National Correctional Family Appreciation Week

This issue of the Correctional Oasis is dedicated to wellness needs of correctional families, and we take this opportunity to make a proposal to correctional professionals across our nation.

On May 5, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed Proclamation 5187 that designated the first week in May as National Correctional Officers Week, to honor correctional officers. We now celebrate this week as National Correctional Officer and Employee Appreciation Week.

For all of us who are familiar with corrections work in some capacity, it is relatively easy to note Correctional Officers’ and other correctional employees’ tenacity and bravery.

It is not as easy to note the tenacity and bravery of their family members, especially their spouses/domestic partners, who are the glue that holds the family together.

Given the vital, even critical, support provided to correctional staff by their families on an ongoing basis, usually quietly and in the background, why not designate the first week of June as National Correctional Family Appreciation Week?

We hereby propose to formally recognize correctional families for their commitment, loyalty, courage, forgiving spirit, and tireless efforts to keep their home life healthy and their family members together, both practically and relationally. Perhaps we could adjust the old adage to instead say, “Behind every successful correctional employee is a supportive family member.”

We want to acknowledge their faithful perseverance in the face of the toll that correctional work takes on their loved one, and, indirectly, on them, usually with very few tools at their disposal.

Correctional families aim to provide their correctional employee loved ones with a safe haven, a refuge, the place where they go to find peace, to relax, and be refreshed and renewed. Home is the primary place where correctional employees receive love, support, encouragement, and help.

Yet, as you know only too well, correctional families often make considerable sacrifices alongside their loved one who works in a correctional environment.

And with COVID-19 the last few years, and the extreme amounts of mandatory overtime with no end in sight, the sacrifices made by families on an ongoing basis have grown exponentially.

We have the staff’s recognition/appreciation week in May. Military families get celebrated the whole month of November.

A week dedicated to correctional families is WAY OVERDUE.

Think of it as launching a grassroots “movement” to build support for this idea collectively, and then approach higher- level decision-makers about making this an officially recognized annual event.

That is why I urge us all to get on board with the celebration of National Correctional Family Appreciation Week. Let us not wait for a presidential proclamation. Let us choose to express our appreciation to correctional families NOW, in our hearts, in our homes, at the places where we work, and in our communities. Perhaps a presidential proclamation will follow later on. In the meantime, let us not keep correctional families waiting any longer for the belated recognition of their immense value and their untold sacrifices.

Some of you may also want to celebrate parents and other close family members who are part of your support system, and that is completely commendable.

So, what can you do to honor your family and correctional families nationwide during the National Correctional Family Appreciation Week?

Celebration of National Correctional Family Appreciation Week at HOME

In your personal life, a sincere, heartfelt THANK YOU to your significant others for supporting you and being there for you is a good start (accompanied by apologies where apologies are due).

Then figure out ways to speak to them in their “love language” by doing something with them and/or for them that you know they like. Spend focused time with them, one-on-one. Express your affection physically, through touch and hugs. Do the one thing they’ve asked you repeatedly to do and which you’ve been putting off. Point out their strengths as a person, and the times they’ve been patient with you, trying their best to understand you or to give you space. Give them a little gift you know they’d enjoy having. Whatever you do, put a smile on their faces.

Post the celebration of the first National Correctional Family Appreciation Week on social media – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter and use the hashtag #nationalcorrectionalfamilyappreciationweek.

Email us at admin@desertwaters.com to let us know that you’re in! We will email you a flyer that you can share, and also a short video announcing this event, so you can continue to spread the word about the first National Correctional Family Appreciation Week!

Celebration of National Correctional Family Appreciation Week at WORK

In your professional life, spread the news about National Correctional Family Appreciation Week to coworkers, supervisors, administrators and union leaders. Then consider implementing some of the following ideas:

Administrators and supervisors, make a special announcement to that effect at your facility.

• Ask staff to submit anonymous statements of reasons why they are grateful for their families, and share these with your Maybe even print that list and send it home for the families to read.
• Prepare a letter of appreciation that staff can take home and share with their significant others, including their children. We provide you with a sample letter here. (I believe that it is no exaggeration to say that some of your

staff are still working at your agency because of their families’ rock-like support and encouragement, and their carrying the burdens and demands of home life to a large degree.)

• If at all possible, host a barbecue or another form of a Family Day, even if you have to schedule it

In ongoing discussions and movements across the nation several reasons are given as to why we need prison reform in the U.S. Today I want to share with you one more such reason, a reason that has been embedded in the heart of Desert Waters’ mission since its birth in 2003.

This reason is the health and wellbeing, even the survival of what may be correctional staff’s most valued asset – their family life.

The words I am about to share may sound overly dramatic to some, but I know from hard data, and also from my interactions with correctional staff and their family members for 23 years now, that they are based on fact, and that, sadly, they prove to be true only too often.

What Do We Mean by Correctional Families Being Collateral Damage?

According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, collateral damage in military terms refers to deaths of or injury

to civilians (that is, people not in the armed forces) or damage to buildings that are not connected to the military during a war.

Correctional staff family members and their family life can become “collateral damage” when they are impacted by the destructive ways correctional work impacts their loved ones, which then “come home,” invading and overtaking their personal lives.

Negative consequences of correctional work can be thought of as falling in two broad categories:

• the ways families are affected by lifestyle changes and external demands imposed on them when their loved one becomes a correctional employee; and

• the ways families are negatively affected by their loved one’s Corrections Fatigue – negative changes in their loved one’s personality, health, and functioning – work-related changes that keep adding up over time.

These effects do not necessarily have to end in broken relationships or family violence. However, they can often lead to emotional distancing; family members not feeling emotionally safe around their correctional loved one; feeling cast aside; being rightfully concerned about loved one’s habits (such as a notable increase in alcohol consumption or the continual playing of violent video games); or “walking on eggshells” to not set their correctional loved one off, given the obvious increase in their moodiness and irritability.

These negative changes and their fallout occur in contexts where staff are not trained in handling work-related stressors, or are faced with work conditions and policies that undermine wellness. And they are not taught how to be

supportive of their families, how to help them cope with the lifestyle and other adjustments that corrections work throws their way.

Similarly, adult families are not prepared or equipped to deal with the stressors of corrections work that impinge upon them.

Simply instructing staff to leave work at work without equipping them with skills, work conditions, and the opportunities to do so, such as through regular debriefings at the end of a shift, does not work well, especially on high-stress days.

Leaving work at work is more likely to be accomplished through healthy means, mostly on low-stress days, and by staff who are well-rested, and who have an opportunity to process their workdays’ events before they get home. These conditions are not typically afforded to U.S. correctional staff. (In Norway, by contrast, staff enjoy overlapping shifts.

During the overlap, the exiting shift updates the incoming shift regarding observations about the incarcerated persons, discusses how challenging situations were handled and how else they could have been handled, and shares concerns. And Norwegian COs do not work much mandatory overtime.)

And when we say “family members,” let us not forget to include the parents and the siblings of correctional staff, and others close to them. I still remember the father of a Correctional Officer who worked at a particularly violent maximum-security institution, who told me with tears in his eyes, “We do not know who our son is anymore.” After reading our booklet Staying Well, he told me that now he understood more about what happened to his son, and how to best approach him.

Data

Regarding research data, one study indicated that staff’s Work Health impacted their Family Health unusually strongly (Spinaris & Brocato, 2019). As staff’s Work Health increased, so did their Family Health. And, conversely, as staff’s Work Health decreased, so did their Family Health.

(Work Health in that study referred to staff’s level of morale, energy – physically and emotionally, and job satisfaction. Family Health was measured by items such as, My work schedule causes conflict at home; My family has told me I should find a job outside of corrections; When I get home from work, I feel like I’ve got nothing more to give; Since I started working in corrections, I find it harder to express affection to my family. Do any of these sound familiar?)

Another study of Correctional Officers (Lerman, 2017) reported the following percentages of respondents agreeing at some level with the issues below:

• 66% indicated that work makes it hard for them to spend sufficient quality time with family;
• 65% indicated that they were told by family that they judge others more harshly since they started working in corrections;
• 53% indicated that they are harsher or less trusting towards friends and family since they started working in corrections;
• 41% indicated that they would be better parents, spouses or partners if they did not work in

Possible Solutions

These statements are not meant to blame anyone or hold anyone responsible for their genesis/origin. The correctional system in the U.S. has devolved in ways that only too often hurt all those who come in contact with it, even those who come in contact with it indirectly, such as staff’s family members.

We believe that all of us who are involved in corrections can help change that, when we all focus our energies on doing what we can within our sphere of influence.

So, what are we at Desert Waters doing about this situation? Here are some of our efforts to date:

1. We work to increase awareness about the correctional family as collateral damage by:
   1. Publishing articles such as this one, and dedicating entire issues of the Correctional Oasis to this subject;
   2. Speaking at conferences about it;
   3. Conducting research in this area; and
   4. Designing and delivering training for staff and their family One such training is Desert Waters’ Correctional Family Wellness™ (CFW) course, which has two versions – one for adult family members to understand and support their loved one who works in corrections, and another for for staff We train instructors who can then train coworkers and also family members on these topics.

2. We work to devise solutions for these matters, and we collaborate with others who are interested in these same issues.
   1. We are starting to explore the possibility of offering one-day wellness retreats to correctional couples, to

help them identify and address issues related to Corrections Fatigue and its consequences. Ideally, this would be in person, but virtual options could also be considered. (If you are interested in such a one-day wellness retreat for correctional couples in your area, or have some ideas about such an endeavor, please share your thoughts with us at admin@desertwaters.com.)

1. We encourage correctional administrators to consider offering Family Days, perhaps off site, and adding an optional prison tour to be provided to adult family members who want to tour their loved one’s
2. We strongly recommend that correctional agencies’ EAP services include family therapy and individual sessions for spouses/domestic

References

1. Lerman, E. (2017). Officer health and wellness: Results from the California Correctional Officer Survey. https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/ uploads/research/pdf/
2. Spinaris, G., & Brocato, N. (2019). Descriptive study of Michigan Department of Corrections Staff Well-being: Contributing factors, outcomes, and actionable solutions. https://www.michigan.gov/documents/corrections/MDOC_Staff_Well-being_Report_660565_7.pdf

“I wonder what happened to my husband since he became a corrections officer. He used to be so easy going. He’d laugh and joke, and didn’t complain much about things. Now, after five years in the system, he’s all somber. It’s like he can’t enjoy anything. He’s also become paranoid. We don’t go out together much anymore (he’s sleeping in the evenings before going to work), but when we do, he insists on sitting with his back against the wall. He never used to be so uptight before. And he’s so negative! He finds fault with everything and everyone. He tears me down all the time, and he’s become very strict with our kids. Actually, I think they’re now afraid of him. And he went from drinking lightly and only on the weekend, to drinking quite a bit every day when he gets off work. No surprise, he’s gained weight. Now I avoid him. I’m tired of walking on eggshells around him, yet I can tell that he’s miserable and I feel for him. And I fear for our marriage and for our family. Please help me understand!”

Below are some of the posts we received in reply. Their intensity, degree of expressed caring, and candid content was very moving to us. We’ve separated them in two categories: posts by other spouses, and posts by staff.

Wives/Spouses’ Replies

Correctional Staff’s Replies