The Office of the Governor yesterday announced a change in leadership at the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC). Former agency director Josh Tewalt left to join the private sector. His replacement, Bree Derrick, was promoted from her position as the department’s deputy director.
Over the last five years, I have attentively watched Tewalt and Derrick tiptoe the IDOC through a gauntlet of landmines while balancing on their shoulders public safety and the humanity of others. I have also collected personal accounts from prison staff and residents, and briefly spoken in person to both Director Derrick and former Director Tewalt. Whatever impression I may have given in the past, I view Tewalt and Derrick as extraordinarily talented individuals.
There is currently a lot of positive progress happening in Idaho corrections, much of which I am failing to cover in these posts. Mainly because most of my time is now spent working with IDOC staff and residents to change our prison culture from within–something for which I am grateful. But also because someone in the Transparency Department has been denying my public record requests, and I’m yet not comfortable moving past the interference and on to other subjects.
When it comes to improving corrections and maintaining public safety, there is at least as much work to perform at my peer level as there is in public and political spaces. Thank goodness that Idaho prisons are in the process of becoming plentiful with pro-social opportunities. These opportunities are helping people to leave in better condition than when they arrived. They are also making our prisons better places for people to live, volunteer and work.
But there is no quicker path to regression than to take the hard work of others for granted, or to confuse privileges with entitlement. Speaking as an incarcerated person, I now find it more important than ever to support those who are investing, not in our prisons, but in the people who fill them.
Director Bree Derrick and Josh Tewalt are two such people.
I wish them both luck in their new positions and hope we can be friends at the end of it all.
Click here to read the Office of the Governor announcement.