If you’re commissioner of the nation’s fourth-largest state prison system, you’re going to have moments like that. But on the whole Goord seems to thrive in his job, talking with enthusiasm about what he has learned in his 28 years of state service.

XXX XXX Ms. Judy Goldman walks with the assistance of Lucie, the first guide dog trained at Bedford Hills, the facility at which the program was introduced in the DPCS system. The image is cropped and smaller version of one in an article in a story in the August 2004 issue of DOCS Today. Click image to access issue.

His seat on the PBB board is a telling vote of confidence, and Goord already had begun exploring programs along the same lines when PBB president Gloria Gilbert Stoga arrived at his office four years ago to ask for his help.

“She came in, nervous, not knowing what the system’s perception would be,” he recalls. “Then my dog came in.” Goord’s yellow lab, Mogul, is in the office with him nearly every day, and, as he often insists, is an integral part of his operation.

“I think Puppies Behind Bars has done an outstanding job,” he says, adding with typically self-deprecating dead-pan humor that “I also like to think that having my support has made a difference. I picked places [the Bedford Hills and Fishkill prisons, to start with] where I knew it would be a success. For instance at Fishkill, the superintendent was Wayne Strack and he was a dog person.”

PBB: Aside from the fact that the commissioner has a yellow lab and Wayne Strack is a dog person, why do you think this program works so well?

GG: . . . Working with the dogs, the inmates are renewing their feelings of compassion and feelings of love. Those are very positive things that we want to send people back out to the community with. The community’s perspective is that they’ve lost those things, they’ve lost those values. I hate to sound corny, but what’s more positive than a person’s love for their animals or animals in general? If the inmates [PBB has chosen] didn’t have those values, they now have them, and if they had them, the program has renewed those values....

XXX XXX Inmate Jesse Mulligan (left) tends to Power while inmate Heriberto Rivera’s attention is focused on Noll. Image is a smaller version of one in the cover story of the June 2003 issue of DOCS Today. Click image to access issue.

The effect hasn’t been just on our inmate handlers, either. The effect has been on every person the puppies come in contact with.

PBB: When you talk about rehabilitation and restoration, what determines the success or failure of an effort like Puppies Behind Bars?

GG: Creating a good product for the consumers that are getting the puppies—that’s very important to us. And the second piece of it, from where I sit, are statistics that over time show that these people go back to the community where they came from and don’t come back to my system and are arrest-free. The problem in my business is that a person’s failure in the community is sometimes looked at as a system's failure, but when you’re dealing with human beings, you cannot just blame the system for that person’s failure. . . .

PBB: What makes the difference between someone the program works for and someone it doesn’t work for?

GG: . . . I think we have found that the inmates certainly have been very trouble free while they’re involved with their new responsibilities of taking care of the puppies. The other positive things are that it gives the community some glimpse into what goes on in the prison system. It gives not only the inmates involved in the program, and the employees involved in the program, it gives all my employees some sense of pride that inmates are giving back to the community. I think that’s very important. But it’s a hard question, my friend.

PBB: We only ask the hard questions. You’ve devoted a large part of your life to a very difficult job, both hands-on and in the bureaucracy. Looking at it from both sides, what has been the toughest challenge of your career?

XXX XXX Puppies Behind Bars pups pose (well, sort of . . . ) with inmate trainers and PBB instructor Carl Rothe (2nd from right) at Mid-Orange Correctional Facility. Image is cropped and smaller version of one in the cover story of the June 2003 issue of DOCS Today. Click image to access issue.

GG: . . . The biggest challenge has always been—and continues to be—to keep the balance of care, custody, and control while you’re creating an environment where inmates can get opportunities to fix their problems, and then working on programs for better transition [to society] and not returning to the system. . . . So I guess the hardest part of the job is creating an environment in these institutions where I can do all the things [rehabilitation and restoration] that I just talked to you about. Because in environments where inmates don’t feel safe and employees don’t feel safe, nothing else happens. . . .

(The biggest problem, by the way, [when the auditors come to my central office] that my people are most concerned about, is how do they explain the dog [Mogul]. And I say, “The dog stays. You have to explain to the auditors that the dog is an integral part of keeping the commissioner focused and the dog is just part of the system.”)...