American Correctional Association Case Study

The National Prison Association, known later in 1954 as The American Correctional Association, is widely known as the oldest correctional association; whose mission is to "provide a professional organization for all individuals and groups both public and private that share a common goal of improving the justice system” (ACA, N.D.). The ACA has since established Corrections Online Training for all states to have the opportunity to become ACA accredited facilities and trained personnel. Equally important, Lending (2004) acknowledged that gaining ACA accreditation provided correctional personnel with the chance to positively impact their lives through enhanced: education, growth, professionalism, and opportunities to secure future objectives and missions; through utilizing ACA’s public training and career development program and by maintaining certification with college educational courses, training events, and …show more content…
The correctional field standard for promotion for supervisory personnel needs to be addressed for both gender and race as well. Griffin, Armstrong & Hale’s (2005) research exposed percentages of different supervisory roles in personnel that obviously pointed to discrimination of gender and race in upper management ranks. They found that 57.7% white males dominated these positions leaving the rest of the breakdown as 28.5% minority male, 9.7% white female and 2.1% minority female (Griffin et al., 2005). There is a higher need for women correctional personnel due to supervising the increasing number of female residents, conducting searches of female offenders; the demand for female personnel needs to meet the demand of female offenders (Peak,