ISSUES AND PRACTICES.pdf - The Counseling Team International

The available empirical and anecdotal evidence convincingly documents that stress amongcorrectional officers is widespread and, in many cases, severe.[1] Furthermore, severalcircumstances may have created increased stress for correctional officers in recent years: Inmate crowding has increased in many correctional facilities. Furthermore, the ratio ofinmates to custody or security employees rose from 4.2 to 4.6 between 1990 and 1995.[2] Inmate assaults against correctional staff in State and Federal prisons have increased.Between 1990 and 1995, the number of attacks jumped by nearly one-third, from 10,731to 14,165.[3] During this same period, the number of correctional officers increased byonly 14 percent,[4] resulting in an overall increased risk of assault for each individualofficer at the end of this period. Assaults in jails appear to have declined between 1990 and 1996 from 3.2 per 100prisoners in 1990 to 2.4 in 1996, with a peak of 3.6 in 1992. However, in absolute terms,there was an average of 42 assaults by prisoners on jail staff per jail system in 1996,including an average of 206 assaults in each of the Nation's 17 largest jail systems,representing on average of 4 assaults per week.[5] Many offenders serving increasingly longer sentences do not fear punishment or respectthe authority of correctional officers.[6] According to one superintendent, "Inmates todayaren't afraid to assault staff; they don't care if they get put in segregation." There are more gangs-and more dangerous gangs-in prison.[7]What Causes Stress for Correctional Officers?Many years ago a researcher observed, "any organization or social structure which consists ofone group of people kept inside who do not want to be there and the other group who are there tomake sure they stay in will be an organization under stress."[8] More recently, A.T. Wall,director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, confirmed this observation based onfirsthand experience: "You have a captive population that doesn't want to be here and wants to beas comfortable as possible for as long as they have to be incarcerated. And correctional officersstand in the way of those desires, so there's built-in tension and manipulation."Beyond this global source of stress, it is possible to distinguish among stresses caused by thecorrectional organization, those created by correctional work itself, and those brought on byfactors external to the facility.Organizational sources of stressMany individuals interviewed for this report suggested that organization-related conditionscreate stress for many officers, in particular, understaffing, overtime, shift work, and supervisordemands.Understaffing