The team has many players, but all should be working toward the same goal of offender rehabilitation. Further, a team approach is especially critical in overcrowded prisons and jails where many inmates may accept attitudes, values, and behaviors of hardened inmates and become career criminals. Effective correctional staff can help stop this process by being positive role models for inmates. Staff can prove to inmates that the whole world is not self-centered and that inmates deserve concern and respect. The author attempts to help correctional staff become team players by addressing crime and punishment, correctional trends, the criminal personality, effects of imprisonment, inmate characteristics, and the ability of inmates to change. He explores effective ways of working with inmates, based on a team approach, that involve standard operating procedures, rules, dealing with self-centered inmates, inmate resistance, and the use of education to produce change. A glossary of prison slang is included. 90 references