170 hours saved
25% decrease in errors
Actionable audit results
Creative Corrections was founded on the belief that safer, more effective correctional systems begin with experience, accountability, and a willingness to do things better. Built by veterans and former correctional professionals, the team brings firsthand knowledge of how justice facilities operate, both at their best and at their most strained. That real-world perspective is what makes their work different. They don’t approach institutions with theory; they show up with practical insight, earned over decades on the ground.
Today, Creative Corrections works alongside facilities across the U.S. and internationally to improve operations, policies, and outcomes. Whether they’re conducting audits, strengthening oversight, or guiding teams through compliance challenges, their mission remains the same: to help correctional institutions meet the highest standards of safety and performance.
Why Creative Corrections was brought in
A Decision to See Things Clearly, from the Outside In
In early 2024, Milwaukee County found itself at a critical point. The jail system, long burdened by operational strain, had reached a point where the weight of internal pressures and external scrutiny could no longer be ignored. Staffing shortages, procedural inconsistencies, and concerns around facility oversight had been building over time, creating an environment that felt reactive and unstable. County leadership understood that addressing these challenges required something beyond a quick fix and would need an objective, experienced perspective.
That’s what led them to Creative Corrections. Recognized for their practical, boots-on-the-ground approach, the team at Creative Corrections consisted of individuals who had spent their careers within the corrections system. The decision to bring them in would deliver real answers from people who understood how correctional facilities function at every level, and who had the credibility to offer insights that would be taken seriously across departments.
The Challenge
Faced with a Complex Facility and a Compressed Timeline, Creative Corrections Was Ready
A Jail Already Under Pressure
By the time Creative Corrections arrived, the strain inside Milwaukee County Jail was impossible to ignore. Years of underinvestment and persistent staffing shortages had eroded the facility’s ability to provide consistent oversight or basic care. Key safeguards were faltering: suicide prevention measures were unevenly applied, mental health services were overloaded, and staffing levels in housing units routinely fell short. For Creative Corrections, the real challenge was not just identifying where things were broken, but doing so within a culture where dysfunction had, in many ways, become routine. That normalization made objectivity harder to maintain and trust more difficult to build.
Scope That Spanned the Entire Facility
The scope of the audit was vast—and intentionally so. Creative Corrections was brought in to examine nearly every operational function inside the facility: intake, housing, suicide watch, medical care, use of force, training, food service, infrastructure, and more. But size wasn’t the only hurdle. Information was fragmented, policies were outdated or inconsistently followed, and the institutional knowledge that might normally guide such a review had eroded after years of staff turnover. Many procedures existed more in practice than on paper. This project would need Creative Corrections to map an environment that lacked a shared definition of how it was supposed to work. Doing so required fluency in correctional operations, sensitivity to the people involved, and the ability to read between the lines of policy and practice.
Infrastructure That Didn’t Support the Work
Even the act of conducting the audit came with its own obstacles. The facility lacked consistent internet connectivity across major housing units, making real-time collaboration and data syncing impossible in many areas. Auditors had to move independently, capturing complex assessments and photo evidence offline, often with limited ability to confirm or cross-reference findings until hours later. With multiple team members working simultaneously, keeping the data clean, coordinated, and structured was no small feat. And in an environment this sensitive, there was no margin for error. The tools of modern auditing such ascentralized platforms, live dashboards, and shared access weren’t readily available. So the team relied on their process, discipline, and adaptability to create consistency where the infrastructure couldn’t. The conditions weren’t ideal. But the work had to happen anyway.
“Many areas of the facility lacked reliable internet access, which made real-time coordination and digital data entry nearly impossible during the audit.”
Steve Spaulding, CEO, Creative Corrections
Pressure from the Clock and the Conditions
While there was no formal deadline, the sense of urgency surrounding the audit was unmistakable. At the time, the jail had become the focus of growing concern among community advocates, county officials, and even internal staff over ongoing incidents involving inmate safety and mental health. In a facility where preventable harm had already occurred, every day without answers carried weight. For the auditors, this created a different kind of pressure: not from a calendar, but from the knowledge that real people were continuing to live and work inside an environment with unresolved risks.
The Solution
Certainty Enabled the Process, and Creative Corrections Delivered the Insight.
Faced with a facility in disarray, where even basic infrastructure made the logistics of auditing difficult, Creative Corrections turned to Certainty. The jail lacked reliable internet access throughout much of its interior, which meant real-time coordination between auditors wasn’t possible in the traditional sense. Certainty’s offline functionality became essential: auditors could move through housing units, intake areas, and restricted spaces independently, documenting their findings directly on mobile devices without needing a live connection. Once reconnected, the data synced back to a centralized system, cleanly and without loss.
“This project required a fast, organized, and credible approach, and our team was able to deliver exactly that.”
Steve Spaulding, CEO, Creative Corrections
This flexibility allowed the team to operate with precision, even in an environment that offered little of it. With multiple auditors working simultaneously across different parts of the jail, Certainty created consistency where the facility itself did not. Standardized templates, structured input fields, and the ability to attach photos in context helped ensure that findings were not just recorded, but recorded clearly, uniformly, and in a format that would stand up to review by county officials, legal teams, or community stakeholders. Certainty helped to enforce discipline in how information was collected and organized.
For Creative Corrections, that structure Certainty provided was substantial in this project because it enabled speed without sacrificing rigor. With Certainty, the team could stay focused on what mattered most: identifying real issues and recommending realistic solutions, not getting stuck in administrative rework. The platform’s dashboard also gave project leads a way to track progress in real-time, providing oversight without micromanagement and enabling better decisions about where to deploy attention as the audit progressed.
In a project where every hour counted and every observation had the potential to lead to meaningful change, Certainty provided the backbone for a process that was as focused and thorough as the conditions would allow. Certainty was able to help Creative Corrections set a new standard for how audits in high-risk, high-pressure facilities can be done.
Your Toolkit for Better Audits, Inspections & Investment Decisions
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Key Outcomes
170+ hours saved
Across data entry, report prep, and manual consolidation.
25% error reduction
Through structured input and centralized reporting.
2-week turnaround
For full audit completion and delivery.
60 corrective actions
Leading to reforms in staffing, safety, and mental health care.
The Result
A Full-System Audit With Findings Built to Drive Change
Creative Corrections’ work on this project delivered something rare: clarity, speed, and actionable insight. Over the course of just two weeks, the team completed a full audit of the Milwaukee County Jail and produced a comprehensive report that jail leadership could act on immediately.
The findings were not abstract or diagnostic alone. Creative Corrections translated their assessments into over 60 targeted Corrective Action Plans, each tied to specific operational deficiencies identified during the audit. These CAPs outlined practical, department-level reforms and gave the County a concrete roadmap to begin addressing issues that had persisted for years. In high-risk areas such as suicide prevention protocols, staff training, and mental health response, the recommendations prompted immediate attention.
“The final report was one of the most organized, professional, and evidence-based audits we’ve ever delivered.”
Steve Spaulding, CEO, Creative Corrections
Certainty played a central role in enabling this level of detail and structure. The platform eliminated hours of manual effort that would have otherwise been spent organizing scattered notes, formatting reports, or chasing down missing documentation. In total, Creative Corrections saved an estimated 170 hours across data entry, organizational prep, and report compilation. They also reduced errors by at least 25%—a significant improvement in a high-stakes environment where accuracy and accountability go hand-in-hand.
More importantly, Certainty gave the team a way to communicate clearly. With structured inputs, visual documentation, and categorized findings, the final report delivered usable information where the jail leadership had immediate visibility into the issues, the evidence, and the steps required to address them. The audit by Creative Corrections launched a process of reform. And Certainty helped ensure that the process started on stable ground.
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