Who Are the Real Prisoners? A Case of Win-Lose Conflict in a State Correctional Institution

Abstract

This article discusses the authors' attempts to intervene in a win-lose conflict situation that developed among prison staff at a state correctional institution and between the prison staff and an outside educational organization funding the vocational education program. The authors present the symptoms of organizational paranoia that develop, discuss the organizational antecedents peculiar to a corrections system and a state bureaucracy, and then outline the OD approach used to address the conflict, as well as its abrupt termination. The relative merits of consultant consensus and dissensus (power-coercive) approaches are discussed; and some radical theorybuilding is presented for consultants working with clients in highly political state human-service systems. Certainly the administrators and staff are losers in such a conflict situation, the authors conclude; but it is the taxpayers and prisoners who are the "real losers. "

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