Prison Guard Turned Boss Presses for Reform

Rod Hickman stands on a flag-draped stage in a crisp blue suit, gazing out at 310 men and women ready to swear an oath to become prison guards.

A quarter-century ago, Hickman was one of them, a correctional academy cadet, trained and eager to patrol the cellblocks of California. Now he’s the big boss, and on this bright February morning he arrives from Sacramento with a message for the rookies:

Beware, or this job will rot your soul.

For Hickman, that sober warning cannot be trumpeted enough these days. Since his appointment four months ago as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s secretary of youth and adult corrections, Hickman has preached a rousing gospel of reform for an agency battling scandal on multiple fronts.

“This is a challenging time in corrections,” he said after the graduates had dispersed to swap hugs. “We need to restore our integrity and regain the public trust.... It’s daunting, but we can’t go anywhere but up.”

Proof of that grim assessment abounds. Over the past several months, California’s $6-billion-a-year penal system has been hit by a wave of troubles that most describe as unprecedented.

In November, an independent watchdog agency said the state’s prisons amount to a “revolving door” for criminals, with parolees so ill-prepared for freedom that two out of three wind up back behind bars.

Soon afterward, a federal court investigator reported that a “code of silence” condoned by top prison management allowed rogue guards to go unpunished for abusing inmates and other misdeeds.

In mid-January, concern erupted about the California Youth Authority, the state’s juvenile prison system. Two teenagers hanged themselves with bedsheets in their cell, and a flurry of reports lambasted the youth system as overrun with violence and plagued by substandard medical and psychiatric care. Now, a scuffle between counselors and inmates at a youth facility in Stockton is also under investigation.

At one time, such disclosures would have roused little public notice. But a combination of forces has suddenly landed prisons -- and those who work and live within them -- squarely on the Capitol agenda.

Hickman, 47, took the helm amid this turbulence, and was quickly summoned to testify before lawmakers who were holding hearings on the troubles. Rather than defend the system, the plain-spoken secretary delivered a disarming admission: California’s prisons are dysfunctional institutions ripe for reform.

“So far, he is saying and doing all the right things, and that is a refreshing change,” said Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), chairwoman of the oversight committee on corrections. “But can he turn this ship around? We’ll see.”

The hurdles are many and formidable. California’s prison system -- the nation’s largest -- is vast and far-flung, with 32 adult lockups and 13 juvenile facilities and camps. Altogether, corrections employees number about 50,000, many of them represented by a labor union with tremendous sway over decisions large and small.

Beyond the legislative scrutiny and a governor who wants quick action, Hickman faces pressure from a U.S. district judge, who has threatened to place the Department of Corrections in federal receivership if it does not refashion its employee discipline system.

“Talk about multi-tasking -- this is a very, very big job,” said Haunani Henry of Sacramento, a retired warden who spent 35 years in corrections. “And with all the agendas and the politics, it’s going to be difficult.”

Henry, who hired Hickman as her second in command at Mule Creek State Prison, is among many who believe he may be the right man for the times. They describe him as a nimble communicator with a can-do style, a passion for corrections, an ethical core and extensive knowledge of the system.

Oddly, that insider perspective is a novelty for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, founded in 1980. Hickman, who earns $131,412 a year, is the first African American corrections secretary and the first who has worked inside a prison.

For a man who entered corrections somewhat on a whim, landing on top of the heap has felt downright surreal. At the recent academy graduation, Hickman shared those feelings of awe: “In June of 1979, I sat where you sat,” he told the hushed cadets. “And I never would have thought -- I never would have thought.”

Hickman’s steely gaze and imposing physical presence -- he’s a lifelong weightlifter -- belie a softer center. Onetime foster parents, he and his wife, Gloria, a corrections captain, now have an adopted son, Roderick Jahid. Hickman strives never to miss his turn to escort the third-grader to Cub Scouts, and loves to recount how Jahid, nervous about meeting Schwarzenegger at his father’s swearing-in, practiced his handshake repeatedly in the family’s kitchen.

The son of a senior master sergeant in the Air Force, Hickman had the typical upbringing of a military brat, bouncing from town to town, learning to adapt to new situations -- like being the only black student in his elementary school in Cheyenne, Wyo. Such experiences helped make him comfortable in the multicultural prison milieu.

During his early days as a correctional officer, Hickman figured his stay in the profession would be brief. But bit by bit, corrections began to look like a place where he could find a niche.

As a guard, Hickman said, he prided himself on being someone who was “fair and believed that people needed to be treated with respect -- notwithstanding the fact that they were incarcerated felons.” That perspective was not universal, however, and his concerns about the behavior of other officers inspired an interest in training guards.

Hickman worked at the correctional academy three different times, and shaping new recruits yielded some of his happiest professional moments. The upward arc of his career, however, led him through a diverse string of posts. When picked by Schwarzenegger, he was the department’s chief deputy director for field operations.

During his ascent, Hickman developed a reputation as a fanatic about management philosophy, a guy always studying the latest theory on how to energize employees. As warden at Mule Creek State Prison in the late 1990s, he gave his staff a book called “Who Moved My Cheese,” a tale that illustrates the need to accept and prepare for change.

Capt. Richard Subia, who worked under Hickman for five years, was among those who took the story to heart. Some staff members, Subia recalled, “sort of rolled their eyes and figured all the books and theories were a lot of flash. But they just didn’t get it. Rod’s passion is true. He motivates people and wants everybody to move forward.”

Donald Specter, who runs a nonprofit law firm that has repeatedly sued the state on behalf of inmates, said he knew from their earliest encounters that Hickman was “not your typical corrections bureaucrat.”

Proof of that came during a lawsuit over the department’s failure to make prisons accessible to inmates with disabilities. Lagging behind on work to fix the problems, the department sent Hickman to smooth things over and negotiate with Specter for more time.

“But when I explained the situation, telling him that the department had already broken all these deadlines, he said, ‘You know what, we don’t have a leg to stand on, so we’ll just have to get this done,’ ” Specter recalled. “It was so different from the usual excuses and whining.”

Public criticism of Hickman has been scant. But some skeptics -- speaking privately for fear of alienating the secretary -- question whether he will stand up to the powerful guards’ union, of which he was a dues-paying member for 25 years.

The secretary resigned his membership recently, saying it had become a “distraction” because of public perceptions about his loyalties. And while he acknowledged that the union is “very influential,” he said he had frequently opposed its negotiators across the bargaining table.

Hickman will encounter opposition again as new parole policies lead to a population reduction of as many as 15,000 inmates, meaning a need for fewer officers. The union won’t like it, he said, “but we need to go forward with some of these things ... and they need to be on board.”

Some reforms already are underway. But Hickman’s first priority is to purge prisons of a culture in which guards believe they are compelled to lie on behalf of abusive colleagues -- or, at best, to keep quiet when they witness misconduct.

He believes that culture took root gradually as California’s prison population ballooned.

“When you think about the basic mission -- incarceration and running secure institutions -- we’ve become very proficient,” Hickman said. “But what we haven’t done is train people in how we want them to be.”

Instilling that sort of character is not easy in an environment that tends to make people emotionally callous and corrode their sense of right and wrong, Hickman said.

Those who work in corrections “see horrible things, things nobody else sees,” he said.

“If you don’t pay attention,” he said, “pretty soon these things wear on you and you’re not the ethical and moral person you used to be.”

The cure for such lapses and the culture they have created, Hickman said, is quite simple: “You reward people for behavior that you want and hold them accountable for what you don’t like.” Then, he said, employees either change or get out: “It’s the burning platform.”

Hickman already has taken steps to create that burning platform. Last month, for instance, he issued a memorandum to all corrections employees declaring “zero tolerance” for the code of silence and noting that any employee who fostered such a code could be fired.

In the long term, Hickman said, he dreams of restoring California to prominence as a leader in corrections -- making it a state where parolees leave prison with the skills to survive, crime-free, on the outside. Ex-convicts, he said, would not be the only beneficiaries.

Taxpayers, too, would benefit from both lower costs and streets made safer by a correctional system that works, he said.

“Look,” Hickman said, “I’m a hook ‘em and book ‘em guy. But the reality is that public safety will be based on parole success. And it’s pretty clear that what we’re doing now ain’t working.”