Prevention and Mitigation Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Prevention and Mitigation Analysis - Essay Example They include risk transfer, risk avoidance, risk reduction, and accepting the risk if everything else fails. All these strategies require the firm’s management to be ready to handle any risks since they happen when least expected and their effects can be devastating. The Arizona Department of Corrections operates 13 prison facilities, including the Arizona State Prison Complex – Lewis, which has six units, all named after correction officers killed in line of duty. The Dale Morey unit is one of these units where in early 2004, prisoners attempted to escape but ended up holding correction officers hostage. The standoff lasted for 15 days between January 18 and February 2, before the conclusion of negotiations and the release of hostages. This event exposed various loopholes in the management style of the Arizona Department of Corrections. The management could have prevented the long 15 days that the two officers went through had officials responsible foreseen and acted o n these weaknesses. Though the ordeal ended peacefully, it caused trauma to the officers involved, and the people lost faith in the institution. Therefore, the management had to work extra hard to remedy these. Strategies to Handle the Situation The management could have done several things to avoid the standoff, or at least reduce its effects. Since prevention is always better than cure, preventive strategies are usually more effective and less expensive as it is easy to predict an occurrence but not its effects. Therefore, of all the recommendations discussed, the management of any institution should always attempt preventive measures. Measures the prison management could adopt include; acquiring knowledge on disaster preparedness, self-defense training for officers, hiring professional crisis negotiators, employing adequate prison officers, humane treatment of prisoners, increasing officers’ pay, improvement of prison infrastructure, and providing officers with better weap ons (Greenstone, 2005). Education The Arizona Department of Corrections should take all its employees for training one aspect or the other of risk management. This means that all employees should have the guiding steps to take in case something out of the norm happens. In that case, their efforts would not conflict or waste in other manners, as they would all be geared towards achieving a common goal in an orderly manner. The management should make schedules such that employees go for training in disaster management on a rotational basic, so that the information would be up to date with the situation at their workplace. In addition, there should be maximum employee participation in making decisions that affect the conditions of the working environment. The management should perform an analysis to identify the effective portions of training and single out others for modification, improvement, or reinforcement. Employees should undergo an analysis too, to identify the most valuable on es, especially among the low ranking correction officers. The management should single out high performing low rank officers, recognize, and award them so that other officers may emulate them as ideal employees. This system should be successful considering that the only other people that these officers interact with are criminals (Hubbard, 2009). Self-Defense Training Though officers go for rigorous training before employment, the system