The PREA Resource Center (PRC) is pleased to announce the Problem-Solving with Peers Discussion Series: Implementing PREA in Locally Operated Adult and Juvenile Confinement Facilities. This program is designed for professionals who work in smaller, locally operated facilities and are responsible for implementing the PREA Standards and ensuring sexual safety. This series will be guided by the issues and interests expressed by participants and will promote peer networking and problem-solving discussions about PREA implementation.
Purpose
These discussions are intended to provide opportunities for peer engagement, idea generation, and discussions of innovative solutions and practices related to achieving and maintaining compliance with the PREA Standards.
Further, these sessions provide an important opportunity for the PRC and the PREA Management Office (PMO), within Bureau of Justice Assistance at the U.S. Department of Justice to more deeply understand the unique PREA implementation challenges and strengths of smaller, locally operated facilities. The PRC and the PMO will use the lessons learned during these sessions to inform their ongoing and future work to assist the field.
Details
A series of virtual discussions will be held for adult jails, lockups, and community confinement facilities; and another for juvenile facilities. The dates and registration information can be found below. The intention is for all participants to attend as many of the relevant sessions in their series (i.e., adult or juvenile) as possible. This will promote meaningful engagement and relationship-building among participants that can benefit their PREA work.
Adult facility sessions will be facilitated by subject matter experts from Activating Change; and the juvenile facility sessions will be facilitated by subject matter experts within the PRC and its consultants. Bios and details about the discussion facilitators are available at the end of this page.
The discussions will focus on specific PREA topics that are most relevant and important to the participants. Examples include, staffing plans to promote sexual safety in confinement, developing, and expanding outside partnerships to support PREA implementation, creating options to report sexual abuse and sexual harassment externally, and succession planning and sustaining effective PREA work over-time. Ultimately, participants will determine what PREA topics are covered by using pre- and post-event surveys. Through these surveys, participants will be able to suggest topics for discussion and share specific PREA challenges and promising practices that will guide the discussions. Please come prepared to ask questions, share stories, and collaborate with one another.
Who should attend?
These discussion sessions are intended for professionals who work in smaller, locally-operated facilities such as adult county jails, community confinement facilities, and lockups; or locally-operated juvenile facilities. Individuals attending the sessions should be coordinating, managing, and/or highly involved in implementing the PREA Standards, and ensuring sexual safety in their confinement facilities.
Logistics of sessions
Sessions will be held virtually via the Zoom platform. They will not be presented as webinars but rather as facilitated discussions; therefore, participants are encouraged to use video and audio features to experience the sessions fully. In addition to video and audio, these sessions may use the chat, voting, polling, raising hands, and/or breakout room to enhance participation, and maximize the utility of the discussions.
Transparency
Discussion topics may be sensitive in nature; therefore, to encourage full participation, sessions will not be recorded. In addition to the facilitators, on occasion, the sessions may be observed by staff from the PRC and/or the PMO. If such observers are present, participants will be advised of this at the start of the session.
Consistent with the primary purpose of these sessions to build relationships and community among the participants, and to promote dialogue and information sharing, post-event notes (with no personally identifiable information) will be sent out to all registrants after each session.
How to register and join sessions
Participants must register for each session individually. For example, if an individual would like to attend all four discussion sessions that focus on adult facilities, they must register for all four adult sessions. The PRC will send reminder announcements prior to each session. As emphasized above, the intention is for all participants to attend as many of the relevant sessions (i.e., adult or juvenile) as possible – ideally the full series.
Please click the links below to register for the discussion sessions you are able to attend:
Session 1
Adult: Tues. 6/4, 2:30-4p ET / 11:30a-1p PT
Juvenile: Thurs. 6/6, 1-2:30p ET / 10-11:30a PT
Session 2
Adult: Thurs. 8/22, 1-2:30p ET / 10-11:30a PT
Juvenile: Thurs. 8/22, 3-4:30p ET / 12p-1:30p PT
Session 3
Adult: Tues. 10/1, 1-2:30p ET / 10-11:30a PT
Juvenile: Thurs. 10/3, 1-2:30p ET / 10-11:30a PT
Session 4
Adult: Tuesday 12/3, 2:30-4p ET / 11:30a-1p PT
Juvenile: Thursday 12/5, 2:30-4p ET / 11:30a-1p PT
Facilitator Bios
Allison Hastings is a Project Director at Activating Change, where she works to promote healing and dignity behind and beyond bars. For more than 15 years, she has led efforts to address sexual abuse and victimization of currently and formerly incarcerated people. She accomplishes much of her work through Activating Change’s partnership with the National PREA Resource Center (PRC). For over a decade, Allison has managed the organizational partnership with the PRC, developed resources, provided technical assistance to many correctional facilities, and served as faculty for virtual and in-person training. Prior to joining Activating Change, Allison spent over 15 years at the Vera Institute of Justice working to eliminate sexual abuse in jails and prisons and improve conditions of confinement, including reducing the use of solitary confinement. In all of her projects, Allison seeks to uphold humanity and reduce the suffering of people who are incarcerated, particularly those who have disabilities and those who are Deaf. She holds a Master of Science in Justice, Law and Society from American University and a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in English from Southern Methodist University.
Alternate facilitators
Lisa Capers is the Program Director for the Operations and Resource Management Division at the National PREA Resource Center. She came to Impact Justice in 2017 and is based in Florida. Prior to joining Impact Justice, Lisa was an attorney in private practice where she handled juvenile defense cases, conducted Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) audits, and provided correctional consulting services. In April of 2016, Lisa retired from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) in Austin, Texas after nearly 25 years’ service in the Texas juvenile justice system. She began her career as an Assistant County Attorney prosecuting juvenile delinquency and child abuse cases.
At TJJD, Lisa was the Senior Director of Training and Organizational Development where she managed the Juvenile Justice Training Academy and the PREA Compliance Division. Before the creation of TJJD, she served as Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel for the predecessor agency, the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission (TJPC), for 19 years. At TJPC, she was the architect of the web-based, statewide facility monitoring/auditing system known as COMETS (Compliance Monitoring, Enforcement, and Tracking System) which monitors the 95 county-operated juvenile facilities in Texas annually for compliance with minimum state confinement standards.
Lisa has worked on PREA implementation since 2006 when she oversaw development of new standards for juvenile facilities in Texas consistent with PREA principles before the actual promulgation of national PREA standards. Lisa has trained hundreds of juvenile justice practitioners on PREA and related constitutional conditions of confinement since 2007. In 2009, Lisa served as the Project Manager on the Building Capacity Project at TJPC, a partnership with the Project on Addressing Prison Rape at American University’s Washington College of Law that developed a comprehensive PREA training curriculum for juvenile facilities.
Lisa is a Department of Justice Certified PREA Auditor for adult and juvenile facilities. Lisa has a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration/finance, and she received her Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Texas School of Law at Austin in 1991.
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Teresa Stroud is a Senior Program Manager at the PREA Resource Center. Teresa provides management of the BJA Site-based Implementation grant working with PRC partners to support correctional facilities across the US. Teresa is an expert in juvenile corrections and represents the PRC in work related to juvenile justice involving PREA implementation. Teresa provides technical assistance for the PRC through Contact Us and Auditor Assistance. She assists with the development and delivery of Auditor training and serves as faculty in delivering training through PREA Academy 101 and PREA Academy Investigations Training.
Teresa became certified as a PREA auditor for juvenile facilities in December 2015. As Senior Director of State Programs and Facilities at TJJD, Teresa and her staff worked with the Georgetown University Center for Juvenile Justice Reform to implement the Youth in Custody Practice Model as well as the Program on Supporting LGBTQ youth. Teresa is a Fellow with the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University.
Teresa has worked in the juvenile justice system as a youth rights specialist and ANE investigator. Teresa also served in roles as program administrator, Superintendent and Senior Agency Director. Teresa was also an investigator in Child Protective Services for five years. Teresa possesses a Master of Interdisciplinary Studies from Stephen F. Austin State University and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice Leadership & Management from Sam Houston State University.
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Phebia Moreland serves the National PREA Resource Center as a Program Director for the Training and Support Division. Prior to the PRC, Phebia served as the PREA director, Contract Compliance, at The GEO Group, Inc. for six years. In this role, she was responsible for PREA oversight for more than 100 facilities in U.S. Corrections & Detention, Residential Reentry Centers, and Youth Services. She directly managed the company’s overall effort to comply with the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security standards to prevent incidents; worked with facilities when incidents occurred; developed policies; and implemented best practices in training, identification, investigations, treatment, and reporting.
Phebia has been a certified PREA auditor since July 2015. She served briefly as the quality assurance/accreditation manager at Community Education Centers. Prior to this role, she spent 20 years at the Atlanta Department of Corrections serving in various assignments ranging from correctional officer, sergeant, and lieutenant/accreditation manager. Phebia received her Bachelor of Science in criminal justice from Georgia State University.
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Kayla Houser is a senior program manager focusing primarily on the PREA Targeted Implementation and Planning Support (TIPS), to which supports smaller confinement facilities to become PREA compliant. She joins Impact Justice with over a decade of experience in the victim services field, with specific focus on addressing sexual violence through an anti-oppression framework.
Most recently she coordinated the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape’s projects to reach survivors who are under- and un-served by the anti-sexual violence movement. Her work primarily focused on expanding sexual assault services to older adults, people with disabilities, and individuals who are incarcerated through training and technical assistance to rape crisis centers and allied professionals. Kayla spearheaded a multi-year project with Pennsylvania county jails and rape crisis centers to enhance services to incarcerated survivors. Her other work has focused on domestic violence services and supporting crime survivors through the post-sentencing process. She has a particular interest in trauma-informed approaches to corrections and survivor-centered paths to healing.
Kayla has received sexual assault and domestic violence counselor/advocate, and community crisis response training. She has a BA in political science with pre-law and a certificate in diversity and social justice from Lebanon Valley College.
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La Cole Archuletta has more than 30 years of experience in corrections, having worked in both male and female prisons, community corrections, and parole. She held various management positions and oversaw residential community corrections programs including specialized programs such as therapeutic community, youthful offenders, boot camp, and a work release program in a county jail.
She began her career at a private community corrections facility, then went to work for the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) as a correctional officer. Her work there included duties as a parole officer and criminal and administrative investigator. As a parole officer, she developed expertise in working with parolees with mental and substance use disorders.
La Cole began implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2004 and later, the national PREA standards into the CDOC. As the department’s first PREA coordinator, she developed its PREA policy and created processes to prevent, detect, report, and respond to sexual abuse and sexual harassment. Under her direction, the agency became compliant with PREA standards in all their facilities. She retired from the CDOC in 2016 and began working with the National PREA Resource Center as a consultant and then joined its team in 2018. She is a Senior Program Manager and is responsible for the Field Initiated Training and Technical Assistance initiative which provides guidance and training to confinement facilities to implement the PREA standards in their facilities.
She was certified as a PREA auditor in February 2014 and has conducted PREA audits of both adult and juvenile facilities. She earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Colorado at Denver.