Today I was able to experience a lot of different positions within the department. I first sat with Ms. Laura Nozedar in her office, where she showed me the techniques she uses to audit media activity in relation to public safety. For example, Ms. Nozedar uses a program called Cision that allows her to track certain keywords (such as employee names) across the internet to keep an eye on issues that pertain to the department and to keep everyone updated on different media mentions.
Next, I sat in with Mr. Wilbert Darcus. Mr. Darcus is in charge of the offender family hotline, which means that he answers calls from the families of offenders (either in prison or on parole) and answers any inquiries they may have. I was able to listen into several of his calls, which was very educational because I got to see how he handled a variety of situations. For example, one of the calls was from a woman who was inquiring about her boyfriend’s probation regulations. Mr. Darcus also had several resources that he used to help offender families, such as the offender database. When someone would call asking about a specific offender, they would give Mr. Darcus that offender’s seven digit number and he was able to look them up in the offender database. I also learned that Mr. Darcus has a diverse background, ranging from service in the US Navy to work in the US Postal Service. Because of his multifarious experiences, Mr. Darcus had many interesting stories to tell, as well as a plethora of varied paraphernalia decorating his office.
Then, I visited Mrs. Claire Rice, who explained the interworkings of the department’s various publications. The specific publication that I watched her work on was their bi-weekly digest, which is a collection of information and reports on significant events that are sent out to all the employees every other week. Mrs. Rice walked me through the process of how she designs and creates the bi-weekly digest using different software such as Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Abode Illustrator.
It was very interesting to learn about Mrs. Rice’s creative process, as well as observe the amount of collaboration that goes into the publications. One of the most striking things to me thus far in the program is the diversity of employee skill sets within the department. There are many different people within one department, and- despite their different backgrounds- they’re all constantly working together and bouncing ideas off of each other. Observing these interactions throughout my first three days at the NCDPS has taught me a very important lesson: collaboration and teamwork is vital to success.