FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS — A young active-duty corrections specialist at her first duty station and her elder sister, a 12-year veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve, used their military police training, both newly learned and ingrained, to work side by side last week in the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, the U.S. military’s maximum-security prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Pvt. Samiya Jones, C Company, USDB Battalion (Corrections), Army Corrections Brigade, and her sister, Reserve Staff Sgt. Jamaica Jones, 88th Military Police Company, 535th MP Battalion, 290th MP Brigade, both worked inside the walls of the USDB while the elder sister’s Virginia Reserve unit was on post training for a deployment mission. At the same time, the Reservists augmented short-staffed USDB Battalion members who needed to complete their own required annual training in areas such as unarmed self-defense, range qualification, taser certification, military vehicle driving, emergency preparedness, winter weather response and escaped inmate procedures.
“From the active-duty side, since I’m (in the prison) every day, it’s definitely a morale booster for me,” Samiya said about working with her sister, who is about 10 years older. “It makes coming to work a lot easier when I have somebody that I can look forward to, somebody who knows me."
As a former member of the Richmond, Virginia, police force and now with the Federal Reserve Bank, Jamaica is used to civilian law enforcement, but she said seeing what the corrections job is like for her sister was eye-opening.
“I definitely commend her for doing this every day; it’s definitely a hard job to do,” Jamaica said.
In addition to the Virginia MP company, Reserve units from Florida, New York, Nebraska and California have also trained at the USDB for deployment missions and assisted with USDB operation, but this was a first for sisters from the partnered units to work together.
“Over seven iterations of having Reserve units here, this is the first time that we’ve had one sister in the active duty and one sister in the Reserve, and them getting to work together ... — not compared to combat, but definitely (in) a stressful environment — and in this situation it is kind of peculiar, because the younger sister … gets to teach the older sister what (active-duty corrections work) looks like,” said Sgt. Maj. Daniel Dodds, USDB Directorate of Operations.
A recent Army structure change transferred the mission of detainee operations — the internment and resettlement duties that were the responsibility of ACB and similar units — to Reserve and National Guard units. Members of the 88th MP Company, 535th MP Battalion, 290th MP Brigade, out of Fort Eustis, Virginia, spent time in their home state in December learning from USDB personnel and obtaining necessary certification, and then spent two weeks in Kansas in January, working alongside experienced corrections specialists for on-the-job training, and then “posting” to do those jobs on their own. The training adds the corrections capability to the Reservists’ military police skillset.
“They essentially take over the prison, and it allows us to take our active-duty Army soldiers out of the prison to get after the annual training guidance that we can’t usually do — when they aren’t here, we can’t afford to take people out of the prison to do training, because we still have to provide care, custody and control for the inmate population,” Dodds said. “This gets after the active-duty training for our guys and allows the Reserve unit to train for their upcoming mission… So, recognizing that a lot of those units don’t have the corrections expertise, and recognizing our need in shortages, we made this what we call Training and Legacy Week, and we’ve used this concept to help train those Reserve units and allow them to get operational experience in the environment that they’re going to be working in when they are deployed to (overseas confinement facilities) or working in the detainee ops displaced civilian kind of environments.”
The USDB had partnered with a Reserve unit from New York early in 2023, but Dodds said the program didn’t have the management needed at the time to keep it going. Shortly after he arrived at Fort Leavenworth, he worked to revive the program, which involved coordination with post entities for housing, food, transportation, as well as background checks and more, and the Reserve training and prison manning partnership started up again in August 2024.
“A little over a year and a half ago when I got to the unit, we realized that within the Army Corrections Command, and specifically Army corrections facilities, we don’t have enough active-duty 31-Echoes (corrections specialists) to perform the jobs that we are required to do,” he said, noting that additional temporary manning was approved for military police soldiers in the 31B military occupational specialty to assist with the corrections mission. “And, so, the Army gave us an initial batch of 31-Bravos, military police soldiers, but then later we realized that that wasn’t enough. In order to help us facilitate our mission and our annual training requirements, we would partner with the 200th MP Command, which is the headquarters of the Reserve military police force.”
This partnership, as well as some happenstance, Dodds said, is what allowed the sisters to work inside the prison together.
While working in the USDB at the same time, the Jones sisters performed escort duties, moving inmates from place to place within the facility and to appointments.
Jamaica said she also gained experience in the many different jobs within the prison, listing some of the care, custody and control responsibilities within the USDB involving the Special Housing Unit with high-risk inmates, access control within the prison and daily operations managing inmates and staff.
Dodds said after each Reserve training iteration, an after-action review is conducted to keep improving the program.
“We look at what went well, what needs to be improved upon, and how we can make it better for the next group,” he said. “This current unit, the 88th, is the largest unit we’ve had here — they have 106 people here. They’ve worked in every position within the prison because we have slowly built it until it is this great product.”
Samiya said her first MOS choice was actually in the medical field, not corrections. Dodds said the corrections MOS is generally not a popular choice for new soldiers.
“Most people do not want to join the Army to work in this career field. This is one of those career fields where you’re working with the worst of the worst day in and day out. We have low acquisition numbers for 31-Echoes, coupled with environment that we work in is challenging,” he said, noting that so many of the normal day-to-day habits of the community are not allowed in the prison, which adds to the complexity. “You can’t bring your smartwatch and track your steps; you can’t have your cell phone and have easy access to your loved ones who are not in the prison — everything in this environment becomes more complex because of the environment and the potential for contraband to get in the hands of inmate population. And so, given those challenges, you really rely on your training to get you through the day.”
USDB personnel trained the Reservist MPs on proper restraint, frisks and searches, cell inspections, escort procedures, riot control, ways inmates try to manipulate staff, observation reports, disciplinary reports and more.
“They trained us really well in the short time that they had us here,” Jamaica said.
Dodds said interpersonal communication was another important, and potentially lifesaving, skill that was part of the training. He provided an example comparing the 31B and 31E MOSs to help illustrate why interpersonal communication is so vital when working in the prison.
“As a military police soldier, when she initiates a traffic stop, and she talks to that person who committed that traffic infraction, she’ll go up to the window, ask for the license and registration, and she’ll talk with that person probably once, give them a ticket or don’t give them a ticket, and she will more than likely never see that person again that (she) pulled over. Whereas, in this (prison) environment, that soldier that works on the floor is working with that inmate or encountering that inmate, and that inmate can be a murderer, it can be all types of heinous individuals — she doesn’t have backup, she doesn’t have a weapon, and she doesn’t have anything aside from a radio and the way that she communicates with the inmates to keep her safe,” Dodds said. “So where (the road MP) only encounters that driver once and has a taser and has a weapon and all this stuff to keep herself protected, the prison guard essentially just has the that she communicates.”
He said interpersonal communication skills become more developed over time, and that MPs are some of the best communicators in the Army because they deal routinely with highly stressful situations where words can have so much power.
Samiya recognized the importance of IPC for a corrections specialist.
“Someone who just graduated high school, like 18 years old, coming to tell a grown man what to do, some people don’t like that, so it’s just all about how you carry yourself and how you talk to keep your rapport good,” Samiya said.
While she might have known more about corrections than her older sister, Samiya said Jamaica helped prepare her before she joined the Army.
“She helped prepare me in the aspects like what to expect — the authority — some things that I’m not used to back at home; understanding that I am in a career field — this is my life and my job and profession — and how to be professional and conduct myself, on and off of work.”
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