Is It Too Glib to Say that Everything About Excessive Mandatory Overtime Is Difficult?

Is it too simplistic to say that everything about excessive mandatory overtime is miserable, complicated, and difficult? Is it too obvious to say that chronic sleep deprivation damages careers, families, physical and mental health, and even agency missions?

The physical consequences of lack of sleep are increasingly well known. It affects our central nervous system, impacting how our bodies send, handle, and remember information, and reducing our reactions times to those equivalent to driving while intoxicated. It affects our immune system, the mechanism that fights off bacteria and viruses. It affects our respiratory and digestive systems. It lowers our bodies tolerance for glucose, which if overlapped with poor eating and/or drinking habits, can contribute to diabetes. It affects our cardiovascular system, both to our blood pressure and our ability to repair damage to blood vessels. The repair of other cells and tissues are impacted as well, largely due to the depletion of growth hormones. Alzheimer’s risk increases through plaque accumulation.

The emotional consequences are apparent in our everyday lives. This includes moodiness, shortness of temper, reduced problem-solving ability, increased anxiety and depression, and increased suicidal thinking. These impact our off duty lives as well as our teamwork while on duty. In the latter case, unprofessional decision making can follow, thereby creating a safety liability for both offenders and staff.

Further, asking a corrections professional to engage in Motivational Interviewing or implement his or her Role Model, Reinforce, and Redirect offender interactions skills in a challenging one-on-one situation—when all we really want to do is put our head down and sleep—is death by a thousand cuts to the agency’s public mission each and every shift. The extent to which outcomes cause moral injury by violating employees’ sense of professionalism will vary.

We realize how sensitive it is to even mention this topic. Correctional facilities can’t close and send students home for virtual services like schools can. Correctional facilities can’t triage offenders like some medical facilities may be required to do. Facilities must stay open, must feed, clothe, and shelter offenders. Facilities must provide medical and mental health care. Facilities must keep safe those confined during the period of their sentences. These services are not optional. Not offering them creates problems for which solutions are mandatory.

Solutions need those responsible to take action. If action is insufficient, blaming frequently follows. It is not our intention to blame anyone for the current state of affairs. The problem is too multi-dimensional for blaming to be a useful strategy. In fact, if anything, our intention would be to charge all parties involved to focus on their individual duties, look around, and make sure you are rowing the boat in the same direction as your partners.

• If you are a line employee, don’t call in, thereby making a colleague work a mandatory, unless you truly can’t work.
• If you are a formal or informal leader at the work site, contribute to a culture that reduces emotional or physical fatigue so as to increase retention.
• If you are an institutional upper manager, take a shift every once in a while. Besides allowing someone else to stay home and recuperate, you are signaling your awareness of the problem and genuine care for your staff. The morale boost might be even more than you expect.
• If you are a program administrator or executive, analyze your policies and your staffing patterns to see where unexpected OT requirements are hidden. And heck, if you can effectively work a shift, don’t be shy.
• If you are a newer employee, one hired to help us fight through the thicket of difficulties we currently face, work to achieve meaning, not just money.
• If you are responsible for recruitment in any form, work as if people’s lives depended on it.
• In all cases, remind each other that the duties you perform are important, profound, and socially consequential. It is not a little thing what we do, and therefore requires us to be at our best to succeed. Rested, refreshed, and restored.

But while we are doing that, we need to recognize the biggest picture of all: as members of a governmental structure we operate under the color of law. Laws are developed to clarify the rights of the populace. When our actions impinge on the human rights of others, whether justice-involved persons’ right for safety or treatment; employees’ right for safety, scheduling, and humane work conditions; or the public’s right for safety and agency accountability, we need to take a deep breath and call a boiling pot of water exactly what it is. Especially if we are sitting in it.