DWCO’s mission is to help increase the occupational, personal and family well-being of corrections personnel. Our vision is corrections staff who are professionals, who are healthy physically, psychologically and spiritually, and who live well way past retirement.

DWCO was founded by my husband Ted Tudor and me as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in 2003. Neither of us wanted to get involved in corrections. He was retired. I had moved to Fremont County (with its 12 prisons and jail) to semi-retire and play “farmer” while maintaining a psychotherapy practice. As a result of counseling and talking with corrections personnel in our county, I became aware of the need for more specialized services targeting corrections staff wellness.

With that awareness came a strong spiritual “nudge” to respond to the need myself, but I resisted the idea. I could feel the love my God has for corrections staff but I did not want to get involved. Somehow I knew that doing so would require all my focus and energy—and more. And I was convinced that I was totally inadequate for the task. I’d never served in law enforcement or the military. I saw myself as too “soft,” too mercy-motivated for the job. Plus I thought that being female would not help open doors for me in a male-dominated profession. So, my standard response to the inner prompting that wouldn’t quit was, “Lord, send a man with a military background. They’ll listen to him!” I’d often ask my husband Ted, “Why do you think the Lord wants us to reach out to corrections people?” His answer was, “He heard their cry.” Still though that would not move me to respond to the call.

After two years of trying to weasel out of this “assignment, ” I finally embraced it with both excitement and trepidation in December 2002. This happened only after I had a dream in which a voice which I knew to be the Holy Spirit warned me that if I kept refusing to step into the corrections arena, I would miss out on my life’s calling. This may sound way too far out to some of you. Everybody has their own beliefs about spiritual matters. I just want to share with you how I ended up doing wholeheartedly something I had no interest in doing to begin with. Believe me, the dream I had terrified me. It was a very somber warning, like the last call to board a plane before departure. The dream helped me realize that I did not want to die and then discover I had squandered the biggest chance I’d been given so far to make a positive difference. So I repented of my willfulness and “signed on” in a hurry.

By the way, the message of this dream and your importance to my God still motivate me today. This is why I go to bat daily for corrections personnel who have been fighting for our communities for so long, often at great personal cost to themselves. And yes, not every day is fun. Often I am deeply grieved because of the needs and heartaches we encounter. Yet, the rewards of serving corrections staff far outweigh the days of disappointment or anguish I experience, because one person being helped is worth the struggle.

As for Ted, he got on board as well and went from being retired to being re-tired, faithfully volunteering at DWCO about 20 hours a week. Now he is even preparing to serve as a corrections staff pastor/spiritual encourager. He has been my solid rock, my team-mate and, together with my mother, my cheerleader and encourager. DWCO wouldn’t be where it is today without Ted’s help and my mother’s support.

DWCO is now a team effort of (mostly) volunteers. We have a dependable, hard-working and committed board. Over the past six years many talented, compassionate and dedicated people have come alongside us—often people with no corrections background. They have blessed us with donations of hard work, ideas and financial gifts. Retired and active corrections personnel are a particularly indispensible resource. To all our collaborators and helpers we offer a HUGE “THANK YOU!”

Things keep getting better and better. Yes, we are grateful. Serving you is a privilege and an adventure, worth every penny and every ounce of effort. It is a joy to see corrections workers getting healthier and corrections families smiling again.

What do you think drove him to pretend everything was manageable & that he was OK?

From having spoken with 100s of you 1-on-1 over the past 9 years I’d say it’s the culture that mocks & tears down whoever is perceived to be “weak.” (For “weak,” read “human.”)

Paranoia prevails about being seen as a wus, because staff witness how those who do seek help get treated by their peers. Just admitting they’re in emotional pain may render them an outcast in a hurry. Others are afraid (apparently for good reason) that seeking professional help will ruin their opportunities for promotion.

It’s such a tragic choice to have to pick between being human & disrespected vs. respected & dead.

There’s LOTS wrong with this picture.
The picture needs to change yesterday!

And it’s not just about intervening with people who have hit the wall & are on their last legs emotionally. It’s also about being proactive & promoting staff & family wellness from the start, from the Training Academy & on a regular basis after that, & putting our money where our mouth is. Staff IS the most valuable asset in corrections.

Got to wire people for LIFE & to equip them to weather life’s storms.

• Anticipate problems and take measures ahead of time to reduce or even eliminate their impact.
• Manage your money wisely to reduce your financial stress.
• Learn to say “No” to yourself at times. Delay or even completely forego certain kinds of gratification.
• When your gut tells you that you’re about to take too big of a risk, opt for long-term benefits over short-term rewards. That is, avoid  short-term gain that might lead to long-term pain. Adrenaline rushes are costly.

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

Paul’s answer came after a long pause. “I think I just got too used to keeping myself under control in order to remain professional.”

A little more discussion revealed that Paul learned to exercise extreme control over his emotions so that he could:
 
1. Operate as he’d been trained instead of reacting emotionally;
2. Maintain his safety by not giving away personal information.
 
Due to professional demands, the emotional side of COs—what gives life flavor and the sense of being alive inside—sometimes gets shoved down so effectively that it may become difficult to retrieve that side of oneself at will.

Law enforcement officers, by the way, face similar challenges.

Too much self-control can become too much of a good thing.

COs function in an environment which is potentially enemy territory. They must stay in charge and show self-restraint even in extremely emotional situations. And experience has taught them that the less people know about what “gets to them,” the safer they’ll be.

So COs learn to put on an imaginary “mask and shield.” They figure out ways to keep the lid on what’s inside.

The problem is that, like with any habit, the more it is exercised, the more automatic it becomes. The “mask and shield” become a way of life. The poker face becomes routine. Emotions get suppressed and ignored before they even hit awareness.

The shutting down around inmates can carry over to other staff and to personal relationships.

After a while COs may not be able to easily put their finger on what they’re feeling or needing. They might even forget they are capable of generating tender emotions. They may lug the war gear around even on friendly territory.

It does not take long before relationships with significant others suffer. Personal connections are nurtured partly by appropriately sharing emotions and innermost thoughts with loved ones. When COs’ emotional life gets constricted, relational ties are starved.

What can COs do to maintain access to their hearts, given that they need to stay “in control” at work?

Here are a few ideas.

1. Remind yourself of how you experienced emotions prior to working in the criminal justice system. Years ago, how did you use to feel around a trusting child? A playful puppy? A beautiful sunset? Seek to reconnect with such emotions. Give yourself permission to feel tender emotions.

2. Make the effort to identify emotions when they pop up. Pay attention to body sensations such as muscle tension or a racing heart. What emotions are related to these sensations? Treat this new venture of self-awareness like you would take time to taste a new ice-cream flavor.

3. Keep from judging your emotions as good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable. Emotions give you information about how you feel about whatever is going on in your life. We are accountable for the actions we take in conjunction with our emotions, not for the emotions themselves. Allow emotions to show up on the radar screen of your self-awareness. Focus on them without judgment. What are they telling you about what’s going on with you?

4. Experiment with expressing emotions appropriately to people you trust. Which emotion can you share more easily? Affection, happiness, excitement? Sorrow, anxiety, embarrassment? Disappointment, frustration, regret?

5. For those of you with a faith perspective, do a Bible study on emotions experienced by God. Reflect upon some of the Bible passages that describe God feeling love, anger, compassion, sorrow, regret, jealousy or joy. Remind yourself that since you are created in God’s image, you too will experience the whole spectrum of emotions. Allow yourself to experience and manage such emotions responsibly.

And, above all, become willing to work on reconnecting with your “heart.” The flavor of your emotional life and your most important relationships depend on it!

Posttraumatic stress takes a heavy toll on body, soul, and spirit of survivors.1 In addition to substance abuse, untreated posttraumatic stress may contribute to high turnover, sick leave, and early disability retirement in corrections. And it may be at least partly responsible for the high suicide rates among corrections staff.2

At the very least, unaddressed posttraumatic symptoms affect job performance adversely. Irritable and tense staff are more likely to react to inmates’ taxing behavior and get into arguments with them. They may also become more predictable in their way of handling things and thus more prone to manipulation.

Sometimes the unsuspecting targets of staff’s posttraumatic turmoil are family members, friends or coworkers. Spouses may be the primary recipients of verbal or even physical aggression. This happens when staff members get home day after day without decompressing from “combat mode” following shifts where their posttraumatic buttons were pushed—such as after breaking up fights among inmate gang members.

Why are corrections professionals vulnerable to psychological traumatization? Like other law enforcement personnel—and, it can be argued, perhaps more than other law enforcement personnel3—corrections staff are exposed to potentially life-threatening and horrifying situations more than the average citizen. Some of these events would be characterized as critical incidents and some not. (In the former case a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing team may be sent to a facility. In the latter, potentially traumatic events are treated as part of the job. Staff tend to just dust themselves off and keep on going.)

In the course of their careers, correctional staff may be exposed to a variety of traumatic incidents: being assaulted; witnessing the gruesome injury or murder of staff members (”That could have been me!”); being taken hostage, raped and tortured; or being caught in an inmate riot. Additionally, staff may have to cut down inmates who have hanged themselves and perform CPR on lifeless bodies. Staff that rush to a disturbance might come upon the horrific sight of an inmate stomped to death or disemboweled by other inmates. Or they may be part of the team overseeing an inmate’s execution.

Observations in war time have shown that even the “toughest of the tough” can be affected. Psychiatrists have come up with a plethora of names describing the outcome of exposure to horror, danger, helplessness, and death. Shell shock (World War I), war neurosis (World War II), post-traumatic stress disorder (Vietnam war), and combat stress reaction (1982 Israeli Lebanon war) are all labels coined to denote the symptoms observed.4

The corrections culture has typically tended to leave the issue of staff traumatization unaddressed. Being “tough” is a requirement for the job and a badge of honor for correctional officers (COs). COs who have gone through life-threatening experiences or who have witnessed gore may be treated by colleagues with the unspoken expectation that they should remain unaffected by the ordeal. (”Oh, it was just an inmate!” “They had it coming!”)

Yet sometimes nothing could be farther from the truth. COs do get affected. A traumatic event can have a lasting biological, psychological, spiritual and social impact on them. Corrections staff are human beings who, like the rest of us, are influenced by the incidents to which they are exposed. COs too go through a complex inner process in their attempts to adapt after their exposure to traumatic stressors.

Ultimately, whether a person is traumatized or not after experiencing a potentially traumatic event—and the degree and manner of their traumatization—are the result of a complex interplay between the characteristics of the event, the characteristics of the individual person, and the characteristics of their socio-cultural context.

My ultimate goal in discussing this subject is that of increased understanding and empowerment of traumatized corrections staff and their loved ones so they can reclaim their lives through effective support and treatment interventions.

REFERENCES

1 van der Kolk, B.A. (1996). The Complexity of Adaptations to Trauma. In B.A. van der Kolk, A.C. McFarlane, & L. Weisaeth (Eds), Traumatic Stress. New York: The Guilford Press.

2 Stack, S.J., & Tsoudis, O. (1997). Suicide risk among correctional officers: A logistical regression analysis. Archives of Suicide Research, 3(3), 183-186

3 Finn, P., Talucci, V. & Wood, J. (2000). On-the-Job Stress in Policing—Reducing It, Preventing It. National Institute of Justice Journal, January 2000, p.24

4 van der Kolk, B.A., Weisaeth, L., & van der Hart, O. (1996). History of Trauma in Psychiatry. In B.A. van der Kolk, A.C. McFarlane, & L. Weisaeth (Eds), Traumatic Stress. New York: The Guilford Press.

“He ate his shoes!” was what my husband mumbled over and over one evening during his first couple of months on the job in the prison system. What sort of job had he found himself in and what sort of people would eat their shoes? Thus began his life as a corrections officer, dealing with not only shoe-eaters, but inmates that would do just about anything.

Corrections is a field that is unrecognized, underappreciated. It is rarely thought about, other than by those working in it or who have family that spend their days or nights working in this environment. But without the folks working behind the walls, the rest of us would be in a world of hurt. And with the ever-increasing inmate population at all security levels, the challenges and risks of this job increase right along with it.

As the wife of a corrections officer, I know I don’t hear even half of what goes on during his workday. But I have sure picked up a whole new lingo, which is required if you want to keep up with a day in the life. Bang-in, hack, shank, SHU, Boss, shake-down, hooch, tat, kite, bubble, sally-port, grill, lockdown, cop-out, chit, body alarm…. Is there such a thing as a prison lingo translator? Wonder how much it would pay?

Then you have the fact that the corrections employees don’t know their fellow workers first names! Going to a work sponsored event or bumping into coworkers out in the world is always interesting when getting introduced. Everyone is either just their last name, Thomas, Rodriguez, Hughes, Miller, whatever, or they are their title—Warden, Captain, Lt. Or someone says “I’m sorry, I don’t know your first name.” First names are rarely used on the job, and thus they remain a mystery to most.

Here are a few more thoughts on corrections peculiarities.
1. Dental coverage should be handled in the same way as a uniform allowance for those in the corrections field. With the stresses of the job, grinding of one’s teeth while sleeping can sometimes be heard throughout the house keeping all awake—all other than the officer, that is, who has finally managed to shut their mind off long enough to fall asleep. And all that grinding takes a toll on the teeth, thus the need for good dental insurance.

2. Restaurants need to spend a little more time thinking about how to decorate their walls since many an officer tend to sit with their back to the wall, leaving the others at the table facing the wall. Without some lively decorations, the view can get old real fast, even as the officer keeps their eyes on the move, watching for shady characters, weapons, and anything else out of the ordinary that might be cause for alarm.

3. Remember the saying that hair makes a man? One of the reasons I fell for my man was his hair. In the world of Corrections, hair can kill a man. Having hair on your head in any length over an inch gives the inmate something to grab hold of. Regular haircuts at home become part of the routine. The good news is that this also becomes a way to help the environment, by leaving the pile of hair outside for the birds to use in their nests.

Spending your day inside the walls can be a dark experience and you never know what the day will bring. But where else can a person get the idea for a limerick such as this:
There once was an inmate who knew
He’d get protein by eating his shoe
Canvas laces and soles
He didn’t need any bowls
Though he bit off more than he could chew

Thank you to all those working in the Corrections field. You are a special group of people and your willingness to spend your day in this environment, risking your lives, is much appreciated!

Here’s a partial list for the benefits of laughter:

Improved blood circulation
Increased oxygenation of the blood
Reduced pain
Muscle relaxation
Reduced stress hormones 
Stronger immune system
Reduced anger
Reduced anxiety
More joy
More sense of hope

Here are some thoughts as to why corrections staff may get entangled in such relationships, even after they have witnessed similar situations ending in shipwrecks.

False sense of intimacy. Staff spends a good portion of their waking hours with coworkers, in close quarters. In many cases they spend more time with coworkers than with their own partners. Together, they share stressful and even traumatic experiences. They bond with one another like soldiers in a combat zone. Staff may not confide in their partners about work to not cause them worry, to maintain professional confidentiality requirements, or to forget about work while at home. They may come to believe that fellow employees understand and support them better than their partners. Physical proximity coupled with shared unique experiences on the job can cause professional boundaries to collapse.

Emotional release. The corrections environment tends to be one of underlying tension, negativity and/or boredom. Distressing emotions get stirred up on the job with few healthy outlets. Romantic/sexual involvement in the workplace provides a jolt of excitement, a means of escape from such emotions, a mood-altering “fix.”

Self-worth issues. When a coworker flirts with a staff member with low self-esteem, that person feels desirable, “special.” The person starts to think, . I’m preferred over another person. I’m sexy/ cool /hot. I call this “collecting votes.” So getting involved with coworker ensures that these exhilarating feelings will keep getting generated, at least for a season. 

Sex and romance “addiction.” The process of seduction provides powerful although temporary mood lifts. As the effects wear off over time, addicts seek a new high through a new relationship. And the pattern continues. In some cases even sex addicts fall for the games of others who are deeper into their sex addiction, who are more of a true sexual predator on the “hunt” for their next conquest, their next victim. So those who just wanted to “play” may end up devastated, beaten at their own game.

Role modeling. Exposure to certain behaviors desensitizes people to them. Staff’s conduct influences other staff. When exposed to coworkers’ involvement with fellow employees, some staff might come to regard this as acceptable or even advantageous behavior, and they may follow suit.

What can keep staff from getting caught in these traps?

1. Count the cost. Is a fleeting thrill worth destroying years of investment in your partner and your family? Is it worth damaging your integrity, your self-respect, and perhaps your career?
2. Seek help. If you find that you are strongly attracted to a coworker, ask to be moved to a different team, a different shift or even a different facility. Seek professional counseling to learn to distinguish between love and infatuation, and to address addictive acting-out patterns.
3. Examine your beliefs about yourself. The less you truly love and respect yourself in healthy ways, the more you’ll expect others to make you feel lovable and respectable. Sooner or later your partner will disappoint you. If you can’t shore yourself up through your inner resources at low points in your committed relationship, you’ll look elsewhere for an ego boost. Get help for these issues, as they are not likely to go away on their own. Your future and your family’s future depend on it.