Officer works with hardened Leavenworth inmates
By Jan Biles - Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal
Posted : Saturday Jun 27, 2009 15:42:03 EDT

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Sgt. 1st Class Aljournal “A.J.” Franklin believes every individual should be treated with dignity and encouraged to become better — even if that person is on death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.

Franklin, 43, a noncommissioned officer who administers the military post’s mental health facility, provides counseling to five men awaiting execution and about 425 other inmates with life or long-term sentences at the corrections facility.

“We give them a better and brighter outlook for the future,” he said.

The U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, completed in 2002, is the only maximum-security prison in the Department of Defense. The majority of inmates are housed under medium- and minimum-custody levels, although some are trustees and live in a campus-like environment. The facility provides correctional treatment and vocational training, such as barbering, carpentry and welding skills, to give the inmates meaningful work and certified skills upon release.

Franklin, who volunteered to work with the inmates, said the most rewarding part of his job is seeing a change in the people he counsels.

“To see a person I’ve helped six months later and they’re doing better, and they’re happy, or even to hear them say something positive after they were initially very pessimistic, that’s very rewarding,” he told The Fort Leavenworth Lamp earlier this year. “Personally, you take some pride in the fact that they’ve improved.”

Franklin didn’t enter the military with the goal of counseling people who had committed crimes while serving their country.

He joined the Army in 1989 after graduating from Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina with a degree in political science. In 1991, he was deployed with the 82nd Airborne Division to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq as part of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Working with those in need

He and his wife, Maria, who were parents of a young son, were happy to learn a year later that his next assignment would be at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he would be trained as a mental health specialist. Those working in the mental health field typically are assigned to clinics or hospitals and aren’t required to relocate as often as some other soldiers.

After assignments at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and in Germany and Kosovo, Franklin arrived in September 2007 at Leavenworth to begin his work at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks.

“There is no typical day,” he said when asked to describe his routine.

While he may have planned counseling sessions with individuals or groups of inmates, he also responds when inmates are “having a bad-day experience with staff.”

Franklin said he approaches an irritated inmate in the same way he readjusts his thinking when he is having a bad day. He tells them, “This, too, will pass.”

“We work through it,” he said.

Franklin said treatment goals are determined by a multidisciplinary team and based in part on an inmate’s sentence: death; life with a chance of parole; or a specified number of years, which includes the majority of inmates.

Those with numbered-year sentences are offered “lots of rehabilitation and personal skill development to help them overcome what brought them here” and get them ready to return to society, he said. Those inmates might work on anger management, better decision making or better awareness of the impact they have had on their communities.

Franklin said inmates with life sentences work toward similar goals so they can show growth when they become eligible for parole.

He helps those on death row to understand how “their mistakes and thinking errors got them here” and realize their lives aren’t over.

“There’s always the hope something will change for them,” he said.
Always on the go

His greatest challenge? Time.

Franklin said 24 hours is too short of a day to accomplish all he wants to do.

“I’m really motivated to see changes in a short period of time,” he said.

In addition to his work with inmates, Franklin provides training and counseling to soldiers new to the base or returning from duty in other countries.

His supervisor, 1st Sgt. Ron Hussung, said Franklin’s “skills, maturity and know-how” work to his advantage when counseling soldiers who have combat-related stress, are experiencing difficulty re-adapting to civilian society after being deployed or struggling with other issues.

Franklin said less-experienced soldiers are more open to his guidance because they know he has faced situations similar to theirs and understand he wants them to succeed.

“I want them to be greater than anything I could ever be,” he said. Franklin said working at the disciplinary barracks has changed him, too.

“Working in a place as challenging and changing as USDB with people who have been adjudicated and sentenced, I find myself doing a lot of reflection and prayers,” he said. “I find my prayer time pays dividends in my work time.”

Ellie