Probation Cadets See Job From Behind Bars

Thirteen rookie probation officers in San Luis Obispo County thought they were in for a routine day of on-the-job training recently until a uniformed supervisor burst into their classroom and boomed: “OK, everybody is under arrest!”

The trainees tittered and joked, unsure what was happening. But they soon found themselves in handcuffs, being led away to juvenile hall, where most had already spent many months--outside the bars, guarding juvenile prisoners.

For a long day they were held in cells, sometimes verbally abused and denied such simple freedoms as a drink of water--all part of role-reversal training designed to sensitize probation officers to what it’s like to be a young person behind bars.

The “Lesson in Empathy,” as the training is known, appears to be unique in California. Its spirit runs counter to a trend toward increasingly tough treatment of young criminals best exemplified by a March ballot initiative, Proposition 21, that would allow more juveniles to be tried as adults.

Some corrections experts--including the acting warden at Corcoran State Prison--believe that the training could benefit a broader group of people who work in prisons, jails and juvenile halls.

John Lum, San Luis Obispo County’s chief probation officer, said he ordered the training to make the county’s 40-bed Juvenile Detention Facility safer and more humane for young criminals and the Probation Department’s juvenile services officers--nonuniformed, generally unarmed employees who guard the inmates.

“These [officers] have to have a feeling of what it is like to be on the other side,” he said, “and everything that goes with that--from being searched and touched by strangers to being seen in public in handcuffs.

“If they are not sensitive to how someone is reacting to what they are doing,” he added, “then they may be putting themselves and the minors in a dangerous situation.”

Psychotherapist and onetime actor Leonard Manzella created the training using a psychodrama model that he has previously employed with heroin addicts, prison guards and victims of domestic violence.

“The idea is that you can’t just understand something intellectually,” he said. “This training helps you to live a story and to understand it on that level.”

When the first training session was held in April, 13 cadets were lounging around a conference table hearing a brief talk from Lum and Manzella. One of their supervisors, Brian Wilkinson, suddenly appeared and began handcuffing the employees, whose mouths hung agape.

“It caught some of us by surprise,” cadet Robert Kraft, 30, said later. “I thought, ‘Well, OK, this is just part of the training,’ and it didn’t feel that real. But as time went on and the cuffs seemed to get tighter, in a way it felt very real.”

The session also was intended to teach the trainees that an officer’s style and demeanor can greatly alter the way juveniles respond.

During their van ride to the detention facility, a basketball game and group discussions, the cadets were supervised by three men playing the roles of officers. One was an unfeeling autocrat, another was passive and expedient, and the third was authoritative but empathetic.

The trainees almost universally agreed that, by the end of the day, they were drawn to the third officer and wanted to follow his directives. When the belligerent officer snapped at them or shouted orders, they talked back and were slow to respond.

“I realized [that] because I could not control the situation, I became quite belligerent and nasty,” said cadet Meg Shepard. “There was a side of me that I didn’t recognize.”

Kraft said that no single incident during his day of incarceration shocked him but that the accumulation of small indignities put him more in touch with what young prisoners go through.

When he asked for water and was told to drink from his sink, he was put off because the faucet hung directly over a toilet--a complaint he had heard many times from prisoners. He felt twinges of embarrassment when he was led around in cuffs in front of others, although he knew it was just an exercise. And when he discovered that his cell wall was smeared with someone else’s saliva, he became nauseated.

“It’s one of the most powerful experiences I have been through in helping me be more sensitive toward the people I am dealing with,” Kraft said. “I have been through other trainings . . . but they couldn’t tell you enough to compare to really being there.”

Kraft and others who support the training conceded that many of their colleagues in law enforcement would consider it too “soft” for officers dealing with inmates who need a hard line.

But Manzella filmed the initial training session and has made a documentary, “Walk the Talk: A Lesson in Empathy,” that he hopes will spread the sessions to other agencies. A few correctional officials have seen the film and expressed interest in the training.

W.A. Duncan, warden of the adult prison at San Luis Obispo, said in a letter that he believes the role-reversal approach could help “all law enforcement agencies.”

Lum, who is viewed as something of a maverick, said he eventually hopes to expand the training to all his probation officers.

He drew attention last year when he said he would try not to let any juveniles from his county go to California Youth Authority facilities, contending that the agency’s prisons have become too dangerous.

His voice, however, is still in the minority among juvenile and correctional administrators who want an even greater crackdown on young criminals. For evidence of that wider trend, Lum need only look in his own backyard.

Gov. Gray Davis hopes to open a 160-bed boot camp at a National Guard camp in San Luis Obispo by the fall. The message of the camp, according to a spokeswoman for the governor’s Office of Criminal Justice Planning: “Get on the straight and narrow now or go to the [California Youth Authority] for the offense.”