Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia and the Fight for Healing in Corrections
Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia is at the forefront of the national movement to reform the way America runs its correctional institutions. Source: Courtesy of Dr. Jones Tapia
Psychology textbooks likely would not have predicted that Nneka Jones Tapia would be one of the first clinical psychologists in American history to run a jail, serve as Managing Director at one of the country’s premier social impact organizations, or even graduate from college.
“Textbooks pigeonholed me as someone who was at risk and even doomed for failure,” she said. However, Dr. Jones Tapia has never been overly concerned with what others perceive as insuperable obstacles. “Life experiences shape us in ways that textbooks don’t,” she added.
When Dr. Jones Tapia was 8, her father was incarcerated. While this event would shape her path forward, she was adamant not to let it define her. She would go on to graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill with a major in psychology, lead Cook County Jail as its warden, and draft a novel framework for prison reform alongside national leaders in the space.
Although she was always attracted to the field of psychology, it was not until her junior year at UNC that she realized she wanted to go into correctional mental health. Rather, she knew that she wanted to practice clinical psychology in the context of corrections — “correctional mental health” was essentially a nonexistent field at the time, and it is still a burgeoning field today. Dr. Jones Tapia knew that it was the path for her, however, because she witnessed firsthand the devastating effects incarceration has on communities. Importantly, she notes how incarceration can serve to rob people of their potential. That is because Dr. Jones Tapia argues that the effect of incarceration is not limited to the time when a person is in a correctional institution, nor is it limited solely to the person who is incarcerated.
“So many people, specifically from my community, the Black community, were entangled in this criminal legal system in a way that eroded not just people, but whole communities. That’s why I knew it was so important for me to go into correctional mental health,” she said.
By some metrics, Cook County Jail is the largest mental health hospital in the United States of America. Almost half of the 60,000 people who cycle in and out of the jail yearly suffer from some type of mental illness. When she was promoted to serve as the warden at Cook County in 2015, Dr. Jones Tapia became the only major correctional leader in the country with a background in clinical psychology at the time.
When asked why it is so rare for mental health experts to run correctional institutions, Dr. Jones Tapia said, “I think there is a credibility that comes automatically with someone in law enforcement to lead a correctional institution that people outside of law enforcement don’t necessarily have.” To overcome any lack of credibility that she might have had, Dr. Jones Tapia made sure to forge strong connections with correctional staff. Fortunately, her background in psychology and natural disposition for empathy aided her in this. “I realized really in my first week at Cook County Jail the amount of trauma that staff endure working in this system… There was a camaraderie that was established early on, because we were together in one of the most difficult times of our lives working in corrections.”
During her tenure, Dr. Jones Tapia was able to implement or strengthen many policies at Cook County Jail aimed at improving the mental health of incarcerated people and staff. Upon arrival at the jail, all incarcerated people now see a clinician to derive a full mental health record in order to ensure proper care is taken with their treatment. With the person’s permission, the jail even provides a part of that record to judges before an incarcerated person’s arraignment so that no factor of their case goes unnoticed. Additionally, all incarcerated individuals at Cook County are enrolled in health insurance plans. Under her leadership, the jail also established the Empower Movement to encourage staff to actively engage in a system-level cultural shift focused on their wellness.
Furthermore, Dr. Jones Tapia implemented model programs at Cook County while she served as the First Assistant Executive Director at the jail. One of these model programs is a transition center for incarcerated individuals with mental health issues. The program provides them with therapy and wellness programming and prepares them for life outside of jail by reconnecting them with educational and employment opportunities in the community. The mental health transition center has seen immense success in reducing rearrests in addition to improving wellbeing for both the participants and staff.
After more than ten years of tireless work improving the lives of incarcerated people and correctional staff at Cook County, Dr. Jones Tapia found that the immense strain of her role was impacting her beyond the confines of the work day. In 2018, she made the decision to step down as warden after serving in that role for three years. However, this was a far cry from her retirement as a force for change in the criminal justice arena. Rather, she recognized that her “focus had to change from the day to day operations [at Cook County] to healing in the broader environment.” In recognizing what she needed to be well, she “also realized what the staff needed to be well, and what the people incarcerated needed to be well.”
So, her approach to championing healing in correctional institutions changed. She began working for Chicago Beyond, an impact investor with a holistic approach to bettering outcomes for young people in the city. It was by stepping away from inside Cook County Jail that Dr. Jones Tapia was able to put into place what would be the final piece of her framework for correctional institution reform: the families and communities around incarceration.
“Chicago Beyond is where I found the space to see the bigger picture, to see the broader reason that we need to invest in healing for people in our communities, whether they are inside the wall or outside of it,” she said.
Adding in the communities affected by incarceration to her framework for prison reform alongside incarcerated people and correctional staff, she began working on a paper through the Columbia University Justice Lab’s Square One Project. That paper proposes the STAAC Framework, a system for corrections aimed at achieving harm reduction.
To prove the effectiveness of the new framework, Dr. Jones Tapia worked with Cook County to implement the Family-Friendly Visitation Pilot in 2019. The pilot was an overhaul of the existing visitation policy that reduced the inherent trauma involved in the process. As a part of the Family-Friendly Visitation program, families were able to enjoy activities together under the supervision of non-uniformed correctional staff in settings such as a children’s museum and areas of the jail that were retrofitted for trauma-informed visitation. Additionally, security protocols were retooled to be more humane, and communities were able to give feedback on the process, among other changes. Reflecting on the impact of the program two years later, Dr. Jones Tapia said, “I’m happy to say that the pilot visitations gave the Cook County Sheriff’s Office the tools that they needed to create family-friendly and trauma-informed visitations for the more than 60,000 people who cycle in and out of their jail each year.” Needless to say, the pilot program is now the model for visitations at Cook County Jail.
However, Dr. Jones Tapia recognizes that “on the pathway to seeking justice, there is no endpoint.” Through her work at Chicago Beyond, she has continued to revise the STAAC Framework with the help of an advisory council of formerly incarcerated people from across the country. This spring, Chicago Beyond will release a revised framework for corrections reform that centers on what Dr. Jones Tapia calls the new standard for correctional operations: holistic safety. Dr. Jones Tapia says that the new framework for holistic safety will do more to encourage the “stark cultural shift” needed in prisons and jails across the nation.
At the end of our discussion, Dr. Jones Tapia took a thoughtful pause after I asked her what she wished everyday citizens understood better about the criminal justice system in the United States. “One thing that I would like for people to better understand is that the criminal legal system does not work. It is not just. Not only is it not just, but lives are lost because of it,” the former warden said. She pointed to the fact that the suicide rate among both correctional staff and incarcerated individuals is significantly higher than that of the general population. She noted how for every year that a person is incarcerated, they lose two years of their life expectancy and that correctional officers have a life expectancy that is about 20 years younger than the general population. “So what I want people to understand,” she said, “is that we can’t afford to not act. We can’t afford to ignore the realities of the impact of this system.”
Dr. Jones Tapia is a pioneer in the movement to center wellness in the criminal justice system for everyone affected by it. Using her unique combination of educational training and life experience, she will continue to fight for what she believes the system needs most: healing.