Prison Warden advocating change - Brian Koehn

From Marine to Prison Warden to Culture Disruptor

When I talked with Brian Koehn, co-founder and CEO of Social Purpose Corrections, I expected to hear about prison reform from someone who’d worked the system. What I got was a conversation with a guy who spent 28 years in corrections, including 14 years as a warden across five facilities, and came out the other side asking: why are we doing this backwards?

Brian didn’t grow up dreaming of prison work. “I would argue that nobody ever said, when I grow up, I don’t want to work in a prison,” he told me. After four years in the Marines, he got his criminal justice degree and was thinking FBI. But a master’s degree meant more school, and a private prison opening in Appleton, Minnesota needed supervisors. “I was like, well, I’ll take a summer job just to see what it’s like until I figure out what I want to do for a master’s,” Brian said. He was 25. That summer job became a 28-year career.

The Military Structure That Hooked Him

The structure drew him in initially. “I was a Marine. And corrections is very structured and very military,” Brian explained. “It was just something I was comfortable with, something I was used to.” He climbed the ranks the way you’d expect: officer to sergeant to lieutenant to captain. By 42, he was a warden.

But Brian’s honest about his early motivations. “I have to admit that back then, my motivations probably weren’t as pure as they should have been. I love to say it’s because I wanted to help residents reform, but I can tell you back then that probably wasn’t my motivation.”

What changed him was seeing the system’s failures up close. “Over time, I was good at doing what I was taught to do. And that’s a traditional way of doing corrections until I could start thinking for myself and asking questions like, this doesn’t make any sense. Why are we doing this?”

Running a City Where Nobody Wants to Be

As a warden, Brian was essentially a city manager. “In reality, although the title I held was warden, I was really city manager. It was, that’s what I was, I was responsible for managing a city that the whole population didn’t want to be there.”

That city had everything: hospital, high school, restaurant, public works, police department. All inside the fence. The difference from a regular city? “I know how many HIV cases we had. I know how many that we had that were in population that were maximum custody versus minimum custody. You know, I knew who had an education who didn’t.”

Brian walked the units daily, talking to staff and residents. “I walk the units by myself all the time. Every day I’d walk and sit down on tight lines, flatter tables and talk to the residents.” He learned to navigate the racial politics carefully. “You make sure that you talk to all the races, you know, never single out one race. Have a really bad idea.”

The Numbers That Don’t Add Up

The statistics eventually broke through Brian’s conventional thinking. Two-thirds recidivism rate. Correctional officers dying at 59 on average, compared to 76 for the general male population. “How toxic does a culture have to be to take 19 years of your life?” he asked.

Each violent incident costs $17,000. “Violence is expensive, not only in lives, but in cost,” Brian said. “You start really as a leader, as administrator, I started asking these questions like, this is just crazy.”

The breaking point was understanding that most people inside weren’t the monsters the system treats them as. “Most people incarcerated are good people that made bad choices and really grew up with crummy circumstances. There are few that are just, they’re hard to deal with. I’ve looked into the eyes of the evil before, but it’s by far the minority.”

The Norway Model That Changed Everything

Brian found inspiration in Norway’s approach, which dropped recidivism from 91% to 21%. Three principles: dynamic security, normality, and the import model.

Dynamic security means letting staff have professional relationships with residents. “You allow the staff to have a professional, not personal, professional relationship with the residents,” Brian explained. Normality means operating inside as normally as possible to reduce reentry shock. The import model brings community into the prison.

In Maine’s maximum security prison, which follows some of these principles, “sex offenders live with general population. If that isn’t a sign of a healthy culture out of what is, by the way, for your listeners, that almost never happens.”

Coaches Instead of Defense

Brian’s football analogy captures his vision: “In today’s corrections, the residents are on a team on the offense, trying to move their ball down to the end zone, which is released in success in society. But who’s the defense? Well, in today’s corrections, the defense is housing. It’s jobs. It’s the felon tag.”

His solution? “We pull the officers off the field, and we put them on the sideline as coaches, encouragers.” Officers become part of the solution, not obstacles. “The officer should be on the sideline encouraging the residents to move through those challenges to their end zone, not be on the field, stopping them from moving to their end zone.”

The Nonprofit Disruption

Social Purpose Corrections operates on a simple premise: take private prison efficiencies and apply them to a nonprofit model. Instead of profits going to shareholders, everything gets reinvested in programming, mental health, job training, and reentry support.

“What if 100% of prison net revenues were reinvested into drug alcohol rehabilitation, on-site job training, education programs, accessible mental health and self-care treatment, mentorships, employee training, medical care, real-world reentry assistance?” It’s not just theory anymore. They’ve got backing, including a recent million-dollar investment.

Brian’s track record gives him credibility few have. “I’m one of the most diverse corrections leaders in the United States. I managed BOP, U.S. Marshall detention, immigration prisons, six states, two jails, men, women, max, minimum. I started a nationwide transgender unit.”

The goal isn’t just reducing recidivism, though Brian’s confident they can do that. It’s changing how people leave prison. “We want to leave our facilities with a job in housing,” he said. Not $50 and a bus ticket to nowhere.

Brian spent three decades in a system he now calls insane. His solution isn’t to tear it down but to prove there’s a better way. Sometimes it takes an insider to see what everyone else has accepted as normal.