Business opportunity and sustainability in Nigeria, a case study of mobile money. Nigeria, like other developing countries in the world, is faced with numerous challenges, which includes leadership and economic sustainability among others. Meanwhile, Nigerians' tolerance levels to adaptability to these challenges are high with a lot of innovative solutions as they present themselves over time. With a rapid increase in unemployment rates, Nigeria has tapped into the world financial inclusion project through mobile money and agency banking business led by fintechs, banks, and now mobile network operators, also known as MNOs. Thereby generating over 1.3 million jobs from 2012 to date. Point of sales transaction carried out in Nigeria in the first eight months of this year stood at around 4.06 trillion naira. In 619.3 million transactions representing a 45% and 61.8% increased respectively. Compare records in corresponding period of 2020. This is based on data obtained from the Nigerian interbank settlement system, NAPS. What these are shown us is in the middle of challenges, Nigeria can solve basic day-to-day needs, creating jobs and world stream while focusing on the betterment of the nation. It is worthy of note that innovations like these will assist to rapidly reduce the unemployment rates. We just have to look inward. May God bless Nigeria and guide our leaders right. Mobile money. It is something that has really evolved since 2011 when the Nigerian government tapped into the world bank goals of financially including the hit-and-to-exclude debt population of the country. By 2020, 80% of the population will have been included. Of course, by 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic affected the achievements but that has also been extended to 2024 now. But if you look at the journey so far, you can say that Nigeria has not done badly in that regard. Even though there are some things that has not really gone well, when you talk about, because there are two aspects to this, when you talk about mobile money and agency banking. Yes, agency banking has thrived, but mobile money has not really evolved as it should. Mobile money aspect will be the one that will allow, the ones who do not have any identity can still have access to financial services just with their phone numbers. The phone numbers become their accounts numbers and then with that you can also send money. But one of the major issues that we have is that the inter-probability of the platforms has not really made the mobile money to evolve the way it should and that is where I think the regulators should work on. It has a great future. Financial inclusion is key in this economy. I believe that I come from a background where I have some dealings with microfinance banks that I know that we have a future with the advent of mobile money. You bring in a lot of the population, you bring in more of the population into the economy. The problem really is that technology is low right now in Nigeria. There is a need for government to pay attention to developing internet technology more and more. So that these communication companies that are going to provide the services can do a good job. You find today sometimes you want to interact with your bank. It is difficult. The network is poor. Banks cannot serve you quickly enough. But I think it is a positive development because it is for me an enhancement of the developments that we have seen over the past six years in the communication industry. Communication has now turned to banking. I think there is a very great future for our country in it. Thank you. I am actually looking at it from various perspectives. I just use the mobile money and banking agent as a case study. What I am saying in essence is business can strive in Nigeria. The people are saying where people begin to talk about that they are living. Migration is not a new thing. We are happy that people who are also migrating they are skilled people and they are not constituting new sense in the countries they are going. That means by the next two, three years we will be expecting high rate of international remittance into the country which is like a plus. Now what we are saying now is this. Ukraine will share war. It has affected the production of wheat which naturally comes from Ukraine. Now people will say it is government that is not doing something that makes the cost of bread flowers go high. Not knowing that we are importing which is the war. Now what we are saying is these are problems. These are opportunities for us to look inward to say can we have land that are suitable to plant this with. These are materials that are used for producing flowers. So I am just using a case study of banking sector. Before now we have less than say 20,000 ATMs across Nigeria to cater for over 40 million Nigerians that have bank accounts. We have an ATM. And we have over 100 million bankable adults. Meaning that we have less than 50% of them who are actually banked. But these innovations of financial inclusion that people tap into has actually made access to basic finance easy. It has taken banking services out of the brick to meet the people. So the problem of I have to go and do long queue in the bank and the players which are the agents who are doing this business they are making money on daily basis. And that is employment. So unemployment is reducing. People are also their daily transactions financial access they can easily get it without saying they are traveling far away to do. So a lot of things needs to be done to standardize it like he said. However what I am saying is if we can impart the same spirit in every other sector look inward don't wait until the government say we have to do this. Government see being has a standard with the banking sector but thinkers came and said no we can use technology decentralize this create jobs for people. You have to take people getting jobs you have individual who are not taking things create out of this. People are clean. Now thank God for this new law that is just signed. Start up bill. There is not an act that is just consent by the president. So what he is trying to tell us now is people can actually think of a number of ideas we can build Nigeria to suit our taste. We don't need to jack up. Because right then you leave your home you own a way and stuff like that. When you come back all those money that you made you say I am sending money from my boat to go and build ours. Why don't you build ours there? I am not sending money down here because you cannot carry everybody to any country you are going to. What I am not making any case for are people that are living in the country. I think of course there are business opportunities in Nigeria. Countless of them. The issues we have is with the business environment. We talk about access to finance. We talk about security. Most people that are living in this country some people have said of course no one that has left and have ridden the country today there are people that can live in a standard living in Nigeria you have a standard living in Nigeria if you look at the cost to take them to leave this country why are they running away? It is the security you don't want to be in a traffic lock jam and be looking behind your back who is there to kidnap you you are sleeping and you hear some sound and you want to look at what is happening out there all of these things account for why people want to leave this country it is not because there are no opportunities It is from where Usain is really coming from the point is first of all I think the private sector in Nigeria is quite small it needs to be expanded I think the point he is making with the coming of things like this we can begin to see we widen and expand the private sector with finance because without finances like blood if we can allow people to set up small businesses and grow their businesses even if they are in kafanchan even if they are in soko too you don't need to leave your village for instance to say bank is not working or you don't have finance you can take a loan from anywhere for instance so if we build the private sector we have a great future in Nigeria I think it is small government cannot really do everything government can do a lot but we need a big private sector and with things innovations like this I think the future is bright we are going to get somewhere the private sector will come when we have the enabling environment both of you have actually made a good point so I will wrap up by saying the government has to take the lead we are talking about insecurity legacy government started installing cameras every point in Nigeria everybody is conscious of their movements so government has to take the lead by the time government takes lead in every sector I am sure that everybody will adjust and things will set for the better so if the citizens are ready to take innovative ideas government create enabling environment and take the lead where necessary I think it will be good so all we are sure going to like is next after the break stay with us


Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Just to preface this right off the bat, this is not going to be positive in any way shape or form. I read Ezekiel Boone's The Mansion and I didn't like it whatsoever. I'm going to go through this and explain exactly what I didn't like. I will start off less spoilery and I will get more spoilery as we go on. As of right now, the book is out. It dropped December 4th. Atria Publishing. Let's see here. Yeah, Emily Bestler Books. Atria Publishing was nice enough to send me a copy. Sorry, but yeah, this isn't gonna go well. I have a bookmark in here for the exact place where I actively started to load this book, actively started to hate it. And that is at exactly page 200. I want you to imagine for a minute. This this book was pitched to me. The one of the representatives contacted me and asked me if I wanted to read kind of like a reboot of The Shining. I forget exactly how it was described to me, but I do know that The Shining was one of the words that caught me and I'm all for you people trapped in a location. So I thought I'd give it a try. There's been a recent resurgence of lesser authors trying to capitalize on greater works. One of those just throwing this out there. Hugely popular book. A Head Full of Ghosts is just a modern reboot of The Exorcist. I don't think it was done very well. Of course, I am in the vast minority there, so you guys might love this book. I will continue to talk about what I didn't like, but that's one of the things that first caught my attention very early on was the similarities between The Shining and this book and not in any good way. The setup here imagine The Shining. Imagine Stephen King's The Shining. Where the first half of the book. This is something like four to six hundred pages. I can't remember. It depends on which copy you get. The first, you know, half of The Shining, all that is is the prefatory, the stuff at the beginning. Imagine a book like that. Imagine if The Shining took half of the book for them to even get to the hotel. Now imagine a book where they actually get to the hotel in the first quarter and then they leave the hotel to go shopping for the next quarter of the book. And we're gonna get into more spoilers now. So if you are wanting to read this because I said it was like a head full of ghosts, it's not, but I hated these two books for completely different reasons. A Head Full of Ghosts was at least well written. This book is written with the structure of a literary novel where you spend a lot of time with the characters. You get a lot of character development. I mean we're told right off the bat that one character is an alcoholic and one character is hugely successful. And then you throw a woman in the middle, literally just tossed in. You have almost no character buildup for this lady. Just tossed in the mix. And then we're given a love triangle on par with, wait for it, Twilight.  Imagine if Michael Crichton and Stephanie Myers collaborated on a reboot of The Shining. Imagine that. You have these faux pseudoscience I don't even know what to call them. You have this technology side that's not written very well. It's not the fun side of science. It's the, you know, it's it's all the boring stuff, if I'm honest. And then you have on top of that you have a love triangle between this woman that, you know, hasn't been developed at all. Other than we know that she doesn't trust her alcoholic husband. Oh, yeah. Did I mention alcohol? I think I did mention, but alcoholic stuck in a resort hotel place that might be hunted. I there's actually twins in the book. I can't make this stuff up. There's twins in the book. I don't believe that there were twins in King's The Shining. I think Kubrick did that on his own accord, but there's twins. There might be a psychic element. There are whole sections of this book. I can't remember reading because I was dumbfounded at how boring it was. I have no idea if you guys at Atria are watching this and I hate that you made it this far, but why did you publish this? I don't understand that 200 pages and in the first hundred pages they do gets to the hotel and then he leaves to go on a shopping trip for another what, 70, 60 pages before they get back to the hotel? Who thought that was a good idea? I had a buddy of mine who couldn't even, I got this dude, Michael Hicks, finishes damn near everything. He's a reviewer. He's an author. He made it, I think he made it 15 pages, 15, no, so 15% before he started skimming and me and him got to talking and he goes, does it get any better? And I'm like, no, it's pretty much the whole book. And there is some action that picks up, I would say in the last 75%, so I guess the last 100 pages, there's some stuff that goes on. It gets kind of interesting, but not enough to, not nowhere near enough happens to even remotely come close to making this the first 300 pages forgivable. There's just, there's terrible, terrible stuff in here. The most action that happens in the first 200 pages, the most action that happens is somebody cuts their hand and there's a scene in a bathroom that lasts all of a page and a half. It's just, I don't, I don't know where it went wrong and I can only imagine that this book was published because they published his first three books, which was the hatching series. And he had another book, so they just signed the consent of contract. That's exactly what it feels like. It feels like one of those books to fill in a space while he works on something good. That's kind of what it feels like.  I didn't like anything about it. And it has been a long time, well, not actually, you know, that's a lie. Elevation was one star bad by Stephen King. This one, I don't even want to, you know, everybody, if you're still watching this video, watching me rant, everybody has that one book or maybe even several books where you wish you could give below one star. Some people say, oh, I wish I could give six, 10 stars to this book. I don't even want to give this book one star. It is so bad. If you go and check out the look inside on Amazon, I want you to imagine reading that for 200 pages before anything else happens. There is a massive, like 30, 40 page info dump. At the very beginning, that's how the book starts, is with a massive info dump. You find out all of these two guys's history, why they hate each other, everything. It's like Boone decided, I was like, okay, I have, I, he wrote down all the stuff that these two guys have been together and decided instead of sprinkling that throughout the book, he just dumped it all in the first chapter. Why? I don't get it. Anyways, I'm sure there's people out there that will love this book.  I just, I don't, this is one of those ones, and I hate saying this. You guys know that I have a completely open mind when it comes to this stuff, but this is one of those books I don't see anybody enjoying. The book is out today. If you want to go check it out, please do. If you like Boone's stuff, please throw all your money at him. That's fine. This is my worst book of the year. You guys can wait for my best and worst of videos, but this is the worst book I've read this year. Also, final note, it took me three months to read this. I got to page 75. I stopped because I was bored. I got to page 200. I stopped because I was bored, and then I read several different books in between there, but then I finished it and one got off a weekend just because it was sent to me for review. Again, I'm sorry, but I got to be honest. This is one of those books that would be a reputation killer. If somebody came out and said, I love this book, I would stop watching their content. I would stop reading their reviews. There is nothing redeemable about this book. Anyways, so there you go. Until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye. What the f-


Welcome back. Dr. Hernandez presented the overview of sex offenders in the federal system on day one of the two-day seminar. On the following day, he discussed the specifics of Butler's sex offender treatment program. Today at this first part, I want to talk about the sex offender treatment program. And when I refer to the sex offender treatment program, I am now referring to the residential component of the sex offender treatment program. The SOTP is intended in the future to be a national program that includes several different components. And I'm going to talk about those components this afternoon. This is part of a larger proposal that we are working on. Today we're going to be talking about background of the SOTP overview, admission criteria, the referral procedures, and the discharge process. All right, background and philosophy. This program was actually started as a pilot program in 1989 where a few people who the Bureau of Prisons participated in a work group looking at the need for sex offender treatment in the Bureau of Prisons. At that time, the work group recommended the development of a 24-bed residential sex offender treatment program here in Butler. And it was originally conceived as a 24-bed program. In 1990, this program was formalized and turned into a component of our psychology services. The program lost its director in 1995, I believe. And there was a period of without, there was an interim director, but I came on board in January of 1997. Since that time, I have made along with the new staff considerable changes to the program. And what you will hear today, what you have been hearing thus far reflect the changes that have been implemented to the program. The program largely remains a cognitive behavioral program within a relapse prevention framework. Our philosophy is this program, being voluntary, is designed to help those who want to help themselves. Now, a lot of people say, yes, I want help, I need to change. They say that at a time that they're actually vulnerable, they're scared. They're afraid that if they don't comply with a judicial recommendation, somehow they're going to be locked up forever. Even though there is plenty of information that tells them that is not the case. A lot of inmates then who come into the program say, yes, I do want to participate, but when we actually put the heat on them and put them to task and demand that they change, many of them do not meet those expectations. And few withdraw from the program, many have to be expelled because of ongoing rigid resistance or just a blatant violation of program rules or BOP rules. This is a program that is task-based. It is not time-based. This is a question that I get all the time. How long is the program and how long does an inmate need to complete the program? Well, given the premise that treatment is a lifelong endeavor, I don't see a clear beginning or a clear end to treatment. Many individuals have started the change process way before they entered treatment. It may have been when they were put in handcuffs. At that moment they may have already started the change process. It may have been at sentencing. It may have been when they were put in a bus and transferred to this institution. Or they still may not enter the change process even after they are into the program or in the program for several months. The end, we don't have a clear end because this is not like a class where you have session number one and then session 16 and then you have your final exam and then it's over. I've had inmates who have participated in other sex-fender treatment programs who have stated to me upon entering the programs at DOC, I've been in treatment before. All I need is some of that victim empathy and some of that cognitive restructuring. I've had, I did have a long talk with that inmate to explain to him that that's not the way it works. These are not like college credits that you transfer from one institution to the other. It is task-based. Inmates are supposed to, program participants, sex offenders are supposed to achieve and maintain certain therapeutic gains. Yesterday Karen talked about acceptance of responsibility, talked about effective modulation or self-regulation of negative affect. She talked about effective application of relapse prevention skills.  That is how we judge their progress and that is how we judge their program completion. I have met no inmate who has left our program either because he has been expelled or has actually, his sentence has expired and then we have to put them out the door. No inmate that I know of has completed all phases of treatment. It is an ongoing process. I have an expectation that every inmate, every program participant will continue in some form of sex offender treatment or aftercare upon release from prison. So in, from my perspective, that doesn't, treatment doesn't end when they are out the door. Now they may have achieved a great deal in their progress. That is yet to be determined if they're going to maintain those gains. But again, it is task-based, not time-based. We've mentioned this before. Cure is not the goal. We don't intend to cure anybody.  We try to modify their criminal lifestyle and we spend a lot of energy and time doing that. But we recognize that these are very, very difficult patterns to break. And for some people, I have concluded that is almost impossible to break. And all we can do is help them, help themselves through two dimensions. The external dimension that is applying conditions externally that reduce the possibility that that individual will re-offend. And also the internal dimension, which is giving that person tools internally, psychological tools that he can use to then reduce his level of risk. So the goal is here, self-control. It is not cure. Treatment is long-term. I think I mentioned this before. Insexual demience is a lifelong problem. It is not something that's going to go away. A lot of program participants have unrealistic expectations. If not magical thinking about, hey, I'm going to complete the program. They get into this high because they have not been encountering any high-risk situations. Certainly in prison, they don't have any children to molest and very few stimuli or triggers. So they get into this high. They have an illusion of self-control, many of them, and go out and think, yes, I'm going to make it. I'm going to leave that life behind, and it's not going to bother me anymore. I'll just get an adult-appropriate relationship and my life will be fine and dandy. Well, that's not the way it usually works. They'll be confronted with multiple, multiple sexual risk factors. They're going to be confronted at every step of the way. If you have an inmate, a supervising who tells you, no, I've been fine. I haven't been bothered by triggers, sexual risk factors. They are really fooling themselves and being blind to those factors. This also has some implications for policy decisions. I was talking to an officer this morning about the gross inadequacy of three to five years of supervised release. And certainly that's not your fault. It's everybody's fault for thinking that that is adequate. It is by far not adequate at all. When we look at recidivism data, sex offenders actually do quite well. Three to five years post-release, recidivism rates are low. But as you get closer to 10 years and as you get closer to 15 years post-release, those recidivism rates skyrocket. They literally go up like that. So to me, that suggests that we need to modify our policies. Sexual deviance doesn't stop three to five years after release. Now there are some jurisdictions that are being very proactive and have recognized this problem and have also recognized the inadequacy of other interventions like civil commitment and how expensive that is and have looked at alternatives like lifetime supervision and probation. All right, let me give you a little overview of the program. Every inmate who comes into the program has been pre-screened. I have looked at the PSI. I have looked at collateral information. They have met the admission criteria. But they still go through an assessment period. This assessment period is to do an offender-specific evaluation and to determine whether or not they're going to be suitable for the program. In about two to three months, we will know if this person is a psychopath who will disrupt the program and needs to be immediately removed from the program. In two to three months, we will know if this individual will really come to terms with his sexual behavior problem and really work on what he needs to work. In two to three months, we have a very good understanding of the offender. We have multiple sources of information, multiple interviews, behavioral observations. We know if that individual will be responsible. We search their cells.  We have a good opportunity to look at their entire behavior. The assessment phase is typically 60 days long, and that may vary plus or minus, more like plus, 30 days. At that point in time, we will know if that person will make a good treatment candidate. Now for the most part, nine out of ten times, that person will be put in the treatment phase of the program. It is seldom that an individual doesn't make it and has to be removed from the program after the assessment phase. The treatment phase, and I have a program description in your handout packet that describes the program. The treatment phase is comprised of group psychotherapy. Currently, we are offering, we place inmates in groups of about eight or nine with a co-therapy team. That particular group meets three times a week. In addition to that, the inmates receive approximately one hour per week or one hour every two weeks. There may be times that may be reduced to 30 minutes, and we try to gauge the individual's needs for additional treatment or less treatment. In addition to the group and individual psychotherapy, we also offer the inmate opportunities to obtain some skills and information through psychoeducational programming. Psychoeducational programming may be, the topics may include relapse prevention, may include community building, therapeutic community. It may include anger management. We are currently doing a comprehensive program on stress management. Again, how are these components related? Well, if we just offer them a stress management program outside of the context of a therapeutic process, and this question was raised yesterday, it's rather meaningless. What we try to do is make that stress management program very meaningful and tie it to their individual needs. Karen yesterday mentioned that many of the precursors to offending behavior have to do with ineffective modulation of negative affect to include boredom, depression, and anger. So if these people, when either they're bored, depressed, or angry, they tend to act out in inappropriate sexual ways more than not, more than other times, then we need to give them alternatives or give them tools to manage their boredom, their anger, and their depression in more effective ways. That's how we tie psychoeducational programming to their group psychotherapy to their individual psychotherapy. I have seen too many programs that simply put them through the machine of programs, the curriculum without making meaningful individualized connections to their sexual behavior problem. Therapeutic community. I mentioned this yesterday. All inmates who participate in the program reside in one unit. At this point, it's not the complete unit. In the future, we will have a complete unit, but they reside in two wings. Now, general population inmates are not allowed in those wings. So it gives the inmates some relative privacy to be in common areas, continue in dialogue, in therapeutic dialogue without fear of being overheard by general population inmates. This type of dialogue, this type of activity and investment in the therapeutic community is strongly, strongly urged by treatment staff. Inmates who participate in the program have to adhere to a higher standard of conduct. They have to, number one, although this changed not too long ago, well, up until a few months ago, inmates could obtain pornographic publications, commercially available pornography. That all changed. However, whatever pornography they have, they can still keep. They cannot receive any new publications. Now, ever since I've been with the program, I have had a very rigid stance on the use, possession of pornography by SOTP inmates. And it's not just pornography. It is anything, whether it's pictorial or in the form of written literature, that depicts sexual exploitation of children, women, adults, dogs, animals, whatever it is. Anything that encourages sexual violence, it is prohibited. That's why we don't just look for when we search a sale. We just don't look for obvious pornographic magazines. We search through letters. We search through everything. These people are quite good at creating their own sexually explicit materials, and they will do so with the Sunday newspaper, with the ads depicting children in swimwear, with the Sears catalog, with catalogs that are sent into the institution and are not of pornographic nature.  And that is something that SOTP inmates are held accountable to. I've had inmates who are gifted artists, and instead of using their art and their artistic skills to do something productive, they actually draw pornography, adults having sex with children, or I should say adults sexually abusing children. Very unacceptable, and that's when you really discover whether an inmate is really committed to the process of treatment. I talked about three values, and certainly I could talk more about values.  Their lifestyle is one of criminality. Their lifestyle is one of deception, one of dishonesty, manipulation, use and abuse of people, and they need to change that. They need to change that from the ground up. The metaphor that I use is if you have a house that needs to be remodeled, you can't just remodel the house without looking at the foundation.  And that means you need to anchor your life to values. And these are the pillars on which their house, whatever therapeutic work they do, on which it rests. These values, again, are responsibility in all aspects of their lives. So they can't just be responsible with us. They can't just be respectful with us. They need to be responsible, respectful, tolerant, honest with everyone. The correctional officer, their teacher, their food service foreman, everyone. And failure to do so is when we come in and reflect that back to them and say, well, this is what you're not doing.  So what decision are you going to make? That's what that means. And there is a great deal of pressure, peer pressure, to live up to these expectations and live up to the changes that they say they're going to make. The final phase of treatment, and this may begin when they first come in. We may need to, we start looking at some of these issues when they first come in. That may have to do with their release plans. Particularly if it involves an inappropriate release residence, where there may be substance abuse, there may be children at risk, or what we term enablers, people who will not be adequate monitors of behavior. In the final phase of treatment, what we do is we do risk assessment. And we'll talk about how risk assessment is done. This is a prediction of future behavior. It is a way to categorize or place along a continuum of risk an offender, and this is done for your benefit. I think that you need to know if you're getting a high risk offender, a very high risk offender, like the one we released recently, or if you have a low risk offender, a person who by every indication is likely not to reoffend given certain parameters if he's kept away from these sources of stimulation. But you also need to know if you have a high risk offender and with our suggestions on how that person ought to be supervised and how you ought to interpret their behavior. That's very critical. So we do the risk assessment and then communication with the appeal. What we do is prepare a discharge report. In this discharge report we're going to summarize the course of treatment. We're also going to provide you with a formal risk assessment and then we're going to recommend, in addition to the standard conditions of supervised release, special conditions or risk contingent release recommendations. Now we're not going to go overboard. We're going to try to meet with the recommendations the risk that the offender presents to the community or to the community that he is releasing to. We may have some problems here and we need to work on how to make this communication more effective. If the individual, if the offender is getting released from prison at the same time that he's being discharged from the SOTP, we, the staff of the SOTP, will take it upon ourselves to call the probation officer and forward that report. We have tried to work with our case manager, the case manager that works with us to place that packet in the central file, which is the most official chart or charting system in our agency. We placed two notes. We placed the discharge packet in what we call the FOI section, the Freedom of Information Act section. Those are the exempt documents that inmates do not see.  Section 5 of the central file prompts the case manager, whoever the case manager is, to send information to the probation officer upon the inmates release from custody. So that memorandum compels the case manager to look in the FOI section and really take that packet and release it to you. That's where we may have a problem, because I cannot control what other case managers do. I have an influence on what case managers at these institutions do. But let's say an inmate who gets discharged and has another, say two years to go, goes over to the low security institution or goes to FCI Huasica in Minnesota, I have no way of controlling what that case manager does. Hopefully in the future we can develop some policies and some safeguards that compel case managers to send the information out to you. In the meantime, it will take some proactive action on your part to find out if the inmate participated in the sex offender treatment program and where to get that information. Now we will be more than happy to forward that information to you directly. But once the inmate leaves the program we have like too many inmates to keep track of. But if you give us a call, we also have duplicate records of those discharge packets and we'll be more than happy to release that to you as soon as you need them. Okay? So I'm recognizing that we do have a problem with dissemination of information but I also want to let you know that the information is available to you through us and also by prompting the case manager because that information ought to be in the central file. Any questions about that? Yes ma'am. What about sharing the information with treatment providers? By all means. This is a report that is intended to be used by the probation officer. It is intended to be used by the treatment provider who will see them in after care and in some cases it may be appropriate for certain other individuals to look at that report such as a family member say a spouse. It may be very important for that person to be either fully briefed or have that person read that report. Now all of these offenders have signed anyone who comes into the program they have signed waivers of confidentiality where we can release this information to you, to treatment providers as deemed necessary and to others as deemed necessary either by us or by you. So it's not necessary for us to execute release of information again? No. Yes ma'am. Is a copy of that release included in the packet or with the discharge reports or with the data or canopy? I can make that available to you. It is described in the discharge report in the form of a narrative. It says the inmate signed a consent of information agreeing to blah, blah, blah. Now we can also provide you with a signed copy of that in many discharge packets we have actually included a copy of the consent form. Yes ma'am. I get a lot of calls from the field telling me that institutions are not releasing information without a consent and I talked to Vicky Radine about this in Washington and she indicated that we're a need to know group so we don't need a consent and I thought it would be helpful for people to know that that when you get that response from the VOP to let them know that we are a need to know group and we don't need a release and that's in your policy. Correct. Okay. Let me talk about admission criteria. I talked to many of you, many other probation officers about what are the criteria for admission?   I don't think there's any doubt in your minds but still there is some doubt in other people's minds whether child pornographers are true sex offenders and do they qualify for the sex offender treatment program and yes they do. The inmate volunteers for treatment and this is a very important consideration because I've had inmates who show up here at this institution recommended by the court they meet all the admission criteria and they say to me, well doc if this is a voluntary program I don't really want to do it I want to go back to Oklahoma or I want to go back to wherever he came from I never volunteered for the program I thought the judge ordered me into the program so we have to then not admit that inmate and we'll see if we can send him back. He's between 18 and 36 months from his projected release date that's what PRD means so that includes good conduct time but there is a considerable waiting list for the program and although an inmate with an 18 month sentence would be eligible for the program I don't have a bet for that person right now that person would have to wait a good 12 months a whole year on the waiting list before I can admit that individual so really to be placed on the waiting list and have a good chance of getting into the program at this point in time with only 36 months that individual needs to be closer to the 36 month marker probably no less than 33 months now can the individual be referred to the program with a longer sentence more than 36 months yes if he has a 50 month sentence a 78 month sentence yes they can refer the inmate I'll place that inmate on the waiting list he can be designated to an institution commensurate with his security level hopefully closer to his home and then at the time that he's getting closer to 36 months I will look at space availability and then prompt that institution that case manager to then submit a redesignation request for the sex offender treatment program and that's how we can get the inmate into the program yes ma'am approximately how long does a person stay in the program once you do get them into the membership program our intention is to treat that individual until his data release so they would stay in the program until they are released from custody the reason for that is because that is how we maximize our limited resources we aim to treat those individuals who will inevitably be released to the community because those are the individuals who will need it the most I am not going to treat a person who has a 15 year sentence before a person who has a 24 month sentence let's say you have someone into 24 month sentence and they're on the waiting list for 12 or even 18 months would you still put them in the residential program for the last 6 months even though there's a small amount of time left the answer to that at this point in time is no I would say to that referral person look by the time they get through the waiting list I am not going to be able to place that individual in the program he will not even have close to 18 months left now if the person after doing all the math will have say 16 months or 15 months left in custody yes I will admit that person into the program this is one of the problems that we're currently facing but we're also currently in the process of trying to remedy I think I mentioned before that we do expect that the sex offender treatment program will be expanded significantly come August probably to be implemented sometime in October or a few months thereafter tripling the bed capacity that will solve the problem of individuals who have 18 month or 21 month sentence and cannot get into the program even though they meet all the eligibility criteria there was another question yes ma'am for pre-sentence writers we are I guess advising the court the recommendations about the custody period to put in there may be referred for SOTP treatment at the appropriate time or something to flag that case so it won't fall into the plan my recommendation is for the court to be very specific about the language used in the judgment and commitment order specific referral to the sex offender treatment program at FCI Buttoner review for admission criteria it might even say something about and inform the court whether the judicial recommendation was followed so whatever level of specificity you want to determine the clearer of a response that you will get what I don't recommend is that the judicial recommendation read as recommended to for treatment it should say recommended for the sex offender treatment program at FCI Buttoner yes ma'am will that help place that person ahead of someone who possibly has already been there on the waiting list but did not have that specific order no it will hopefully ensure that I get the referral that's what it ensures and I will review the referral all admissions to the sex offender treatment program go through me so if I don't review the referral it never happened if I don't have any paperwork on that inmate it was never referred the only way in which the case managers are compelled to make that referral if they see on the judgment and commitment order this is what the judge wants at that point they will look up the policy and the policy says the director of the SOTP must review all referrals and then they will forward the information to me I will review it and respond respond back to them in formal communications alright has no pending charges or detainers now if our aim is to treat individuals who will be released to the community because that is what the effect of treatment is is close to aid that individual in the community so if that individual has a detainer to go do another 10 or 15 years in the state of Maryland it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to treat that person when I have another individual who will hit the streets way before that other person will so pending charges that may interfere with release to the community or actual detainers lodged by other jurisdictions to the program it is not an automatic detainers may be in the form of concurrent charges or a sentence detainers may not be significant if they have to go do another 6 months in state custody well that's not significant especially if they are not going to be able to obtain sex offender treatment in that state jurisdiction or correctional system the person is not psychotic and that is floridly psychotic or psychologically unstable if that's the case that person needs to be psychologically stabilized before they come into the program he is literate and not mentally retarded we take people who are even of in the low average intelligence and some in the borderline range of intelligence but if they are mentally retarded we are really not equipped we have not made the modifications to these people and the individual is not a sadist and or a florid psychopath this is a career criminal a person who is cold, calculating, callous has no absolutely no empathy for others or a sadist sadists are not good for these type of treatment programs they actually enjoy quite a bit the retelling of their stories sadists need to be managed in a different way for this particular treatment program that would be a contraindication or the person is not a chronic treatment failure I've seen it too many times where the person has already been failed out of two treatment programs or has reoffended while in treatment and my response to the referral is well what's different now he has a proven history taking advantage of these opportunities these privileges and more treatment is not likely to do any any better okay the referral process I've talked about direct commitment the court makes a recommendation CCM office makes the referral to me then I approve the admission either immediate or to the waiting list then the inmate is designated by the regional director if it's a redesignation from other BOP institutions it follows a similar process the unit team or psychologist makes a referral I review that referral I either accept it for immediate admission or to the placement on the waiting list and then the regional director redesignates that inmate alright I think I've talked about this discharge there are two ways of discharging inmates one is upon release from custody and this is the traditional he completed treatment although they never complete treatment the SOTP mails a copy of the discharge packet to the probation officer or early discharge to program expulsion again that should be the case manager mails a copy of the discharge report any questions yes ma'am how frequently rather frequently there are many who come in many who don't make it in any case I don't consider the expulsion failures either for ourselves or for you the consumers of our services because in any case whether the person makes it to the end or is expelled prematurely you will still get a copy of a discharge report that is intended to help you supervise that inmate that supervisee in more effective ways so to me I'm still providing a service to all of you couple of questions yes ma'am what are some of the examples of what are the reasons why they're being expelled chronic resistance to therapeutic intervention or that is failure to change and this is chronic so this is not just one day I'm having a bad day and they blink the wrong way and I kick them out of the program this is repeated observations of behavior that has been highlighted for the inmate over and over again he has been offered multiple suggestions there have been multiple interventions switching treatment staff and treatment approaches and given their chronic failure to adhere to the treatment plan that's when they're discharged they always know it's coming other examples failure to adhere to certain policies if they assault anybody they're out of the program they know not to assault anybody possession of pornography that's a very good one any type of violation that significantly disrupts the program or the security of inmates by disclosing let's say confidential or personal information to GP inmates these are all grounds for immediate expulsion there is a rather cumbersome review process we don't just say we're going to kick that person out several, several times before we actually do it yes ma'am and then I'll get you sir is once expelled expelled does that mean that they can't maybe six months later or a few later if they haven't a changing part or motivated the question is once expelled can they return to the program and the answer to that is no and they know that and every inmate who comes into the program knows that because if I made one exception then that would lend itself to having people be kicked out and then readmitted they know that this is a unique opportunity that we are investing a great deal of ourselves into their treatment and if they waste their chances this is not their first chance this is not their second chance it's probably their 50th chance and that's what they fail to understand many of these individuals believe in the perpetual second chance they always think they should deserve a second chance they just fail to understand that they're probably in their 50th or 80th second chance so we try to clarify that for them sir if you have a court order and the judge recommends a person have sex offender treatment at Butler all this can be sabotaged by the inmate just saying I don't want to be involved absolutely the question is even with a strong judicial recommendation for treatment the inmate can sabotage the entire recommendation by saying showing up to the treatment program and saying look I don't want any treatment I don't have a sexual behavior problem I'm not a sex offender I don't want your treatment yes that can happen I'm trying to advocate for sentences to be fashioned after the conduct not the possibility of future treatment because let's say a person will get a reduction in sentence because he intends to participate in treatment there is no guarantee that that person will actually comply with that recommendation one more question and I think we need to take a break and I'll entertain more questions certainly during the break yes ma'am have you done any follow up on re-arrest rates if people have completed the program? the question is have we done any follow up of re-arrest rates on individuals that we have released the office of research in our agency did a brief study of inmates who were released from I don't know what this is from the from 1990 up to 1997 when I came in to study the data collection stopped now they looked at a control group and they looked at a experimental group a group of individuals who received SOTP services they found no significant differences in arrests the overall recidivism rates for both groups was very low experimental design problems with that particular study so I wouldn't place too much emphasis on those findings one of the problems by design is the length of follow up they were followed anywhere from 18 to 36 months and as I've said before most sex offenders tend not to re-offend during that period they tend to re-offend years good afternoon everyone I'm Karen Steinauer and I have been working with the Bureau of Prison since 1995 I've been with the sex offender treatment program since 1997 what I'd like to talk to you about this afternoon are the acceptable standards for assessment and treatment of sex offenders as you probably know from many of your interactions with providers in the field there's a whole variety of educational and professional experiences among those providers it's quite diverse what we have found is that a multidisciplinary approach to treatment and to management of sex offenders is the approach that works best the reason for that is that no one player plays the most significant role everyone's working together you have all these different vantage points from which to observe the behavior and the approach of the sex offender and working together seems to really help each other out in managing that sex offender in the community the purpose of this presentation is to assist you in becoming better consumers of mental health professional contracts in the field what do I mean by that exactly many of you will get sex offenders in the community for whom treatment will be required and when you get that person they're going to be looking for someone who can assist that individual through treatment program out in the community there aren't a lot of programs available of the ones that are available there are some that are actually fairly questionable what I'm going to go over today are some of the standards that are expected of good providers in the community and there are only guidelines by the way because universities and other kinds of training programs are short supply university certification programs that is basically you'll have a number of individuals who will not meet the criteria that I'm going to go over and I would not encourage you to be overly wary if you feel you have someone who has done an excellent job with treatment of sex offenders in the past even if they do not meet the criteria I'm going to mention I would still encourage you to look at that person in a very broad kind of way because some of the training experiences and professional experiences are in small supply at the same time I do want to suggest to you what the optimal type of experience professional experience and educational background would be for providers of sex offender treatment how many of you are familiar with ATSA okay good many for those of you who are not familiar ATSA stands for the association treatment of sexual abusers the organization's home base is in Beaverton, Oregon and they're dedicated basically to developing disseminating information about research, evaluation and treatment of sex offenders they get that information out to their membership and all members of ATSA are committed to abiding by certain standards of ethical practices or codes as we call them and I'm going to talk a little bit about them right now just for your information though ATSA does have a website that website is www.atsaatsa.com they have a lot of good information some of which you have in your packets for this conference and they're constantly updating it there are a lot of discussions that take place online regarding recent research in the field certain program practices there are a lot of people who go on to the chat lines in order to get information about how they might approach a given problem for sex offender and I would really encourage you to become familiar with that website okay what are the standards outlined by ATSA for providers of sex offender treatment education must have an advanced degree what does that degree need to be in basically you look mostly at psychology, sociology human sexuality social work criminology counseling and psychiatry they are the primary fields of study in which someone will have an advanced degree the bare minimum would be a bachelor's degree with a demonstrated level of experience under a licensed professional okay so you want basically an advanced degree preferably or a minimum of a bachelor's degree with a lot of experience under a licensed professional what about that experience basically looking for about 2,000 hours of face-to-face contact with sex offenders that's a lot of time if you think about it it's approximately one full year of contact that's 40 hours a week for 50 weeks of the year two weeks of vacation that's a lot of time with sex offenders that's really what it takes to get a real good sense of what the population is about in a very detailed and broad context kind of way it does not necessarily mean however as I mentioned before that everyone who will be considered a good provider of services in the community will have that much contact that is the optimal amount of contact and finally we're looking for individuals who stay current in the field reading the current literature keeping themselves up to date on research and practices and are willing to invest that amount of time to make sure they're aware of the nuances of working with this particular population it is a very unique population again I want to mention these are only guidelines use your gut instinct as well as grounded in the context of the information that you have from your own experience as well as from anything you might learn during this conference the most important thing I would like you to remember though is that sex offender treatment as a unique area of practice is something that you really can't dabble in if you have someone who does well a little bit of that and then oh yes I see five sex offenders a week for sex offender treatment for individual therapy there's not an infrastructure present for that treatment I would really take a second look at that provider as one that you might not want to have as a contract employee with the work you do with sex offenders any questions about that yes treatment providers moving into anger management is that seen as a similar process or is that dabbling then in that situation I would say that certainly anger plays a big part in many of the behavioral patterns of sex offenders as a population it does not play a part in all sex offenders in the population for sure but for many it is a very important component in that process of behavior is that relevant certainly someone who is doing sex offender treatment work may be very skilled in working with anger management and in that it does apply to the population to some extent that's reasonable but again the most important thing we're looking for is someone who is well grounded in the field knowledge wise in terms of research and is providing a certain structure that you can see as a full program not just individual therapy I mean we want to look for someone I'm going to go into some of this in a minute someone who also will provide group therapy has contact with the courts has contact probation officers and has really laid the groundwork for a very comprehensive intensive program as opposed to just a little bit of that kind of work I don't know if you want to add sometimes we have for example evaluations that we review from neuropsychologists whose primary practice is neuropsychology and they will test and evaluate a sex offender and they have probably I've been in court with them and they ask the typical questions so doctor so and so how many sex offenders have you evaluated well and they say well six well that's what we mean that's dabbling in sex offender treatment, sex offender evaluation and we caution you against those providers we don't mean to imply that a sex offender treatment provider ought to not treat other groups certainly I feel qualified to treat depressed individuals I have worked with families with children but I make it my practice to specialize in a field because it's hard enough to keep up with a field with one field let alone several fields so I feel more competent if I stay within a general area practice domestic violence is certainly not in congruent with a person who also specializes in sex offender treatment I see a great deal of overlap it's just a word of caution that's what we want to highlight ok what are some of the more important principles underlying the standards of assessment and treatment first and foremost the reason we even exist community safety takes precedence over any other considerations when I first started doing this kind of work and someone out in the community would ask me what do you do out in that prison I would say well I'm actually involved in sex offender treatment what? sex offender treatment why would you waste your time on them how can you do that kind of work I'm sure many of you have gotten similar responses from individuals as you've talked with them in the community well basically we're looking at community safety we're looking at protecting children if we can work with one offender who has made a difference in his life to the extent that he no longer will hurt a child you may actually especially given the statistics that we were talking about earlier have saved perhaps a hundred children from that abuse from that person community safety takes precedence over any conflicting considerations what else do I mean by that basically an individual just to give you an example family reunification someone is in the treatment program is going back to the community has done really well in the treatment program started out kind of shaky start a lot of DUIs a lot of alcohol problems really wasn't fully committed in the beginning to doing the work he was needing to do got put on probation once well in the program and eventually turned things around worked really hard earned that opportunity to be back out in that community again did a really really good job I actually was feeling pretty good about the possibility of his returning to his family his victims were not actually in his immediate family they were in distant family members homes, nieces and nephews but you know at the same time even though I felt like he might be ready to manage that the reality is that we want to make sure that he's ready before any family reunification takes place so for him even though for him to go back to his family I had to think of his children is he really ready? what were some of the things that got him sidetracked initially in the program well there were things like you know the lifestyle he had led before of not really paying attention to deadlines responsibilities things that he needed to do on a day-to-day basis he would miss an appointment here and there for example or he'd sleep late because well he didn't have an alarm clock he needed to know that there are certain things he needed to be able to manage well in order for him to earn that right to ultimately go back with his family and we wanted to give him the best shot at making it back to his family well the best shot means when he gets out there and he's working with one of you that he is getting his feet solidly on the ground in other ways he's going to be able to come for his family which means a job which means get up early in the morning get to work and do that consistently he needs to show that he's not going to go back to drinking he needs to show that he can manage some time with his children while supervised and not get angry with them over the least little thing so in that case not only is the safety of the community taking precedence but we're really seeing that as a benefit to the offender as well I guess I was saying this I've heard it before is the client is the community or the community is the client so I may be treating we may be treating an offender an individual but that individual may not be my primary client in fact it may be the community at large it may be his family it may be the children or potential victims that he in the future may have contact with so another way of saying it is the client is the community or the community is the client one of the other important principles underlying the standards of assessment and treatment is that there is no known cure we do not contend that individuals leaving our program are cured someone had asked this question earlier if that's the case then why are we putting all this money into treatment all this time and energy and it's because we basically know that some offenders will change to the extent that they can manage their sexual deviance they may still have a fantasy that comes to mind from time to time but they've developed tools on how to not reinforce that fantasy and move further along that continuum of escalation and additional perpetration okay yes with Dr. Hernandez the issue about the community being the client when you all do the pre-release or release and you do have an individual who is a sex offender going back to the family do you do any kind of work with the family project that person going back to their family we have some contact with some family members we do not work with all family members all families for that matter in regard to where an individual is in his treatment and what will need to happen in the home we do work with that offender during the course of his treatment in his being honest and forthright with his family members about what he has done and what that means and how that will affect his returning to the community certain things that will need to be in place the inmate will put together a very thorough relapse prevention plan that he will write and it will highlight all kinds of details about his offense patterns and his arousal patterns and will identify certain high risk situations that he will need to avoid at all costs when he's out there that sort of thing in regard to US probation we actually have a lot of contact with US probation I was telling someone earlier today I'm not just saying that because all of you are here there are a lot of really good questions that come from you as we're looking at releasing someone to the community we've had excellent feedback on what might be available in that particular community and we've been able to work with USPOs to identify certain needs that a given offender would really need to have some that they could do with that would be preferable to have them but certainly those that we find essential for that person making a good transition into the community we've even had the opportunity in some cases to help with the modification of conditions of supervised release by asking the probation officer to send us that what is it a 52 or something I can't remember the number of that form but getting the because we have trust that's built up in that therapeutic relationship we can work with that offender who says he really wants to change and has really worked hard on changing to get him to see that you know it doesn't stop when you go out the door you really need to continue that into the community so how can you best do that agree to certain modifications of the conditions of supervised release so we'll get them to sign it while they're in there and we'll send that to the probation officer actually before they get there and so certain things are already in place before they set foot out our door okay thank you very much for your attention today we thank Dr. Hernandez and all the folks at FCI Butler for making this seminar so worthwhile a great deal of thanks also goes to all of our participants their questions and comments throughout the seminar truly enriched the learning experience for everyone we have an update as to the status of the sex offender treatment program in the training Dr. Hernandez mentioned the proposal to expand a unit of 36 beds to 112 as of November 2000 the sex offender treatment program nearly doubled in size expanding to 66 beds in December they will be in the process of expanding and moving the unit to 112 bed area please remember to fill out your evaluations and rosters and fax them back to us we really need your feedback to help us design future programs and remember to check your FJTN bulletin for part two of this special needs offender series the sex offender treatment program at FCI Butler I'm Mark Maggio, thank you for watching


Felly, felly wedi bod yn gwneud ond llwyddo i'r 04.25, Ieithi'r Lyfriddor yn lleiol yn holygu'r cymdeithasodd arno sy'n bod'i rhoi'r peidio ac yn holygu'r peidio. Andrwn i nhw wedi'i arddangos y gallu ysgufo ar gyfer y cyddenodiwyr i'r bobl i'r adnod o'r Llyfriddor yn feddiad arno ymgylchol a rydym yn dangodol yn i'r thanfygol. Mae gilydd am gywle'r budget neu'r dod yw yw amgueddfa'n gweithio hyn yn ganodol anhygoelol yn 80,000,000. Felly mae yna'n cael y cymaint o'r holl gwymoniaid ymarferan yr adreffydd, ac yn adleffydd, a'r holl bwysig o'r anhygoel yn ei hefyd yn holl gyrwyr ar gyfer. Rwy'n cymaint, mae fydd yn cyr flynyddiadau i gyd yn gyrsgol. Rwy'n ceio ddiwethaf i 15.7kins o myll pleid, mae gennych gennych gweithredu o gylliwnol. Mae'n bwysig. Mae'n bwysig, a maen nhw'n eistedd yn llafiullol. Yn ymddeithasol, rwy'n hexfökol, mae'n eistedd yn dod o bobl a'i byddai ei ddefnyddio'n bwysig, a gweld y gweithio yn fawr, a fydd yn cael ei gweithio cymdeithasol. Rwy'n meddwl o'ch gweithio, mae have gafos i'r strategi ddechrau addedig. Mae'r bwysig o'r gweithio gwahanol a'r gweithio'r bwysig yw'r rhai eu cael eu cymdeithasol, ond mae'r cyfan yw ymdweud wedi eu cyfan y dyfodol, mae gennym ni i cyflogio, mae gennym ni i'n cael eu risiliau, ond mae'r gweithio'n ei wneud i gweithio'r bod y dyfodol yn ymgyrchol ond mae'r fuddiots yma yn eu cyfan yw'r ffordd o'u cyfan yw yng nghymru yn gwybodaeth i gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gwybod. Well, there's a lot of pressures coming through the system this year. It's been a challenging, even more challenging year than usual. We've had to put in an additional £82 million into our budget for £24.25, of which £28 million is for to cover pay and price inflation, and £54 million is to cover service pressures. Predominally those service pressures are in social care such as children's and adult cares, but there are also pressures in highways and other areas. We've had a long year because we started last July with a £45 million gap, so all our staff have worked extremely hard to get that down to be able to balance the budget. And as the leader has said, we've done that with only £15.7 million of efficiency savings, and they are efficiency savings, they are not cuts. So, we've managed to balance the budget. I would add that we were able to balance the budget at the last minute, because Michael Gove, the Secretary of State, announced £500 million worth of additional social care funding last week, and a West Sussex share of that is £6.9 million, so that enabled us to close that gap of the final gap of £3.6 million. The additional 3.3 that we're left with, we have put into the budget, but we will decide how we spend that in the first quarter of next year, because we didn't have time to allocate it, the funding came through so late. But what I'd like to be quite clear about is that we are not putting money, any of this additional funding back into our reserves, because we've got the additional funding, we no longer have to draw that money down from our reserves. So, that is very important. Our council tax decision for next year is that we have, unfortunately, we are having to increase our council tax once again by the maximum amount, which is 4.99%. We have to do that because the core funding that the government give us is assessed on the fact that we will raise council tax by the maximum amount. The 4.99% is made up of 2.99% for core services and 2% for adult social care preset. Now, we don't like having to raise council tax because we appreciate the present cost of living situation most people are in. But as it's part of our core funding, we need that money to protect our front line services. A council tax of 4.99% represents a weekly increase for a band D taxpayer of £1.57 per week.


There's no money in easy There's no money in easy But always the question is what's the easiest way for me to get started? What's the three things? What's the one book? I should read Thai. I'm like, there's no money in easy The money comes From the progression Your progression through the skill set those people who are able to focus when the whole world has an attention span They say now that's shorter than the average goldfish an average goldfish scientist say as a six second attention span What do you think that is now in the social media world where people can flip through and get a new hit of dopamine nonstop day after day moment after moment Right, that's the easy thing to do be hypnotized by mass media But to go your own path This is difficult


No rain, no score, this time it was pure silence. Silence is interesting to me. Silence can be the loudest action, it can be the most powerful, and even more threatening than words. Silence can be calming too, every waking moment doesn't have to be covered by sound or by words. But silence can also be captivating when you have an audience at your feet, waiting for your next word. These are the true moments of tension, attention, and power in performance. After relentless action, silence can simply give you time. But sometimes silence is lonely, and can be synonymous with loneliness. Being alone is not the same as being lonely. I like to be alone, not every second of the day, but I need time for myself always. Time to recharge, time to think and to gather myself. Many people aren't comfortable with their own thoughts, some have no control over it. Being alone allows me to create, and forces me to evaluate my actions and my emotions. Solitude grants me time to write, in which I materialize the worlds that I have created in my own head. It doesn't have to be for a long time, but I need solitude. To take care of myself and my mind, to do things that I love, it breeds creativity, and it nourishes my passion. If you can, learn how to be alone, and how to be comfortable with solitude, because learning how to be alone will teach you how to be with others. When understanding silence will teach you the worth of speech.


Hey what's going on everybody this is Giovanni from spy options trading here on this Monday September 17 2018 with a trade recap how about that guys I just thought today would have been hilarious if I did a trade recap so here it is after not being able to trade today because I did have to work full time at my part-time job today and tomorrow so I won't be trading until Wednesday I was taking a look at the intraday action for today and I saw my signal right here guys how awesome is that signal look at that beautiful move down to the downside and so I just wanted to show you the possibilities here of this trade recap had I traded it so I'm just going to move this here because because spy was trading at around 250 I would have been trading the 290 50 puts and more than likely I would be trading the 290 50 puts that expire in two days so that's the 19th and I have them right here and I just wanted to you know just hypothetically speaking show you how you could have made your 10% rather easy as long as you set your emotions inside of course so let's be extremely conservative when it comes to this trade recap I noticed that the signal came on right here at my time 7 35 so let's be conservative and say let's let's get in on the next candle the start of the very next five minute candle which is 740 so 740 right there and more than likely yes you could have gone in at 85 but more than likely I would have gone in at 87 to 90 cents that generally seems to happen to me all the time but let's just use this data here we would have been getting in at the top at 85 cents so we're looking for about an 8 to 9 cent move is 94 cents so we would have been down a little bit there back up to even sideways action and a nice move to 96 cents and I think I feel confident that you would have been able to make that trade but in case you didn't you'd be a little bit more chop and then finally it exploded and more than likely in this trade recap I would not have held for this long just I never do I never hold for that long and for $1.27 that's ridiculous but anyways I just wanted to showcase my signal here today because I did not watch the markets hardly at all today while I was at work but I did want to share with you an idea that I had over the weekend mainly because I started watching the queues a couple of weeks ago and it just makes sense to me but anyways I don't have any data it's just literally a thought I'm looking for overall strength in the market because that's essentially what we're trading here we're trading the market almost as a whole pretty much in a nutshell and so I wanted to see if possible I want to see if it's possible to build a strategy around the queues and spy where I wait for a signal to show up at the same time because more than likely it's going to trigger a move in that general direction and so check this out guys especially today there was a signal at the exact same candle at the exact same time and it just made for a beautiful trade and it looks like the queues moved a little bit better than spy did anyways today but this is just a thought of mine I don't have any hard data I have no experience but this essentially is the exact same script only on the queues and spy and both on five-minute charts to compare apples to apples kind of thing so I don't know guys not necessarily am I trying to trade a switch up my strategy but I think it's worth looking into I just I don't know I'm fascinated by this I'm fascinated by my arrows is really what it comes down to and I want to learn to trade better again comment down below what you thought about this video do you like this idea do you think it's dumb do you think it's stupid do you think it's brilliant whatever it may be comment down below guys I want some feedback from my subscribers like and share my videos always and don't forget to hit that subscribe button down below guys thank you so much and we will see you again Wednesday guys take care


Volunteers with a project known as Operation Christmas Child will be busy next week as they kick off their National Collection Week on Monday. Operation Christmas Child is an international program with a hub and brainer that provides shoeboxes filled with small toys, hygiene items and school supplies to children in third world or war-impacted countries around the world. Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse and we pack shoeboxes filled with hygiene items, school supplies and a wild gift for children in over 130 countries. Anybody's welcome to donate a shoebox gift and any type of average size shoebox can be used. The boxes can be dropped off next week during National Collection Week at locations in Brainerd, Bemidji, Pine River, Grand Rapids and more. Candy, toothpaste, gum, food or liquids are not allowed in the boxes due to customers. They're going to remember that moment when they get that one gift and something they'd prayed for, something they'd wanted, longed for and they open it up and they see it and they instantly fell in love and that's the purpose. To learn more about Operation Christmas Child or to find a location near you to drop off a shoebox, you can visit the story on our website at lptv.org.


When you want to go into a business, you want to go to an interview. Identify the problems they have. That is number one. Do research. Do research on who is the MD. Do research on what problem does this industry generally have. Right? There's someone in the world that has solved it. The industry probably doesn't know that. There's someone in the world that has solved it. Go understand that problem, how to solve it. Try and solve it. Get some data. You know data is everywhere. Look for data. Solve that problem before your interview. Right? So when you go to that interview, yeah, generally you say not to solve it. Okay, there's general problem around productivity. Okay, let me give you one problem everybody had. During the pandemic, everybody closed shop, obviously. Everybody was at home. There's one funny video. So did you see the video in the US where animals started coming to claim the territory? Say, oh, this is just less human is around. Let's claim a backyard territory. Anyway, but what happened was quite a lot of companies had a big issue. Right? Of course, we had to go home and so everybody had to work from home. But now you can see many people coming back. Why do you think they're coming back? There's a good reason to come back. I think for me is culture. You need to sustain the culture of the organization. But one big reason they're coming back is because of something they didn't have when the pandemic started. They didn't know how to measure productivity properly. Companies didn't know how to measure productivity. So then a manager says, oh, we are there. They're working. He's working on his laptop, but you can't see that he's on Facebook. So it's not really being productive, right? But they couldn't measure productivity well, and they still can't measure productivity.  It's not. So think about that's one big problem. How do you solve this? Well, you get a measure for productivity. Now, one thing about maximizing business value. Can we skip through the introductions? Can we go to the slides on? There's just one skill you need to learn. One skill. So you go to the slide that's somewhere that says one skill. Sorry, the slides are not very clear. Okay, let's go to the next one. Good. One skill. One skill you need to maximize business value in a data-driven world. Just one skill. Can we go to the skill? Click. It is click, click, click, how to measure when it comes up. How to measure. That's the key skill you need. How to measure. I think there's a ruler there. I don't use a ruler at all times. Many people do not know how to measure. Just give you one. Productivity. Many businesses need to understand are we productive? If we are productive, that leads to incumbents revenue and so on. We can't measure things very well. And experts, if you bring five experts here, ask them a question. Give me the most important steps for doing it. All those five will give you different answers. Were they wrong? Maybe not. But the fact is those five give you different answers because of some biases we have. So how to measure? That's number one. How can we measure? How do I measure? Anything. And there's a book out I'll recommend to you. How to measure anything. I can't remember his name. I think Douglas. So think how to measure anything. Because everything can be measured. You just have to think critically. So I'm not going to talk to you about data analytics and all the in Power BI and Google analytics and stuff. Those are tools. They're just tools. You have to treat them as tools. The big skill you need to know is how to think critically on how do I measure this thing. And when I measure it, does this correlate with the outcome that I want? Another big skill in how to measure, you always need to know statistics. You need to know statistics. Not the complex or who read statistics here. I don't expect many hands. One hand on the back. Wow. Can we clap for that brave guy? But this guy as well. The way they teach statistics is terrible. It's terrible in the university. This is really, really terrible how they teach statistics. But it is such an important skill in business. Because currently I can tell you for free, most businesses are measuring things wrongly. We're just measuring things wrongly. I have a video online on how we measure, given an example of sales reps and how we determine which rep to fire. This unfortunately is the thing. Pandemic happens, you need to reduce your staff force. When you now grow, you get them back. So you have 1,000 sales reps. How do you determine who is performing better? So that's one problem. How do you measure performance? How do you do that? Think about it and if you have an answer, then tell me. How do you measure performance? One single metric to measure performance. Now back to the slides. Another thing is these are three big things that affect how we measure. Overconfidence, inconsistency, and the complexity around probability that we don't really like. So overconfidence. We're always overconfidence. We are, yes, Nigeria is one of the most confident countries in the world. We are super confident. Can you do this? Yes, of course. I haven't told you what to do. Trust me, I can do it. So that is confident over confidence. This is a good thing, but unfortunately, when it comes to data, we need to be more accurate. How many of you have used CharGPT? How many of you here? If your hand is not up, please today, go and start using it. You have to go and start. Go to OpenAI, get a free account and start using it. This is the most intelligent code human in the world, right?  Who has experienced food stupidity on CharGPT? Yes, so you can't just 100% rely on your tools. But how does it do what it does? It has all the knowledge of the world, frankly speaking, all the books, the whole Internet in its head. And then it now knows how humans basically answer things. Humans have neurons in their head, all these neurons and stuff. And if you train yourself, it gets better and better and better. It's something that doesn't stop growing. Every part of body stops growing, but those neurons keep on getting new connections and stuff. So that's how neural networks happen and that's how CharGPT works, right? So it can give you funny answers at times, just like me human beings, right? We didn't listen very carefully. Then we answered, we gave you some silly answer and looking at this guy. He's still talking. Have you finished? Okay, that's not what I asked. Okay, sorry. What did you ask? Why didn't you listen? So same thing with CharGPT. Sometimes it doesn't really understand what it is you are saying or asking and gives absolutely terrible answers, right? But sometimes it also gives answers and continues to fester the error. Do you notice some people, when they make a mistake, they just continue and continue and continue instead of just standing back? Oh, I've already spent 10 million on this. No, it was work. You spend another five million.  But that is how we humans work and that's also how this new chart engines work. We can go back to the slides. So these three, inconsistency, right? In fact, the most powerful metric, the most powerful metric of performance in the world is how do you measure consistency? Right? That's the most powerful metric. So when you tell how good is this person or that person, it is consistency. Oh, how good is this person in sales? That person made like five million last month. And that's the highest you've ever had. Does that sound like someone that's very good? Yeah, he made five million last month. The highest sales they've ever had. Put your hand up if you think that is an excellent performer. I made five million.  Hands up, hands up. Come on. He's a good performer, right? Okay. They know there's a three question. You guys are two smarts. Okay, anyway. So he made five million last month. That's fine. What did he make two months ago? He made one million. What did he make three months ago? He didn't make anything. He was ill. Right? What did he, what's he making next month? Probably he's going to make another 500,000. So you have 500,000, zero, two million, five million, one million, one million, 100,000, 100,000, 10,000, 10,000, 10,000. That will give someone a heart attack. What is this guy bringing to the table tomorrow? We don't know because he is what? In consistent. So you can be average and consistent. You're far better than someone that's all over the place. Right? And that's what risk is. So business is all about risk. How do we measure risk? Right? And how do we manage risk? Data can help us a lot. We need to understand how to analyze. So let's go to another slide. The complexity and probability here is a simple thing you could do. So I'll just put some, for marketing, for example, measure social media impressions. Now, what do we mean measure social media impressions? Is the number of impressions correlated with how many people buy that product you're selling? So as impressions go up by 20%, does that revenue go up by 10% potential revenue? That's correlation. That's another big word. Correlation. You need to know how to measure correlations, which is what charting it is doing. That's all it is doing. Check it. If we say the word word comes after the most, let's put it there. What word comes after the people? The people are, I think, yeah, so it just, that's all it does. Give you an experiment. Everybody take your phone out very quickly. Let's do a quick experiment on data. Take your phone out. Go to WhatsApp. Everybody go to WhatsApp. You're going to send a message to someone you trust because the person will say something is wrong with you after the message. So go to WhatsApp. Everybody go to WhatsApp. Very quickly. Pretend you're going to send a message, right? I want you to type, you choose which one you type. Let me say I. Type I. I. You don't say I space, right? Type I space. I space. Have we done that? Don't send yet. I space. Can you see three predictions? Shout out the prediction in the middle. Shout it out. Okay. See what you're going to do. You're going to click that prediction 30 times. That one. Just click, click, click. You don't need to read. Just click, click, click, click 30 times. And when you have done, if you think you are brave enough to tell us what WhatsApp said, let's do it. So just click, click, click like 30 times. And then someone should read what WhatsApp gave us, what data gave us. So who has the mic? Can we go on to read? One person at the back. Maybe that lady there in the middle. One person here. Okay. Okay. So one person at the back. So one person, you know, lady here. Okay. That's it. Can we pass the mic? Any mics? Pass the mic. So you will hear some funny things. So let's hear what you can leave your hands up. You can quickly get to shout out. Tell us what's your AI or your data generator is from. Can I give the mic? Can I give the mic? Yeah. Okay. Who has their hands or someone at the back has their hands up. Someone at the back first. And then, okay, let me just come down. All right. So let's listen. Hi. Good morning. My name is Ola Tumiya Blasif. So from my keyboard here, I have been a little too busy for a week. But I'm glad I can help with my phone screen for a while. And then I'm going back home. And then... Okay. Zina, I have to go to the bank to pick up my money from my bank. And then... Okay. Mine stays. I'm so happy to see my Instagram. I'm so happy to see that you're having fun with family. I hope you're doing good. I miss you. My name is Keshifu. I am not sure if you have any questions or concerns. Please listen to the plug-in settings. I'm working on something. So yeah. So that is what's up using your data. Obviously, we know that guy is a very hard worker. So it's using your data and then looking at correlations and looking at doing some statistical analysis, right? What usually comes after I? What usually comes after I am? What usually comes after I am? Good. It just predicts. And the models are getting so good. Let's quickly go. I want to tell you one method that you should learn to be able to do all these things well and progress with business. I know my time is almost up. Let's go to scientific method. I'll leave this. I'll send you this. I want to watch this short one-minute video on what this scientific method is. Hope it plays. The scientific method is about ordinary people doing ordinary things. That includes you, me, and other scientists in the world. The scientific method is just a process or step taken to produce reliable results to answer a specific question. Maybe you think you don't use a scientific method in your life, but I can guarantee that you do. For example, imagine you wake up on a Saturday and you couldn't find your cell phone. That's an observation. Then you do a little research by thinking about the last time you had it. You suspect that it might be in the pocket of your pants from yesterday. That's a hypothesis. And when you check your pants, you're doing an experiment. But science and life don't always go as planned and you find no cell phone in your pants pocket. So the second observation leads you to think again and recall what else you did yesterday. You remember that you put your cell phone in your backpack during school.  And lo, there it is. Life can continue and you're so happy that you share the results with your best friend and explain why it took you so long to text them back. Science. Can I go to the next slide? So this is the scientific method. I'm going to go back again. Observation, research, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion, share results. That whole process that you go through every day when you're trying to solve a problem. That is it. Observation, research, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion, and you share your results, right? So in the data analytics guides that are in visualizations, that's sharing the results, right? Hopefully they get the correct visual so that when people see they instantly understand what's going on, right? So observation, research, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion, and sharing your results. So whether you write science or not, you're going to add, you need to learn the scientific method and use that to understand how to measure things, right? Understand how to measure things and then how to present those things. Let's go to the next slide. Right, solving problems. Next, next, next. Right. So this is how most corporate solve problems are always discovered. They do data generation, then they get data first. They usually have a software. That software, unfortunately, they need that software to talk to 10 other software. So they download data and most of the preferred software for downloading it to is Excel. Then they're not clean the data, kind of go through the data or clean it up, mash it up, mixing it up with different things, getting a particular measure out of the data. Then they go and start presentations on PowerPoint and they present to management on PowerPoint. And then they brainstorm on those numbers presented. Unfortunately, most companies spend maximum 20% of their time on that brainstorming. That's the most important thing, brainstorming on what's going on. They spend a lot of their time cleaning the data, getting the data, collecting the data, not thinking through what the data is saying, right? So your job is when you get to all those companies or you're already in those companies, try and eliminate that backlog, that data, all that manipulation or manipulations they do with the data. Eliminate that. So we spend time on real stuff, which is brainstorming on those numbers. And you can automate it. You can see what's what's up just automated for you. Send a message, obviously. It needs more input from you than I. Right? You know, it's really good when you see some options that are really excellent, isn't it? I've seen that. Yeah, so it's using that data from you. Now, next slide. Let me, I have a slide where I've shown the framework for problem solving in Excel, love Excel. So I've given an example there, but I want to go to one quote at the end. Can we go to the end? Hopefully, we're going to see the quote. Okay, this is also important. Let me talk about this. Biases. One thing about chart GPT and all those other software out there is they're using our data. Our data is biased. It is biased. We are biased human beings.  Yes, some of you say, no, we are all biased. If you want to prove it, go to this book. Read this book, Thinking Fast and Slow. Who has read it? Thinking fast and slow. Go and read that book to humble you. You will see how biased you are. And which means many decisions will make are biased. So they're not optimized decisions for making money. They are biased. Right? So if you check the board, board of directors of most companies don't have ladies, don't have women. They're mostly men. How many, what's the percentage of women in the population? It's like, let's say 50%, right? So how do you know what your customer, 50% of your customers want? How do you know how to sell to them if you don't have that customer in the room? So the data basically says that, right? So when women are more women in a board, those companies actually make more money. It's not, it's proven. When there are more women in the board, there's no women in hand. A lot of those heavy lifting is done by men, but men have decided to stop doing that. Do you know who they've employed? Robots. They now do robots and stuff. They've made robots to kind of do that. But it's important that we understand our market, right? Understand your market. I know that if your market is not represented in the decision making process, you will not maximize your money making, which is what companies need to make money to pay bills and stuff, right? So back to the number one skill you need, which is what? How to what? How to measure. You need to learn how to measure. It's nothing to do with beautiful data, analytic cloud, analytic, etc, whatever skills. No, it is a thinking process and to help you think of how to measure, use the scientific method. It's a very good method to use. There's one method we use. We are known for excel a lot, doing a lot of excel training. I've been doing that for like almost seven years and modeling and stuff. So we created the coin one methodology for using excel. We say a good cook always dices vegetables rapidly. That's how to remember it. A good cook always dices vegetables rapidly. Can I go to the slide where we explain what that means? And you can take that, but I know I need to leave now. This bias data, go online and check for something called the bias codex, cognitive bias codex. You see what this slide is. Very important slide. These are all the biases we have. We will go check this out later. The cognitive bias codex, CODX. You see the image? And then you can check that out. But read that book of, what book did I mention about fast, thinking fast and slow. Very important book. I mentioned another book today you need to get. How to measure anything. Very good. Go to the next slide. I need to conclude, I conclude with this statement from Professor Stephen Hawking. He said, our future is a race between the growing power of technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let's make sure that wisdom wins. Right? Thank you very much, everybody. Okay, so before you maintain, you started about saying, as going into interviews, you should then have to solve the company's problem. So if you are a healthcare personnel and you're going to a hospital, let's say the general hospital, so how do you then have to look at how to solve the problem? Do you feel like, take a survey into the hospital corner, or how can I reduce patients' accidents and all that? Hold the mic, so we'll have a conversation. So the thing is this, right? It's not solve the problem of that hospital. There's a lot of data on problems that hospitals have in general. If you go online, it's okay, what's the top five problems hospitals have? All right? You'll list it up. You actually have GPT going, so okay, so how do you solve these problems? Tell me. Then you can then pick that out and say, okay, typically I have discovered from my research that hospitals have this, this, this, and this problems and major problems that people have. I don't know how many of them we've solved in this hospital, but I have good ideas around how to solve this and this, right? I don't know if you'd want to. Awesome. Thank you so much, David. Thank you very much. Please give David a round of applause for today, please. You have a plaque. Just to follow you, thank you so much.