Felice Upton to Discuss How Facilities Affect Outcomes in Free Webinar
Later this month, a free live webinar from Correctional News will examine how the built environment directly impacts staff performance, safety outcomes and liability exposure.
“The Facility Factor: How Your Building is Driving Turnover and Liability,” featuring Felice Upton, Founder and Principal Consultant of Felice Upton Consulting LLC, will be presented March 12 at 1 p.m. Eastern. Registration is open now.
Upton is a member of the Correctional News Editorial Advisory Board and a national speaker and consultant specializing in trauma-informed systems transformation. With 25 years across every level of corrections, from probation officer to investigator, trainer, Associate Superintendent, and ultimately Assistant Secretary for Washington State’s juvenile justice system, she brings unparalleled operational expertise to her work.
In advance of the presentation, Upton answered some questions from Correctional News about which individuals might find value in attending, learning objectives for the session and other practical resources attendees will walk away with.
CN: What motivated you to put this webinar together?
Upton: I bring 25 years of being in correctional spaces — as line staff experiencing the environmental triggers firsthand, as a member of facility leadership trying to deliver missions in high-temperature environments, and as an executive-level decision-maker making capital investments and evaluating vendor products.
I understand what it feels like to work 8-to-12 hour shifts in dysregulating spaces and how environmental triggers undermine even the best staff training. I have seen why well-intentioned programming fails in high-temperature facilities. I identify with the concerns keep executives up at night, such as liability, retention and mission failure. And lastly, I know how to evaluate products and vendors through an operational lens.
CN: Who should attend this webinar?
Upton: I have crafted the presentation to provide value to a wide array of stakeholders, including correctional facility leaders drowning in retention crises and facing unsustainable turnover costs in adult and youth systems, as well as the correctional executives and wardens responsible for staff safety, operational budgets and reducing use-of-force incidents.
The presentation can also help architects and design firms specializing in justice environments who need evidence-based specifications and outcome data to win competitive bids, along with facility planners and capital project teams preparing RFPs for renovation, retrofit or new construction projects.
On the supply side, product vendors and manufacturers developing or marketing lighting, acoustic, safety and building systems to correctional markets can learn more about how their products directly contribute to outcomes.
And because implementing positive changes can carry costs, county commissioners and government officials making capital investment decisions for jails and detention facilities, as well as risk managers and insurance professionals evaluating facility liability exposure and premium structures, can gain useful decision-making data.
Most importantly, this session is open to anyone who wants to meaningfully open dialogue about how to make the spaces healthy for all in them.
CN: What will be the primary learning objectives during the webinar?
Upton: First, I will show attendees how to identify environmental triggers in the physical plant that “raise the temperature” in correctional spaces, including lighting that creates chronic stress, acoustics that prevent regulation, sightlines that trigger hypervigilance, materials that signal threat and spatial design that forces conflict — and understand how these triggers increase liability and undermine mission delivery.
We will also discuss how to recognize the connection between physical environment and operational capacity, understanding why staff cannot effectively supervise, de-escalate or deliver programming when the building itself is creating dysregulation, and why residents cannot engage in learning or rehabilitation in escalating environments.
With these points covered, I will then provide guidance to assess current facilities using a practical framework for identifying which physical plant elements are creating triggers and escalation risk, and prioritize modifications based on their capacity to “lower the temperature” and reduce liability exposure across operations, and discuss how to frame this for project funding.
Finally, we will apply evidence-based design principles that create conditions for learning and regulation rather than escalation and crisis. Understanding and being able to articulate how critical issues like use of force, injury, retention of workforce can be significantly impacted through strategic environmental modifications.
CN: What are some additional resources individuals can gain from attending?
Upton: As a bonus, those who attend the webinar will receive a copy of The “Temperature” Framework, my expertise and a unique value-add that will give attendees a clear, actionable way to understand complex environmental impacts.
This concept is easy to grasp because it raises one simple question for all facility operations: “Is this raising or lowering the temperature?” The answers directly connect to outcomes, where high temperature leads to incidents and liability, while low temperature results in learning and mission delivery.
This framework is also applicable across roles, enabling both leaders to assess facilities and vendors to evaluate products. It creates a shared language, in which operators and vendors are speaking same framework. By prioritizing modifications with the biggest temperature impact, stakeholders can be better equipped to make sound decisions.