Geographic Tools to Improve Officer Safety in Correctional I

Project Summary for 2002-MU-MU-0016 This project will involve the development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to map the locations of violent attacks, both inmate to inmate and inmate to staff at correctional facilities in King County, Washington. Specifically related to inmate to staff violence, previous research has suggested that officers tend to respond in an authoritarian manner to situations where they feel at risk. This project will analyze whether these perceptions may precipitate violence when and where none may have occurred otherwise. Two products will be created from this research. One will consist of a practitioner-friendly software package which will allow correctional institutions to generally indicate where violent acts have occurred within the facility. The second product consists of a more advance plotting software program to specifically highlight these incident locations and identify trouble spots within the facility so that correctional administrators can adapt security procedures to those areas with the greatest needs. Ca/ncf