THE MISSION

A Vision for the Future: meet
Governor Bill Haslam appointed Tony Parker as
TDOC Commissioner in June. While he may be
new to that particular office, Commissioner
Parker has been a leader within TDOC and a nationally
recognized expert in the field of corrections for decades.
He began his career as a correctional officer at Lake
County Regional Correctional Facility in 1983. Since
then, he has earned an associate’s degree, bachelor’s
degree and master’s degree, all while still working full
time. He’s served as a warden, correctional administrator
and assistant commissioner of prisons. Last fall, he was
invited to testify before members of the U.S. House
Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee as a
subject matter expert on prison radicalization.
We sat down with Commissioner Parker to speak with
him about his vision for the agency, his career and what
he’d like to say to the more than 6,000 correctional
professionals who work for TDOC.
In your 33 years with TDOC, what’s the
biggest change you’ve seen?
The biggest change I’ve seen is how we manage
offenders. Thirty three years ago, I think corrections in
general, not just in Tennessee but across the nation, had
a mentality of lock them up, put them away, they serve
their time, they return home. But what’s critical to
mention is that 95% of them do return home and just like
our name says, correction, we have an obligation to the
taxpayers and the citizens of this state to make sure we
do everything we can to prepare offenders to return
home.
What do you enjoy most about your work
with TDOC?
I enjoy the people. The employees of this department
are some of the best in state government. They do a
great job every day. They’ve got a difficult mission, both
in our community and in the facilities, but day in and day
out, there are a lot of days that go by that I never receive
a phone call. In our business, not every day is going to
go perfect. But, day in and day out, they do a great job
and our employees are our most valuable resource,
hands down.
As Commissioner, what is your vision for the
agency?
There are a lot of initiatives there that we’re going to focus
on. We have our role in the Public Safety Act. Maintaining
our mission of operating safe and secure prisons and
providing effective community supervision is key. There are
a lot of things that make that possible: the day in and day
out operations of our prisons, making sure we meet ACA
standards, best practices, and staying vigilant with policy.
That’s the way you stay safe in prisons and in the
community. We also want to set high goals for ourselves.
We’re also beginning a new process with the Womens
Therapeutic Residential Center in West Tennessee where
we’re going to offer some new initiatives there for female
offenders, some programming that’s gender specific. It’s a
population that we haven’t really served well over the years
and we have a lot of female offenders in our county jails.
We want to get them in and provide them with the services
they need so we can get them back to their families and
again, be productive members of society.
You mentioned the Public Safety Act of 2016.
What role will TDOC play in its
implementation?
It’s at the core of what we say is seamless supervision.
When the offender comes into our facility at diagnostic,
reentry starts at day 1 and that’s what we’re thinking
about, that’s the goal to get the offender back into the
community. With the Public Safety Act, we’re at the
forefront of reentry. We will implement a new validated
risk-needs assessment, Strong-R, that will be used
across the criminal justice community. So, it’ll be used in
our courts, in our prisons and in the community. A tool
that is validated that gives us a good understanding of
what are those criminogenic needs that we need to
address with offenders that prevents them from
recidivating, coming back in to a hard bed. We will also
implement graduated sanctions: swift, certain and
proportionate sanctions. Research tells us that when you
have violations, that the way to address those violations
is graduated sanctions. You take an offender who has a
problem with community supervision, may test positive
for a drug, or may not show up for a hearing or meeting,
or may fall behind for a payment or a fine: Is it necessary
to send them back to a hard bed? I don’t think that’s
always the best use of taxpayer dollars. We have to be
very vigilant in how we address that, and the Public Safety
Act gives us the flexibility to do exactly that, and work with
the offender to try and give them the best option of
correcting their behavior and being productive in society.
6 | THE MISSION