Al Isaac, retired colonel and corrections officer trainer
And as someone who now trains correctional officers, he saw an extreme example of what he says can happen when "the fundamentals of dignity and respect" are ignored.
Isaac, 61, with the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, manages programs that train about 400 corrections officers a year for city and county jails across the state.
But it was his 30 years in the military that triggered his first reaction to the photos.
"To see this kind of behavior, which is foreign to me and every soldier I've known, it just tears me up," he says.
As angry as he is at the soldier's conduct, Isaac believes they must have had direction or tacit approval from higher up. "For something of this magnitude to haveoccurred, I don't think it could stop at the level of lieutenant or captain," he says.
Although he did not work at military prisons, Isaac helped develop basic-training curriculum and served as a brigade commander for a combat-training unit. Before his present job, he was the administrator of Pierce County's juvenile-detention facility, Raymond Hall.
In role-playing sessions held by the training commission, "We have 'inmates' acting out in different ways to irritate, anger or threaten the officers, or hold them hostage," Isaac says. The goal is provide training so that in tense situations on the job, officers don't take matters into their own hands or react to a personal "hot button."
"There is always an issue in this business with some people who get carried away with their authority," he says.
Standards of behavior in an institution can slip rapidly if not constantly enforced and monitored, he says. "If you walk by and someone's doing something wrong and you allow that to happen, you've just set a new standard, a lower standard ... that's the way things get out of control."
— Jack Broom