I hope everyone had a great summer and had an opportunity to get away on a family vacation. If your summer was much like mine, I had the opportunity to spend some time at the pool and beach and even managed to spend a family vacation at Disney World. I hope that everyone was able to make a commitment to spend time to strengthen their family relationships which is very important. This summer has been great, but it will soon be over as we prepare to get our children back in school and we begin to refocus and plan for the upcoming months ahead.
Our focus as the Board of Directors is on the upcoming 2008 Annual Training Conference in High Point at the Radisson Hotel on October 1st – 3rd. The Training Committee has completed the breakout training sessions, and we are all looking forward to a great conference with excellent training and an opportunity to network with vendors, jail administrators and other professionals from across the State. [read more]
Read the full August 2008 Newsletter
We have just completed the Regional Training for the year and our Training Committee did an outstanding job! I was very pleased with the participation by our association members from both the East and West Regional Training. The participation was about the same with 65 registered attendees. This was a huge success, especially for the association members from the West. I would like to personally thank all the attendees, and it was good to meet new professionals as well as getting to network with old friends from across the State.
One of the main reasons for the success of the Regional Training is the coordination efforts of Mark Priest and the Staff of the NC Justice Academy. I greatly appreciate all their hospitality and assistance. I would also like to thank all the individual instructors who provided a professional, informative and interactive learning environment. The course evaluations continually reflected the professionalism, knowledge and courtesy of each instructor. I would also like to personally thank Sheriff Davis and Captain Cochran from Henderson County for providing a tour of their Detention Facility and allowing us to get a hands-onview of their newly equipped Transportation Van, a Diesel Dodge Sprinter. he equipment and design was excellent with a redesigned transportation insert and outstanding graphics that clearly displayed the pride of the Henderson County Detention Facility and Sheriff’s Office. You can see he photos in the newsletter but go to our website www.ncjaa.org and check out all the photos from the Regional Training. [read more]
Read the full May 2008 Newsletter
President’s Message… It seems that the weeks, months and holidays have swiftly gone by and I wonder how the time has moved on so quickly. It seemed just yesterday that we were celebrating the holidays and ringing in the new year for 2008. Somehow in the blink of an eye, we moved from January 1st to the beginning of the month of March. Whether we are ready or not; time is moving on without us and we had better be prepared to move along with the new year as time does not stand still for any one person.
Much of my focus of late has been on budget issues as I am sure is the case with many detention administrators across the state. We are preparing the fiscal budget for 2009 and tightening our belts in the current year to stretch funds to get us through to June 30th. Many similar issues that we struggle with in next year’s budget is the pressure to increase revenues, increasing salaries for additional positions to provide adequate staffing, increasing operational lines for training, equipment, uniforms and even capital projects for construction of new facilities or continued building maintenance and repairs. The same question still arises as we focus on managing detention facilities as being an operation or a business? Unfortunately, it is a little of both as we do our best to be good stewards of county resources, while managing an efficient facility and generating enough revenue to sustain an ever increasing operational cost. [read more]
Read the full March 2008 Newsletter
As I reflect on my initial comments to the members of our Association I would like to begin by focusing on the Annual Training Conference. One of the most difficult responsibilities the board members have is to provide an Annual Training Conference for the members of our Association. The Annual Training Conference is our biggest event of the year and takes a lot of coordination and individual effort to make it a success. The Annual Training Conference must contain several elements in order to be a success; it must have an influential guest speaker, interesting and informative new training sessions, vendors to showcase their new technology and equipment, along with good food and refreshments, and finally a professional banquet to provide a social event for networking that is fun and enjoyable. Each year the board members, our executive director, other members of the association, instructors and vendors work very hard to bring this event together each year through teamwork and professional dedication. As I sit at home reading over the evaluations, I am making note of some very excellent suggestions by the members of our association to improve next year’s conference, but the reoccurring theme I keep reading is that the Annual Training Conference was another success!! [read more]
Read the full November 2007 Newsletter
