Bob Hatrak

Bob and Joan Hatrak coauthored Not On My Watch. The couple combined their skills to publish this bestselling memoir. Bob did all of the research and Joan, using her strong storytelling skills, wrote the manuscript.

Now retired, Bob Hatrak is a famed Rahway Prison warden. He started a career in corrections in 1967 when he accepted the Director of Education position at the Trenton State Prison (New Jersey). In 1973, he was asked to assume the warden’s position at the notorious, violent, and riot-torn Rahway State Prison. Serving there, he built a national and international reputation as a reformer.

Under Bob’s leadership, violence decreased dramatically and Rahway became a prisoner rehabilitation model featuring inmate Self-Rehab Enterprise Groups. He set up a ‘Lifers’ Group, which became famously known as “Scared Straight” and the Rahway State Prison Boxing Association, a Vocational Trades School, which helped inmates, including the legendary Light Heavyweight, James Scott, navigate professional boxing careers. In recognition for his contributions to boxing, Hatrak has been inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame. His approach to prison management helped Rahway go from its prior reputation of ‘a notorious, violent, and riot-torn prison’ to one that the American Justice Institute honored. Under Bob’s watch, a national research project included Rahway Prison among the five most stable maximum-security prisons in America.

Once he left Rahway, Bob led a corrections department in the Pacific Northwest, worked as a state department of corrections director and deputy director, and owned and operated a successful prison consulting business with his wife Joan. Joan and Bob live in Portland, Oregon. Joan has had an instrumental part in writing his memoir. They have two children and four grandchildren.