If you had the chance to be the Warden of a Prison how would you run things. Give ideas on the lay out etc.......
Let's here your ideas..........:idea:

Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.
- Alexander Pope

by Robert Worth
For several years journalists and politicians all over the country have spoken and written angrily about prisons being "resorts" or "country clubs." They have railed against a philosophy of rehabilitation that "coddles" inmates with too many amenities. Punishment is in vogue, along with hard labour and "no frills" prisons, stripped of weight rooms, TVs, and computers. Republicans in Congress have added a no-frills-prison section to the Contract with America's "Take Back Our Streets Act" and they have passed an amendment to the 1994 Crime Bill. Massachusetts Governor William F Weld has argued that prisons should be "a tour through the circles of hell," where inmates should learn only "the joys of busting rocks." Alabama has already reinstituted the chain gang, forcing inmates to do hard labour in leg irons for up to ten hours a day. State administrators and sheriffs, sniffing the political wind, have begun to crack down, cutting educational and treatment programmes, making prison life as harsh as possible.
Yet McKean Federal Detention Centre in Bradford, Pennsylvania, by several measures, may well be the most successful medium-security prison in the country. Badly over-crowded, housing a growing number of violent criminals, it costs taxpayers approximately $15,370 a year for each inmate. That is below the average for prisons of its type, and far below the overall federal average of $21,350. It is about 2/3 of what many state prisons cost. And the incident record since McKean opened in 1989 reads like a blank slate: No escapes. No homicides. No sexual assaults. No suicides. In six years there have been three serious assaults on staff members and six recorded assaults on inmates. State prisons of comparable size often see that many assaults in a single week. The American Correctional Society has given McKean one of its highest possible ratings. No recidivism studies have been conducted on its former inmates, but senior staff members claim that McKean parolees return to prison far less often than those from other institutions, and a local parole officer agrees. According to the Princeton University criminologist John Dilillio, well-known for his harsh pessimism about rehabilitation, "McKean is probably the best-managed prison in the country." And that has everything to do with the warden, a man named Dennis Luther, a life-long corrections officer.
The root of Luther's approach is an unconditional respect for the inmates as people. "If you want people to behave responsibly, and treat you with respect, then you treat other people that way," Luther says. McKean is literally decorated with this conviction. Plaques all over the prison remind staff members and inmates alike of their responsibilities; one of these plaques is titled "Beliefs about the Treatment of Inmates." There are 28 beliefs, the product of Luther's many years as a warden, and they begin like this:

Inmates are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment.
Correctional workers have a responsibility to ensure that inmates are returned to the community no more angry or hostile than when they were committed.
Inmates are entitled to a safe and sane environment while in prison.
You must believe in man's capacity to change his behaviour.
Normalise the environment to the extend possible by providing programmes, amenities, and services. The denial of such must be related to maintaining order and security rather than punishment.
Most inmates will respond favourably to a clean and aesthetically pleasing physical environment and will not vandalise or destroy it.Whatever its effect on recidivism rates, education clearly makes prisons easier and less expensive to run. Prison costs are rapidly spinning out of control. In the past decade state and federal prison expenses have risen from approximately $12 billion to $26.4 billion. That estimate is low because some costs are invariably left out in the process of reporting and because prisons put fiscal pressure on other government agencies as well. For instance, the cost of lawsuits that are brought by federal prisoners are borne by the Attorney General's office, not the Bureau of Prisons. And state attorneys general bear the costs of constitutional challenges to their prison systems. Prison costs are continuing to rise with the implementation of the 1994 Crime Omnibus Bill, which puts financial pressure on states to adopt harsher sentencing guidelines, and which includes a "three strikes" mandatory life-sentence provision for three-time violent offenders. By the turn of the century corrections are likely to be the largest item in many state budgets. Already California is spending more on its prisons than on its universities, and the state's correctional officers union has lobbied Governor Wilson and other conservative politicians hard for even tougher sentencing.
Intelligent prison policy is necessary now more than ever before. Yet politicians have been unwilling to forsake the popular fixation with "getting tough on crime" by getting tough on prisoners. The 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill authorised $7.9 billion for prison construction, and House Republicans have added another $2.3 billion to that.
"It's easy for politicians to advertise building more prisons, because up-front costs are negligible," according to Norman Carlson, who directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 1970 to 1987. "Construction costs are just the tip of the iceberg." Operating costs are much higher and indeed the lack of operating funds has prevented the opening of several prisons recently.
Luther, his staff and his inmates don't expect his example to hold up under the tough-on-crime pressures though. One McKean inmate wrote an MA thesis arguing that prisoners should have the opportunity to earn back the cost of their incarceration and then get an education. This is similar to arguments from inmates throughout the country: providing a long-term goal helps them to stay sane and makes them less prone to violence. It also makes the entire prison easier and less expensive to manage. But prisoners know very well that the current political trend is in the opposite direction. And none of them have any doubt about what the result will be. As one inmate serving a life term at East Jersey State Prison puts it, "You create Spartan conditions, you're gonna get gladiators."
Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser 20 December 1995

Well since I don't know their budgets for each section that would be a hard one to answer.
I think 1st thing I would do is have someone on the inside for a few months to see how things "really" are, with full reports given daily to me, analize it then go from there.
That would give me the best way to know instead of the outside reports of things from the people already in positions. if that makes any sense.

I DO KNOW I COULDN'T BE ANY WORSE AT IT THAN SOME OF THEM ARE NOW!!!

I might start by getting rid of all the incompetent people who work for me.

Number One: Family visits for everyone, married or not, as long as they stay violence-free and out of trouble...

Concerts, plays, art programs, job training, victim awareness programs, family picnics, dances at visiting... home-cooked food on Sundays... town meetings to address complaints... any who abuse the privileges would first be ostricized, sent to a sweat lodge to purify and balance their spirit, and then, if they still can't get along, sent back to regular old prison...

Oh geez, I'd get in trouble right away! :D