I spoke to the LBJ Chaplain, Art Herrera, about the new roster system, and also about our weekly reports. This post will describe what I learned from him. It’s a long post, but please read it, because there is important information for you about our jail ministry.
If you have questions, comments, suggestions, etc, please let me know. I already agree with all of your complaints about this change, so I can’t really help with those, but, you can feel free to express them anyway 😊. I anticipate this won’t be the final word, and there will be more details and updates still to come.
Table of Contents
Roster System
Did you all see the new notification that Chaplain Art put in all of the chapels and classrooms at LBJ? If not, I have attached it below. The new system will be started in December or January. The notification asks you for information about your service, including the name and booking number of all the attendees at your service. Please provide this information to the Chaplain by writing it down and putting it in his mail slot (which is located in the area after you go through the metal detector). This is important, because it will be used to develop the initial roster of inmates at our services!
If we have more than one pod assigned to a time slot, then there will be more than one roster for that time slot.
There will be a roster of men/boys for your service, and only those who are on the roster will be allowed to attend. The initial roster will be made based on our input to the Chaplain that I mentioned above. After that, the roster will be maintained by adding men men to the roster when they submit a tank order, and removing men when they leave the pod. If a man misses two services, he will be removed from the roster. If he misses due to a court date, then he must submit a tank order stating the reason that he missed, and the Chaplain will verify his reason. The only excuse allowed for sickness is that the man was seeing the Doctor, in which case he must submit a tank order telling the Chaplain that this the reason he missed the service, and the Chaplain will verify it. If he just isn’t feeling well, he should still attend the service.
Does this sound harsh to you? It does to me, and I told the Chaplain so (in a nice way, of course). I also told him of our concerns that I mentioned in my last post. He said he understood, and he said he had the same concerns.
Why are they making the change? The Chaplain said that LBJ is the last remaining jail that is not on the roster system. He said that the security personnel (DOs and their captains) like it because it allows them to know at any given time where each man is. He also said that there are guys who aren’t really interested in the service, but are going just to get out of their cell, and he thought they could disrupt the service. I disagreed with him, and said those are the guys that we need to reach, and that I’ve seem a lot of guys like that who are inspired by the service.
Once the new roster system is started, the Chaplain will put the rosters for services in the mail slot for the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix (Kevin Starr’s mail slot). We see a total of 19 pods/dorms, so I anticipate there will be 19 rosters in the mail slot! When you visit LBJ, you should take the rosters that you anticipate you might see for your service, and put them back when you leave the jail.
Weekly Reports
On the Chaplain’s notification (attached below) there is text in red font updating how we are to do our weekly reports.
Prior to this, after each service you would fill out a form from the Blank Forms folder, and put the completed form into the Completed Forms folder. They are changing this.
Now they want one sheet turned in at the end of the month by the “main leader” that gives the total number of inmates who attended, and the volunteer hours for each person on the team.
How will we meet this requirement? Here are two options. One is that we assign one of you to each time slot, and you give the required information to the Chaplain each month. A second option is that I could use the log information that you all give me already, to create a report for the Chaplain each month. I can add some software to the website to automatically compute the required log from the data in the Services Log that I have been maintaining. If it’s OK with you all, I will plan on doing that. That means that all you have to do is continue sending me your Service information via email. Once I write the new software, it will be a matter of clicking a button to generate the required report. You will be able to see the report on our LBJ website.
The data that is collected from us volunteers is then collated and sent to Maricopa County management, who in turn provide it to the federal government. It is used for budgeting planning purposes.
Chaplain’s Notification
Here is the notification from the Chaplain that I mentioned earlier:
20191121-RosterSystemNotifiation
2 Comments
Rick Johnson · November 23, 2019 at 2:38 pm
Joe,
This is a very thorough explanation ! It is generous of you to create a new spread sheet, in effect handling the reporting for the entire team.
Joe · December 2, 2019 at 12:55 pm
Thanks, Rick. I’m hoping that the report will be generated automatically from the log I’m already maintaining, so all I have to do is send it to the Chaplain each month. We’ll see!