Fundamentals of Jail & Prison Administrative/Internal Investigations

About the Book

The goal of this book is to provide correctional supervisors and others tasked with the responsibility of conducting internal investigations with the information and tools to become proficient and meet the state and federal court mandates and expectations of quality. The procedures and tasks in this book serve as a proactive means of preventing correctional supervisors from being charged with failure to conduct a proper investigation and/or being part of a cover-up. For correctional managers and others reviewing supervisory investigations, this book provides the critical information that you should look for before approving and passing on such investigations. This book is pursuant to correctional case law, expert opinions of authorities in the field of corrections, professional investigative agencies, and this author’s over thirty years of experience in conducting investigations in law enforcement and corrections.

About the Author

D. P. Lyons is a retired warden having worked in large detention centers and state prisons. He retired from the New York City, Department of Correction at Rikers Island in 1993. After retirement, he served as warden of the US Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Center (Wackenhut Corrections Corporation) in Aurora, Colorado, consultant to the Minister of Justice, Antilles, the Netherlands, and warden of the Eddy County Adult and Juvenile Detention Centers in Carlsbad, New Mexico. After his second retirement from correctional management, he served as adjunct professor of criminal justice, Rust College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, specializing in criminal investigations and management of correctional institutions. Lyons has undergraduate degrees in business administration and correction administration from the City University of New York and a master of human services degree from Lincoln University, Oxford, Pennsylvania. Lyons also served as principal instructor administrative investigations, correctional supervision and management at the New York City Correction Academy. He coauthored the New York City Department of Correction’s first facility internal investigations training manual. The author is published by the American Correctional Association (ACA) on facility internal investigations and formerly served as a reviewer of new manuscripts for publication by the ACA and the International Association of Correctional Officers on correctional operations. The author’s first book, published in 2011, entitled Where Are the Keepers, was an investigation into a major New York newspaper report that the NYC Department of Correction had the highest financial expenditure on employee overtime than any other city agency. The investigation resulted in implementation strategies designed by Lyons to assist in the reduction of employee absenteeism and resultant overtime expenditures by ten million dollars in one fiscal year. Lyons has served as special guest lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, New York, in the criminal investigation course for New York City Transit Police Detectives. He also served as special guest lecturer on correctional operations at the New Mexico State University at Carlsbad. The author has approximately thirty years of experience conducting and reviewing supervisory internal investigations.