Welcome to Corrections 210-Supervision in Corrections

Mail to:

Rio Hondo College
Department of Public Safety
3600 Workman Mill Road
Whittier, CA 90608

Course Description: This is a basic course which includes coverage of leadership training of supervisors in law enforcement and allied fields. The relationships involved in individual and group management methods and the practical techniques for carrying out the various responsibilities of the supervisor are explored. 

Course Assignments

Unit 1- email your instructor and acknowledge due dates for completed work and final exams.   

Unit 2 - The Role of the Supervisor.  Describe and discuss

1.     The basic supervisory responsibilities.
2.     Complete the open-book quiz Click here to begin quiz.

For reasons that will become clear throughout this course, you will understand that the role of a supervisor in law enforcement is much different today than it was only a few years ago, and the months and years ahead will provide new challenges and opportunities. How does law enforcement provide excellent and responsive public safety services with diminishing local budgets, increased work loads, and constantly changing patterns of crime and community needs? It takes a well-organized, properly managed law enforcement agency to accomplish this and front-line supervisors are critical to overall organizational effectiveness.

There are five major responsibilities that are common to all supervisory jobs:

1. Getting the Job Done

2. Keeping the work area Safe and Healthy

3. Encouraging Teamwork and Cooperation

4. Developing Employee Skills

5. Keeping Records and Making Reports

Front-line supervisors are vital members of the law enforcement management team. They oversee the individual employee’s work and represent the work group to the management team. In fact, one management expert claims that the front-line supervisor – the point of contact between employees and managers – is at the most vital spot in the management chain-of-command.

Because a supervisor is at the same time a member of the local government management team and a member of the work team, supervisors often feel conflicting pressures when they try to identify both with management and with their work group. Don’t be concerned if sometimes you feel caught between the need to satisfy those above you in the organization and your responsibility to represent the needs of your work group. All supervisors sometimes feel this kind of stress. Truly effective supervisors enjoy the opportunity they have to link their work team in a real, ongoing partnership with the other levels of their department.

As a front-line supervisor, you have the opportunity to do two things that are vitally important both to your public safety agency and to other members of your work team. You have the opportunity to be a role model for your employees – a leader they can look up to with respect and loyalty, someone whose behavior they will want to copy. You also have the opportunity as a team leader to be the coach of your work team, helping its members grow and become more skilled and productive as employees, and helping the team become a closely knit, highly effective and efficient part of your law enforcement agency.

Unit 3 - Leadership.  List and discuss 

1.    The various types of leaders

2.     Leadership styles.

3.     Complete the open-book quiz Click here to begin quiz.

Management experts tend to disagree about leadership. Some believe a person is born with certain personality traits and abilities that make him or her a "natural" leader - the kind of individual that people admire, trust, and want to follow. Others believe that leadership depends on the situation. Such experts believe that while President Franklin Roosevelt could lead the country out of a deep economic depression and successfully through most of World War II, he probably would not have been as effective on the battlefield. And while General George S. Patton was an effective leader in battle, he probably would not have been as effective as the nation’s president. Still others believe that both personality and situation are important factors in leadership.

Many managers and supervisors wish that the experts could agree on what effective leadership is and which leadership style is the "best." Unfortunately, leadership is not quite that simple. Because human beings are so complex and so different from one another, even the experts have a hard time deciding what style of leadership works best in any given situation.

The fact is that a supervisor may lead well under certain conditions and not so well under others. Factors beyond differences in the supervisory situation itself can influence how effectively a supervisor is able to lead. One influencing factor is the maturity of the work group. Some work groups are more capable than others in setting challenging yet attainable goals. Some are more willing than others to assume responsibility for their own actions. In addition, work groups obviously vary in the level of member skill and experience.

Another influencing factor is the intensity of pressure or stress under which a work group is operating. In a situation involving high stress (such as an officer-involved shooting or a pursuit) the work group may need and expect the leader to provide quick decision-making and guidance. Quite another leadership style may be the most appropriate when stress is not a critical element in the situation.

But while it may not be possible to outline one formula for how to be an effective leader in each and every supervisory situation, certain fundamentals about leadership are well established. A leader leads. A leader leads willing followers. And a leader leads in a situation – at work, on the battlefield, etc. Let’s look at these elements as we read through chapter #3 of the text, Leadership, Supervision and Command Presence.

Unit 4 - Interpersonal Communication.  Describe and discuss

1.     The Barriers to Effective Communication.

2.     How to overcome Barriers to Effective Communication.

3.     Complete the open-book quiz Click here to begin quiz.

More often than we realize, the observation of the warden in the movie, Cool Hand Luke rings true: "What we have here is a failure to communicate." We become frustrated and surprised when people misinterpret or do not understand what we say. Because we have been expressing ourselves all our lives, we assume that we communicate well, almost as easily and naturally as we breathe. The truth is that although we may be talking, we may not be communicating effectively. Effective communication usually demands a great deal of effort, practice and understanding.

If the supervisor’s job is to "get work done through others," then communication is a necessary part of supervision. In fact, supervisory relationships could not exist without effective supervision. Whenever workers join together to accomplish given tasks, they must communicate. To direct the combined efforts of a work group, a supervisor must somehow tell employees about plans, ideas, and directions so that they can carry them out. Most supervisors probably spend more than half their time communicating in some way – training employees, giving work assignments, demonstrating procedures or equipment, conducting team meetings, answering questions, listening to employee concerns, helping citizens with problems or complaints, and discussing plans and operations with managers and other supervisors.

Supervisors communicate in many different ways. They may talk face-to-face to groups or individual employees; they may use a telephone or a two-way radio; they may write memos, letters or bulletins. They may also communicate through gestures, signals, facial expressions – or even through silence. Regardless of the extent or method, without effective communication, supervisors and workers may find themselves working at cross purposes, pursuing competing objectives, duplicating one another’s efforts, and failing to complete necessary jobs.

Unit 5 - Special Problems in Counseling and Remediation.  Define and discuss

1.     The objectives of employee counseling.

2.     The methods used in employee counseling.

3.      Complete the open-book quiz Click here to begin quiz.

We saw in Unit #4 that many situations arise daily in which you can exercise principles of good communication. Counseling is a less frequently used skill, but one that is just as important to the successful operation of your work team. If you sense that one of your workers is personally troubled, unhappy in the job, or just not performing up to standards, some counseling may be in order.

Counseling is another application of good communication principles that you can use on the job. Counseling skills can help you develop your employees and build a positive relationship with them. Most of all, counseling skills can help you be more effective as a supervisor. Most employees want to feel the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes from doing a good job. They want your approval, and they want to be able to come to you for help. Counseling skills help you to capitalize on these needs. Employees can and do change through the supervisor’s effective use of counseling techniques.

Counseling is a face-to-face communication or interview that can be used in a wide range of situations: for performance appraisal, for work progress review, for dealing with employees with personal problems, and for addressing employee performance problems. For example, counseling may be the first thing you do with an employee who wastes time, who has a record of being late or absent, who is careless, who has a drinking problem, or who seems to be going through a personal crisis at home. Think of counseling as the first step you take toward solving performance-related problems. Sometimes counseling is the step you take before you take disciplinary action.

 Unit 6 - Grievances and the Discipline Process.  List and explain 

1.     The causes of employee dissatisfaction.

2.     The disciplinary process.

3.      Complete the open-book quiz Click here to begin quiz.

Complaints and Grievances

Wherever people work you can expect to hear complaints. Handling employee complaints requires patience, tact, understanding and sound judgment. But above all it requires a procedure for airing and resolving complaints and an effective supervisor who can make the procedure work.

Supervisors who develop skills in handling complaints build good relations with their workers, improve employee morale, and can improve the operating efficiency of their work unit, thereby contributing to their law enforcement agency as well.

Every "gripe" or complaint that is ignored and allowed to become a formal grievance is costly. You pay for it in low production, absenteeism, high turnover, and loss of support from the community around you.

As gripes, complaints and grievances are a normal part of living and working, we will take a closer look at what they are, what causes them, how they can be prevented and how they can be resolved.

Employee Discipline

The Supervisor’s responsibility is to maintain discipline. This means maintaining efficiency, cooperation, and proper work conduct among employees to achieve desired goals. At the same time, the supervisor is responsible for protecting the rights of all employees in the work unit.

For this reason, it helps to know that the work discipline comes from the word disciple – a person who follows the teachings and examples of a respected leader. Like a disciple, the average worker who respects the leader or supervisor follows his or her teachings because they are contributing to meaningful and worthwhile goals. These workers recognize that rules and standards are needed to help everyone get the job done quickly, safely, and well. Discipline does not mean punishment – it means the voluntary adherence to rules and regulations. Hence the phrase, "a well-disciplined organization."

Unit 7 - Personnel Complaints.  Describe and discuss

1.     The Peace Officer Bill of Rights

2.     Personnel investigations and the California Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights.

3.     Complete the open-book quiz Click here to begin quiz.

Law enforcement officers may be accused of misconduct by a member of the general public, by another government agency, or internally as the result of observations made by a member of his or her own department. In any event, each complaint must be carefully evaluated and, if appropriate, thoroughly investigated.

Public Safety employees, like any other member of society, have constitutional rights and legal safeguards which must be protected. In the first place, individual and organizational morale would be severely and negatively impacted if it became known, or even suspected, that employee rights were being violated during the course of a personnel investigation. Secondly, a violation of an employee’s rights could have the same affect as the violation of a criminal suspect’s rights - the loss of potential evidence against the employee.

Bad law enforcement officers cannot be tolerated, but good officers must be protected. In either case, however, the rights of society and the community must be taken into consideration before deciding whether or not to conduct an investigation and what action should be taken at the end of an investigation.

Chapter 10 of the text will explore the various aspects of conducting law enforcement personnel investigations. One of the websites will provide you with California Government Code Sections 3300 et seq which govern the way personnel investigations are conducted in California when they involve sworn peace officers.

Unit 8 - Personnel Evaluations.  Compare and contrast 

1.     The validity and reliability as they apply to personnel rating systems.

2.     Complete the open-book quiz Click here to begin quiz.

Almost all employees are anxious to know how well they are doing in their jobs, but many dread those sessions with the supervisor when their overall work performance is evaluated. It is like report card time in school. Many expect the worst and worry about it.

Most supervisors do not look forward to evaluation sessions themselves. Many feel reluctant to tell employees that they are not doing satisfactory work. Yet work evaluation is needed in the law enforcement profession as it is in every other work situation. Does this mean that supervisors have to grit their teeth and force themselves to evaluate workers? Does evaluation have to be such a nasty, unpleasant job?

Fortunately, the answer is no - not if it is done correctly. You should be familiar with your agency’s personnel policies regarding evaluation. There are several types of evaluation systems in use today in law enforcement

This lesson will discuss how personnel evaluation systems work and, more fundamentally, why we even bother to evaluate employees.

Unit 9 - Training Subordinates.  List and explain 

1.     The Five Steps of Teaching.

2.     Reasons to train.

    Complete the open-book quiz Click here to begin quiz.

Unit Overview  TRAINING SUBORDINATES

Training employees to perform their jobs and providing training to either introduce or maintain skills are important parts of the supervisory process. You may want to take into consideration, however, that some employees may have unpleasant memories of their school days. Part of your job, then, will be to provide the climate for learning by endorsing training activities, encouraging employees to take advantage of them, and helping them in every way to grow on the job.

You might discuss with your subordinates some of the benefits of on-the-job training:

These benefits to employees can also be considered as benefits to the organization, and they make the supervisor’s job easier and more productive. Supervisors can spend more time on planning ahead and preventing problems is the routine work is handled by capable, well-trained workers.

Unit 10