rooms that they were kept in. Uh, I remember we had a, a, uh, illegal from, I believe it was Mexico, it was South America somewhere, and we had him, uh, off to himself for a long time while medical looked at him till he was deported. But he had some kind of fungus that I don't know that ever was identified. And we had to go in basically full mop, you know, military mop dress in order to go in that room.
Michael Cantrell 00:05:52 So I dealt with that myself throughout my career, working at a medical center. So I know, know what it's like to walk around and feel dirty and not know when you're picking up germs. And that's what Covid did to everybody, not just at work. Uh, but even at the grocery store, the we're, we've still got, most of the grocery stores have the little wipes next to the, the grocery carts, because we're still thinking about that and we're still dealing with it. So a combination of all that, a change in generations, a change in what's, uh, normal at the workplace as far as, uh, physical touching and covid, you know, the, the nervousness, the scared of catching something from each other has all severely hurt the way we do business in jail and prisons. So I understand why some of this has happened, but now I'm gonna talk to you about why we've gotta overcome this, what it is that, why it matters.
Michael Cantrell 00:06:50 Okay? And like I said, I, I can see when inmates are used to being escorted by staff and by escorted I I do not mean walking beside or behind if it's a restrained inmate, I mean a proper hands-on escort that all staff should be doing with any inmate that is in restraints, whether that's just cuffs or cuffs and leg irons. Belly chains, if they have restraints on, you should have hands on that inmate. And there's a few reasons. One, it allows you to feel if the inmate's going to assault or pull away from you. You know, we don't let inmates walk alone. If you're letting an inmate walk a step or two ahead of you, this allows for the inmate to increase your reaction time. Your OODA loop has to observe, orient, and decide when he makes a break for it, or turns around and tries to attack you.
Michael Cantrell 00:07:47 Um, these are things that you have to react to and it's gonna take you a minute to observe what's going on, to orient yourself to it, to make that decision before you can act. That's just humans. And we teach that about suspects and inmates all the time. But if you have hands on, you immediately know what has happened when they pull away or attack your brain doesn't have to stop and decide what you're seeing and orient yourself and decide what you're gonna do. Your ability to react to their action is minimized. You can react almost immediately. And that may be no more than pushing the inmate away from you in getting distance. It may include you being able to use physical force to, to get the inmate up against the wall or to put him on the floor depending on your policies to keep him from, uh, attacking or assaulting or, or es escaping, whichever his intent was.
Michael Cantrell 00:08:44 That's one of the reasons that it's so important that you have hands-on that inmate when you're walking with him. It also allows you to protect inmates from falling. I know there's a ton of jokes out there, but it's not a joking matter. We are responsible for those inmates and those inmate’s safety when they have cuffs on, when they've got those restraints on, especially when they're restrained in back. Um, there's absolutely no way for them to catch their self as they fall. There's no reason for us to let them get injured. Uh, so if you've got hands-on and he trips or something like that, then you have the ability to control. You have the ability to, you know, keep that inmate from injuring their self from a fall. It also allows you to direct the inmate and ensure that they realize you are controlling the actions.
Michael Cantrell 00:09:37 You know, the movement, you're in charge of the unit if you let them out of the cell and let them run up and down the hall, passing stuff to other tray slots, that type of stuff. And you don't have hands on these inmates, your unit's outta control, not just that inmate. They know that they can go do this stuff on your unit, then your unit's outta control. And at some point that's gonna come back to haunt you because when inmates get comfortable with the fact that the staff aren't in control, they're, they're a lot more likely to do stuff, whether that be something as big as a disturbance or a riot or whether that's just passing contraband. But if they don't think you have any control over that unit, they're gonna keep trying you and they're gonna try you every day and it's gonna get worse every day.
Michael Cantrell 00:10:27 And the little things like when you bring an inmate out of a cell, turn that key, pop that door, have them facing the rear of the cell, they shouldn't be looking out the window at you when they back out of that cell, because that moment from when the cell opens till you put hands on, is a dangerous time. And any of you that have been working any time at all in prison, know that just a few seconds can make a real difference when it comes to an inmate being able to slip cuffs. So what you're gonna do is turn 'em around, tell 'em to face the back of the cell, and you're gonna have 'em back out of that cell. That gives you more control for those seconds that the door's opening and you're getting hands on. Now, once you've got hands on, we don't jerk these inmates around.
Michael Cantrell 00:11:16 And I always, you know, you look at the old eighties movies and <laugh>, everybody that gets put under arrest gets slammed against a car, you know, and, and that's not what we do. Uh, there's no reason to slam 'em around or push 'em. You know how I like to escort, I'll, I'll back 'em out. I like having my strong hand on their bicep on their strong side, and then I'll take my left hand and put it on that strong wrist, you know, right there around the cuffs, not under the cuffs so that they can get me, but right there by the cuffs, grab the wrist, grab the hand, and then I can escort 'em that way and I can control them, them, I can direct them, I can keep them from falling. And also I can tell if they're getting ready to either assault or attack me or someone else, or if they're gonna try to escape from me.
Michael Cantrell 00:12:07 That's some of the reasons why it's so important that we do these hands on escorts. Inmates should be comfortable with that. And whether that's, you know, escorts to medical education, psychology, it doesn't matter. Every place that they're escorted while they have restraints on, you should be hands-on. And the final thing I'm gonna talk about with hands-on is pat searches. Pat searches are the bread and butter of corrections. You should be doing dozens of pat searches every day. And if you're not, you're not doing your job, you should randomly pat search inmates as you walk on the yard, as you see them coming up the hallway. When you walk into housing units, when something looks suspicious, uh, when something doesn't look suspicious, uh, it's time to pull inmates over and say, Hey, step over here for a second. I'm gonna pat search you. You take 'em over, you face 'em towards the wall, you keep one hand on 'em, you work one side, you switch hands, you work the other side, keep in control so that if they do react or they do turn, then you've got some reaction time.
Michael Cantrell 00:13:16 Uh, if you've got a hand up on their shoulder or, or on their arm as you're doing that, then you can react, you know, and possibly get control of them to place 'em against the wall or on the floor. Uh, depending on the situation. Uh, the first time for you rookies out there, you're, you're gonna change, it's gonna change the way you do pat searches. The first time you find something big or important because you're gonna do that pat search that inmate, you've done it a hundred times and nothing's happened, and you're gonna get to this pocket and this inmate's got drugs in there, or he's got a shank in there, and at that point he's gonna turn and you're gonna fight. But once that happens to you from then on, you're going to do pat searches a lot more carefully and you're gonna pay a lot more attention to that, to the inmates.
Michael Cantrell 00:14:07 You're pat searching and the fact that you are so close, you're in their space at that moment, and it's a dangerous place to be when they decide they want to fight or they want to attack you. So if you've got hands on and you've got that inmate to where you can either, you know, get away or you can get control, that's gonna help you. The thing pat searches do within your system, within your jail, within your correctional environment is they let the inmates know that the you guys are actively watching them. That correctional officers are not supposed to be passive. You know, correctional officers are not firefighters. You're not supposed to go sit in an office and wait till the bell goes off before you respond to something. We need to be out there letting the inmates know that we're patrolling and controlling what goes on in that prison or that jail inmates, for the most part, want us out there.
Michael Cantrell 00:15:09 Most inmates don't want a bunch of weapons and drugs floating around inside that unit, that jail or that prison wherever you work. Most inmates want to be able to do their time without worrying about getting stuck or having to deal with all the trouble that comes with drugs and hooch and weapons. Uh, inside we're not supposed to be reactive, we're supposed to be proactive. And one of the ways that we show inmates that we're proactive is that we do lots of pat searches. We're hands on. They should be comfortable with you, pat, searching them on a regular basis. And they also should be comfortable with being escorted by staff. It shouldn't be unusual for an inmate who's restrained to feel a staff's hand on their bicep, on their shoulder, on their elbow, wherever you, I'm not gonna tell you how to escort, but they should be comfortable with the fact that there's gonna be hands on them while they're being escorted.
Michael Cantrell 00:16:10 I hope that makes sense. I hope that helps you out a little bit. You know, this is just some of the basics. These are some of the things I learned early on, and some of them I learned the hard way. I learned the hard way to make sure I've got a hand on that inmate while I'm pat searching because I, I was pat searching an inmate and he had drugs at Leavenworth. Next thing I know, I'm in a fight. And so it does happen. And how we do our job can prevent and at the least can control some of their actions and some of their reactions. This is Mike Cantrell and until the next one, be safe out there.
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Exercise 1, 2, 3, 4.