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Q:My hostage negotiation/crisis team trains many overlapping concepts with peer support training—active listening, de-escalation, etc. Can I just send my peer support team to that training? A:Yes … and no. There’s no question that special teams training builds valuable skills. Active listening, emotional regulation, and de-escalation are essential across corrections, and cross-training can absolutely sharpen awareness and competence. That said, we caution agencies against relying exclusively on hostage or crisis team training to prepare peer support team members. Here are some reasons why the distinction matters. 1. Different context, different mission Hostage and crisis teams operate in a fundamentally different environment. Their objective is to neutralize an offender-based threat—often under intense time pressure with significant safety risks to others. Communication skills in this context are designed to extract information, influence behavior, and move rapidly toward resolution. Peer support, by contrast, exists in a non-threat, employee-to-employee context. While active listening skills may look similar on the surface, the intent behind their use is very different. [...]

This article emphasizes the need for understanding, empathy, and compassion for staff involved in critical incidents when reviewing and investigating their response to threats or violence. There’s a well-known movie called Sully, starring Tom Hanks as the pilot of the “Miracle on the Hudson” flight that went down with zero casualties. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was celebrated unlike almost any other hero I had seen up to that point in my life—talk shows, guest appearances, parades, parties, galas, concerts. The message was clear: this man saved lives, and we were grateful. However, in the movie—released years later—we are shown a very different side of Sully’s journey. Most notably, we see the investigation conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board into his decision to land the aircraft in the Hudson River rather than turn back and attempt a landing over New York City skyscrapers, in a post-9/11 world. At the conclusion of the inquiry, the panel informs Sully and his co-pilot that [...]

Q: Are specific policies necessary for a Peer Support Program, and, if so, which policies are considered essential? A: Using the analogy of a Peer Support program as a building, policies act as the scaffolding, providing support while defining its structure, dimensions, and key properties. So yes, policies are essential, critical in fact, for a sound Peer Support Program that can be of help to staff while promoting high-quality services, protecting all involved, and reducing legal liability to the agency. Here’s a list of what we at Desert Waters consider key peer support team policies, to be reviewed at least annually by all concerned and updates as needed. Peer Support Team (PST) Leadership & Structure PST Oversight (Administrative, Legal, Chain of Command) PST Policy Writing PSTM (Peer Support Team Member) Supervision – Clinical PSTM Supervision – Operations PST Scope Eligibility for PST Services Procedures for Accessing PST Services PST Procedures/Operations—Location, Time Frame, Frequency Of Use, Limits To Use, Etc. PST Membership [...]

Purpose and ScopeCorrectional staff—especially officers—are often most emotionally vulnerable immediately following an assault. Such incidents can shatter their sense of safety and personal invulnerability. Before an attack, individuals may believe, “It won’t happen to me,” or assume, “If it does, I’ll handle it.” After an assault, however, self-confidence may be profoundly shaken. During the assault, officers may have experienced sheer panic and terror, thinking they’d get killed. And now they may be feeling shame and humiliation, particularly if they froze, fainted, or lost control of bodily functions. Compounding this, surges of rage may follow, leaving individuals feeling emotionally overwhelmed and out of control.How administrators respond to the assaulted staff member in the moments following the incident is crucial. Their approach can either facilitate healing or deepen the trauma, making the difference between recovery and further emotional harm.This article addresses evidence-informed ways supervisors and administrators can support assaulted employees immediately after an incident. The guidance is intentionally limited to administrative support, stabilization, and [...]

I’m a little ashamed to admit that it took me until my mid-forties to finally understand how working in a corrections environment had been shaping—and often sabotaging—my daily functioning. And for the record, I didn’t even know what “functioning” meant at first. It’s a simple concept, yet I managed to make it so complicated that I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But maybe that’s exactly the point. When the easy things slowly become hard—sometimes impossibly hard—that’s when Corrections Fatigue starts showing up in ways people outside the profession can’t begin to imagine. And not only people outside the profession—many people inside it, who are deteriorating themselves, often deny what’s happening because accepting the impact feels too threatening, too real. To really understand what this looks like, let me take you back to a particular phase of my life in my early thirties: a young mom, working full-tilt in corrections, and trying to keep up with expectations that made no sense for any [...]

For 23 years, I have researched, built training curricula and wellness programs, and provided training and clinical services to correctional staff. After decades of hearing correctional professionals across job roles and ranks describe the unvarnished realities of their work, one conclusion is unavoidable: meaningful prison reform cannot succeed unless we first invest in the health and resilience of correctional staff. We say we want prison reform, and in principle there is broad agreement on what that entails: humane living conditions, reduced violence, effective rehabilitation, and services that enable people to serve their sentences constructively, and return to the community in better condition than when they entered custody. Yet despite decades of commissions, reports, and policy initiatives, durable reform remains elusive. The problem is not a shortage of recommendations; it is our persistent failure to confront fundamental realities of how prisons actually operate. Prisons are run by people. And the people who most directly determine whether reform succeeds or fails are correctional officers. Correctional officers interact with [...]

Q: What elements make a peer support program effective in a corrections environment? A: An effective peer support program in corrections relies on multiple interconnected elements that ensure safety, professionalism, and sustainability: Clear and relevant policies: Programs need thoroughly developed policies that are reviewed at least annually. These should outline team member selection and removal, define roles and responsibilities, and provide protocols for handling high-risk situations, such as interactions with suicidal or homicidal staff. Clear policies set expectations, promote consistency, and protect both staff and the organization. Strong leadership oversight: Effective programs require oversight at both the clinical and operational levels. Leaders ensure that the program aligns with organizational goals, maintains professional standards, and receives appropriate support, while also monitoring outcomes and addressing challenges. Comprehensive initial and ongoing training: Peer supporters must receive robust training not only at the start but continuously throughout their tenure. Training should cover professional boundaries, crisis intervention, recognition of high-risk situations, and strategies for self-care. This ensures that peer [...]

Imagine a wooden barn on a farm. On the surface, it may appear solid and stable, but hidden within the walls, termites have quietly weakened the structure. Now imagine a violent storm—howling winds and torrential rain—striking the barn. The walls groan, windows rattle, and the structure rocks and quivers under the relentless force, each gust threatening to bring it down. What is the probability the barn will remain standing versus collapsing? And what does this have to do with suicide? This scenario illustrates the Fluid Vulnerability Theory of suicide (Rudd, 2006),¹ which describes the factors that contribute to suicide risk and why predicting suicidal behavior is so difficult. The theory proposes that suicide risk is fluid and dynamic, fluctuating based on the interaction of two types of risk factors: Baseline risk factors – Chronic, relatively stable vulnerabilities such as a history of trauma or mental illness, family history of mental illness, persistent negative thinking patterns, or past suicide attempts. Acute risk factors – Stressors [...]

Budgets in Corrections Are there any other words in administrative conversations that trigger a deeper collective groan? Probably not. Is “the budget” referenced almost daily—if not hourly—in our field? Absolutely. Do we blame nearly everything on waning budgets? Far more often than we’d like to admit. Do we have significant influence over how much is spent where? Almost never. And yet, year after year, the amount of money spent on issues that were preventable is astronomical—far exceeding the costs of the proactive measures that could have stopped them in the first place. Throughout my career, I’ve heard the reasons for delaying or denying preventative investments. I don’t dismiss those reasons; they’re valid, and they reflect real constraints. But there is a fine line between reasons and excuses. As a field, we have a long track record of finding money for the things we have to do. Take PREA as an example. When we were told we had to comply—at [...]

One of the most urgent challenges corrections faced in 2025 was the widening gap between widespread recognition of the need for staff wellness and the resources allocated to support it. Leaders across the country increasingly acknowledged that correctional staff—particularly custody staff—are experiencing extreme levels of anxiety, depression, PTSD, sleep disruption, substance misuse, and suicide risk. These conditions are almost certainly contributing to the profession’s epidemic-level turnover.Yet many wellness efforts remained under-resourced, short-lived, and shaped by “low-hanging fruit” or well-intentioned initiatives rather than evidence of effectiveness. Wellness coordinators—when designated—were asked to address systemic challenges without adequate funding, training, authority, data, or personnel. Agencies understandably hoped these efforts might help counter years of stress, trauma, understaffing, and organizational strain through goodwill, limited programming, and occasional “feel-good” events. Given these constraints, results were often modest at best, reflecting limitations in scale, design, and sustained investment rather than any question of the relevance of wellness to job performance. When outcomes fell short, some leaders misattributed this [...]