Essay: Creating a diversity statement for Midlands County

Exam 1
Creating a diversity statement for Midlands County
The County of Midland is devoted to following the policy of non-discrimination and creating equal opportunity. We are open to all people despite their age, skin color, disability, ethnicity, gender, marital status, national origin, race, religion, or veteran status. We are committed to following the guidelines of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Engaging in diversity makes our community a better workplace and creates success.
We take everyone’s skills, experiences, perspectives, and viewpoints into consideration. Our goal is to advance a community and workforce to contribute ideas and to build a strong impression for our county. Diversity and inclusion are a key aspect in bringing our individual backgrounds together to address issues and making our county better. The staff of Midlands County will produce leadership and work with partners, staff, volunteers, and agencies to succeed in the values of diversity.
Dear County Administrator,
I feel this is the best diversity statement for our county to see. I wrote this to show that we are acceptable to all people. I feel that this statement will help our recruiting process because I wanted to deliver a message that we are a diverse community in our workplace. I wanted to show that no matter what the position is, we will give everyone a shot to prove themselves that they can contribute to us and our community. I wrote this statement the way I did because I want to send an encouraging message and make everyone feel welcome to participate. I also wanted to let our citizens feel safe to contribute ideas to better the county. I made this statement from a broad perspective as well to make our chair members pleased. However, to follow this statement, I feel like we need to take more action in order to make our community to feel more diverse and inclusive. I suggest we get the people more involved by giving more time to express their beliefs, ideas, and concerns in city council meetings or maybe we could even hold a hearing that is devoted to just the people. Considering our chair member’s beliefs and viewpoints, I feel we need to follow our statement closely and actually give people a say because someone could have a great idea and we can work with them. I also think that we should hold a public process where we review this statement and give the people a chance to comment. In order to make everyone more involved with one another, I suggest we create events where everyone can learn about different cultures. Also, we need to make people feel safe, especially with discrimination still visible in our community. There are even people that are afraid to use public parks so I feel that creating a safe and welcoming environment should be at the top of the list for the planners and managers.
Joe Norton
Midlands County HR Manager
Private Prisons
In our nation, we have noticed a large increase in prisoners and public prisons can struggle to hold all of these potential and future inmates. To help this issue, the government started to use private prisons. Private prisons are jails that are managed by private companies or people that have a contract or agreement with the government. Private prisons have been used since the 19th century and have seen an increase in use throughout the years. When a government comes to an agreement with a private prison, they pay the company or individual for each prisoner or each vacancy for maintenance of the inmates. There are a lot of positives and negatives to private prisons.
As I mentioned before, we have noticed an uprising in numbers for prisoners and publics prisons tend to get over crowded. Private prisons are used as an alternative place to hold inmates and help congestion issues of public prisons. With the reduction of prisoners in public prisons, the government will save money on costs of operation and less staff members would be needed to manage. Private prisons also have a low-cost budget and provide similar treatment just like public prisons. The cost to put a prisoner in a private prison allows the government to save money because the company is in charge of the funds needed to run the facility and take care of the inmates. The government only pays the company for housing the prisoners. Overall, the government saves a lot of money. Some private prisons can offer a more advanced rehabilitation and job training programs for inmates.
Private prisons can also help the community in a way because these companies will be looking for a staff to help run their operation; they’re in need of guards, cooks, doctors/nurses, and many more employment opportunities. Ever since the Trump administration took place, the minimum jail time for illegal immigrants was raised to five years and it’s going to cause an even larger increase in prisoners, so private prisons are going to be put to use even more. Also, college students graduating with a criminal justice degree can benefit from these as well. Achieving employment in law enforcement can be difficult because most work forces want experienced workers. Working at a profit facility can give you that experience because they offer entry level positions. It allows you to experience certain scenarios that you haven’t seen yet and allow for new skills to be obtained.
On the other hand, private prisons have some negativity to it as well. I know I mentioned a lot that the use of private prisons can save money, but that may not be the case sometimes. For example, there are contract prisons that will only accept low-risk inmates, which means they will sub out high-risk inmates to be returned to public ones. The reason some private prisons do this is to keep their costs low and to keep their facility safer with the high-risk inmates out. With the high-risk inmates back in the government’s hands, that means the government has to pay for the proper housing for this kind of prisoner. With the idea of saving money for contract prisons, this could lead to unsanitary factors and poor housing. One more aspect to consider when it comes to saving money, is how the employees are paid. On average, a public prison correctional officer makes about $36 per hour, while a private prison guard will make only $14 an hour. Public prison guards get benefits and overtime as well, while private prison guard’s overtime pay is salaried to avoid overtime pay.
Another negative aspect to consider is the safety and the secureness of the prison. One of the main goals of a private prisons is to save money, but some of those prisons go to certain lengths to prove that and that can raise some red flags. There are some contract prisons that don’t train their guards as much well as they need to be and inmates could take advantage of that. Also, to save money, private prisons might only hire a handful of guards and the inmates could outnumber the guard which could make it difficult to maintain a well ordered prison. There is also the consideration of inmates escaping the facility. There is a case that happened in Arizona where three inmates escaped because of improper screening of visitors and lousy patrol of the premise.
There are also cases and instances where the private prison abuses their power. There’s an institution named Ashfield Young Offenders Institution and there are a large number of cases where the guards have used excessive force on their inmates every year. These cases sent a message across the United States causing states to cancel their contracts and ruin their trust and dependence with private prisons.
Private prisons can benefit and hurt us in many ways, but for the most part, they are very useful if the guidelines are followed. If they are used for the wrong reasons, a lot of people can be affected, staff, the inmates, and even the community itself. The government definitely should do their research when it comes to contracting with private prisons because there are good and bad ones out there.