Photo by Joanne Beck
Diana Prinzi seems like a no-nonsense type of person, someone with a shy smile backed up by a passion for law enforcement and keeping the protocols in check.
So, it may come as no surprise to those who know her best that her latest role falls right in line with her goal to continue being a central point of the organization. She worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement for 22 years before retiring in 2019, and then two years later, she worked part-time for Genesee County, becoming program coordinator for Genesee Justice in 2022.
She began as Genesee County Jail superintendent on Jan. 1.
“This job was a continuation of a path that I had with ICE, as far as with an open facility. I worked on policies and procedures and the accreditation. So this is sort of a branch off of that. It's the administrative portion of that now, and having oversight of a new facility, bringing that to fruition, and getting everything in place,” Prinzi said during an interview Wednesday at the West Main Street Road jail. “Obviously, this new jail has been open and things were up and running, but there's still a lot of growing to do, and getting everything in tune with a much larger facility, all different aspects of how it operates compared to what it was at 14 West Main. I enjoy the administration oversight of it, trying to get all those different parameters in place. And everything that comes to mind, whether it’s policies and procedures, whether it's training, whether it's security oversight, whether it's just daily operations staffing, there's a lot to it. And I like that aspect of bringing all those pieces together.”
Those pieces include 106 inmates, of whom 86 are men and 20 are women. There are approximately 50 correctional officers and a dozen vacancies; three kitchen staff; and medical, religious, and financial service providers, including Genesee County Mental Health. There is a Bible study and Sunday church service, and Genesee Valley BOCES provides lessons for a General Education Diploma program. As she said, there are a lot of working pieces.
Prinzi also noted her deputy superintendent, Jason Queal, aka “my right hand.”
“He’s invaluable,” she said.
Backing up a bit, what led Prinzi, who was born and raised in Le Roy, to follow a criminal justice path? She figured it was some of her college classes, such as research methods and a criminal justice course.
“I got drawn in at the time I graduated from college. They were just building the immigration facility (in Batavia). So that’s really where my path went, that’s really what led my pathway,” she said, bringing it to her current position. “It’s the care and custody of the inmates inside, and what we provide to them, the services that they need, whether it's medical care or food, outside providers for religious services or classes instruction, making sure that we meet the compliance with the Commission of Corrections and what their standards are. So all those types of things tied together, you know? So, sort of it's like a direct oversight of all those things, and I like seeing how all those inner workings come together.”
What else is part of the job?
Certainly, paperwork is part of the job, she said, because “if you didn’t like paperwork, you wouldn’t do the job.” There is a lot of documentation involved when someone is brought into custody, she said.
“You have to make sure that everything's being done properly, everything's being documented properly, and that you can show that the things are being done. So that's a very important aspect,” she said. “So definitely, there's a lot of aspects to this position. It's very fluid. Every minute, there's something new. Being a county jail, arrests come fresh off the street, so there are all different aspects of what people bring in with them. Whatever their care needs are, their backgrounds, they could have immediate needs that need to be attended to.
“Whether it's their situation, where they just came from, their home life, drug use, things like that. Little bit different than somebody that's going into city department corrections, that’s already been through a county jail and spent some time here in terms of just transitioning to basically a new facility,” she said. “So that has been a little bit eye-opening, because I didn't have the county jail aspect under me before, I had more of a controlled environment, I should say, from what we had when working with Genesee Justice.”
She wanted to take special note of National Correction Officers’ Week, thanking them all for their work and stating that they “should be very highly respected.”
“I don’t think people understand the job that they do and the sacrifices that they make and what they deserve for all the work that they put into it, but they see things every day that they come in here that most people never imagine seeing,” she said. “And everything that they do is obviously to support the criminal justice system, but it’s to keep our community safe, too. So it’s definitely a whole different world when they walk in those doors, and what they take every day when they go in the back and they leave.”
Prinzi and other personnel were put to the test a week ago when a fire erupted at nearby Hodgins Engraving, causing chemical explosions and billowing smoke to create potentially toxic air quality for the jail and other building occupants.
"It was a little bit chaotic. You have to understand that, working in the jail, there's different safety and security procedures. I worked with my supervisory staff and with emergency management and our facilities team, just checking to make sure that things were where they needed to be. I mean, we had air quality checks going on. We obviously had smoke everywhere. The wind was blowing in our direction; we couldn't avoid it. We kept an eye on things like that,” she said. “There was talk about whether or not we would have to evacuate. There was a very close eye kept on that. So we were reviewing how we would handle that, and we made close contact with other facilities that we would utilize as resources for that. So we had things in place. Fortunately, we did not have to go that route, because that's a significant undertaking to have to move 100 inmates out.
“I was here long hours that day, as everybody was, making sure people were safe. And unfortunately, people do get affected by it. They can't stop what happens on the outside in the environment. But everybody took their roles. We had the air quality testing coming in … the sheriff was here,” she said. “We had a lot of people, my deputy was here, my deputy superintendent, everybody was trying to do their part to figure it out, besides the staff and the supervisors and the people that are normally here, medical here, we had some extra medical staff evaluate the inmates and stuff. So we just took the precautions that we needed to. Being in a jail, you can’t just pack up and walk out.”
What has been the most challenging part of the job so far?
“There’s a lot of daily challenges, and that’s just part because it is a county jail and we deal with a lot of different things every single day, part of it is generally our staffing. We have a lot of staffing still we're catching up on. There isn't one challenge that stands out above everything else. I think that if you're working in a jail and you're not being challenged, then something's not right, and you should be aware, or be cautious, because you're missing something,” she said. “If those challenges aren't there, challenges make us better, because we have to address them. And we find things every day. You can find something that you've been doing, and you can look at it a different way, and realize, oh, well, we should have been doing this a little bit differently, and we would have been doing it better. And to me, that's just a way of progressing, and improving upon who we are and what we do.”
Prinzi and husband Sam have five children and three grandchildren and when she has any free time, they enjoy traveling or doing projects around the house and spending time outdoors.
As for her free time, she smiled when asked if she had a daytime shift or not. Her hours are during the day, but “it’s a 24-hour shift,” she said. She and Queal are often catching up on busy work — computer, emails, and she is on call — after hours. That means 24/7, 365 days a year, she said. It’s just part of the job.
“It’s part of what the job is, and you need to know that going into it,” she said. “Any law enforcement job has that type of connection to it.”
Prinzi has no qualms about being a female leader of primarily male employees at the jail. She exudes controlled confidence when stating her open-door leadership style and goals for the facility, which was completed and opened toward the end of 2024.
She values input from the most experienced, veteran officers to newer ones just starting out, she said, and understands that all of them "bring something to the table."
“There's a lot of potential in this building, as far as what the staff can bring to the table, what we can do with the physical plant, as far as what the classroom is, what we can offer. And just make it a good place to work and get the staffing where we want it to be. So we have a lot of goals when it comes to that,” she said. “I have my thoughts on things that I want to see based on my experience, and those things are important, and they will definitely trickle into what I'm doing. But I also am very open to the fact that I have not worked in this county jail for all these years. I am very open to what they have to say and to the knowledge that they have, because they work back there every day.
“I will never discount an idea or suggestion. I can't implement all of them. They're not all going to be feasible for what we have, but I'm going to listen to them all and know what they say,” she said. “We have oversight, but we can make it into the best place possible.”
