Staff Stories

This page is about you – corrections professionals – and your stories. Its purpose is to encourage and instruct, and remind you that you are not alone! We offer our deepest thanks to the brave men and women who contributed their stories, and by doing so made it possible for us to offer you this page.

We invite you to send us your story at admin@desertwaters.com. Your story can appear here if approved.

We reserve the right to make edits to your material and to not post stories. And if a writer indicates that s/he is a threat to themselves or to others, we’ll try to locate that person to get them help.

I was reading the Staff Stories on your website and thought that I would send in a short story from my career that took place around 8 years ago.

I was working my post as the Corridor Sergeant one day on swing shift, and once again we had to respond to the same inmate engaging in self-harm. I had already responded to this inmate so many times that I can’t count them. That day was different – worse, as I had to use the cut-down tool to remove the material from her neck. Her face was blue, and she was unconscious. As I began to cut the material, she regained consciousness. She looked me directly in the face, and pleaded with me to save her. She apologized for what she had done, and told me that she didn’t mean to go this far. This happened a couple of times while I was struggling to get the cut-down tool in between her neck and the material so that I could remove it.

Have you ever pictured yourself laid back in your recliner, tears falling down your face, with a 40-caliber Glock handgun laid across your chest? Your hand is squeezing the pistol grip so tight you feel the tingling of numbness as your fingertips and knuckles are turning as white as the Florida sand. You know how dangerous firearms can be, so you keep your finger down the side of the barrel and outside the trigger guard.

You hold the gun, laying it across your chest at first. Thoughts racing through your mind, wrestling with the pain in your heart. Still crying, you put the barrel of the gun against your temple.

So, this is what it feels like to have the cold steel of a barrel pressed against your head with your own hand.

Decompress. This is a topic we do not discuss enough and something we do not do enough. This job wears on you and at times we do not even realize how much it is weighing on us. Sometimes we do not realize it until it is brought to our attention. The problem with this is it is often brought to our attention by our spouse or significant other, children, co-worker or friend.  If other people can tell that we are stressed, it is obviously manifesting physically in some way. A lot of times, other people see it before we realize it. I believe this is because we are used to being under stress. We are always hypervigilant and that often prevents us from fully relaxing. Some of us can never fully relax and that constant stress eventually takes its toll. I have known correctional staff to die within days of retirement. I have known two officers that had heart attacks and passed away while on vacation. I don’t know or understand the science behind it, but it appears to me that we get so used to a certain level of stress and when that stress goes away, this is when the damage caused by the stress manifests itself. It almost seems after so many years at a constant stress level that your body does not know how to react with no stress.

Rates of trauma exposure and PTSD are extremely high among both justice-involved individuals and correctional professionals, perhaps 10 times higher compared to a community sample.

I have worked in corrections for 12 years. I do not have PTSD but I have been exposed to an extremely high volume of trauma in my adult life. Since working in corrections, but outside my work life, I have been robbed at gunpoint and also shot at. Both these incidents were followed by weeks of classic post-trauma symptoms. Ironically, it was my experience of working in corrections that enabled me to eventually move past these traumatic experiences with relative ease, because I anticipate and expect things like this to happen, and I know how to roll with them.

Being an officer with PTSD, I have worked hard on being able to recognize some of the common symptoms of PTSD in myself and in the offenders with whom I work. These symptoms include reliving the trauma, avoiding anything that could or does reminds us of our trauma, increased alertness that affects anger/ irritability /difficulty sleeping, intrusive negative distressing thoughts. And I learned a new term – Flat Affect – where a person does not show socially acceptable emotional expression or they misinterpret emotional expression in other people.

My phone rings. It’s my friend, my best friend. I know what is about to happen because I have been waiting and hoping for this exact phone call and conversation. I answer the phone, but not in the usual excited way. I am deflated and fatigued. It’s been some time since we have spoken. I have been avoiding reality. My best friend is reality. It hurts to avoid reality.

Say what? Yes, chaos “addiction” is real. Is it an adrenalin addiction? Where did it come from? When did it first become apparent that it may be causing problems in your life? Was it before or after your job in corrections began that you had chaos addiction issues?

A couple of years ago I was tasked with writing an article for our Institution’s monthly training bulletin. I have nearly 20 years of Law Enforcement experience, mostly within the state prison system, and have worked at six prisons and one Headquarters assignment.  Even with all the different experiences I have had during my career, I was struggling with what to write about, when an email arrived in my inbox that read, “Another Brother has lost the battle and has taken his life.” Sadly, I wasn’t shocked that this had happened again, but that email solidified my decision of what I felt I needed to write.

The other day I worked a 16-hour shift, and I was on the same yard I started as a Lieutenant on in 2008.

As I sat at my desk reminiscing about all the things I have experienced over the last 12 years, one thing always stands out when I work that yard—January 22, 2010—one of the worst days in my career.

Sounds like our job description, doesn’t it?

The thing is, I am not talking about inmates, but rather the demons within us that we hide from others, fighting inside ourselves. Understand, after 22 years on the line, I still love my job, the staff I work with, and I still look forward to coming to work each day.

The issue, which happens to all of us who do this job, is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I know that term may turn some of you away as it is considered a mental health condition that people fear admitting to, as it could cost them their job, but I sincerely hope it does not.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from a Facebook post.

This will be a long post, but I’m going to do something most Correctional staff don’t do enough of, and that’s open up.

I broke down today, I cried. I don’t break often and NEVER talk about it or do it in front of anyone else.

At first, I couldn’t comprehend another co-worker suicide, but then I got to thinking about our lives. We as Correctional staff SUFFER IN SILENCE. Some of us deal with the daily stress better than others. Some of us can’t cope at all. Some of us have seen some horrendous things that people should never witness, and things we will never forget. Some of us have even had to do things that haunt the s#!t out of us daily and are the things nightmares are made of.

Well, to whoever is reading this, I just want to say hang in there! It will get better. I know it sure doesn’t feel like it, but keep plugging away at it. Be open to new things even if they seem weird or uncomfortable, try them and embrace them, because you are here reading this for a reason.

For those of you who are reading this and who read the first part of my journey, I want to say it will get better, but it is not easy.

I have found that my journey through this process has its ups and downs. After a short lived stint of happiness and enjoying life again, I found myself slipping back into depression. Sure, there are times in everyone’s life that we all get depressed, but my depression has been on a whole different level. The sad, alone and horrible feelings that I had before came back, and they have been extremely hard to get rid of. The daunting task of waking up to my alarm, putting my uniform on and heading to work has been exhausting.

It’s been a long road! Two and a half years ago I was headed for the bottom at an alarming rate. I was in dire need of some help and answers. My depression was off the charts and the overwhelming thoughts of taking my own life were a daily occurrence. I reached out to get help, and it was the best move I have ever made.

COVID-19: a subject I was tired of hearing about and had no intention or interest in writing about. I knew this virus wasn’t nearly as serious as we were being told. I knew the government was totally overreacting. I felt like I was being placed on sanction by our Governor. It first started as loss of privileges, and then Top Lock. I just knew this was Government control and overreaching. Until I lost half of my Officers to this sickness. Until an Officer passed away due to this virus. Until several officers were placed on ventilators. Until the facility I work at was obliterated by this virus, and prisoners were being taken out by ambulance daily. Until I got sick and was off work for three weeks.

The wife’s story: How does someone with 20+ years cope with stress and the everyday concern for their personal safety, as well as their co-workers’?

You become a different person, or you develop an alter ego, if you will. This allows you to keep a stern profile and not allow people to see any other side of you. For safety and security issues this is more than acceptable. However, one needs to be able to turn that off when they leave work and go home to their family and friends.

Although I’ve never worked directly with offenders, because my husband deals with it on a daily basis, I feel as though I have lived the experiences, situations, etc. that he has. He has always been a wonderful provider, soulmate, father and friend but recently I had noticed, those things were slowly diminishing and he was becoming someone that I did not feel as though I knew anymore. The stress of the job was getting to him and that stern profile he had to maintain eight hours a day while at work became his profile every hour of every day.

As we all know, or at least should know, working in the Corrections Profession for any amount of time takes its toll on all of us. Many have sat back and denied the effects, many have accepted the effects, and others are still not sure. I am here today to express some thoughts on how we can change the effects this career choice has had, or is having, on us. And, to let us all know there is Hope.

I began my career in Washington State Department of Corrections in July 1995. I was hired at the Twin Rivers Corrections Center in Monroe Washington. As soon as I made permanent officer I worked as a Sick Leave relief officer for 2 years. I worked between Twin Rivers and the Special Offender Center. TRCC is a medium security prison that houses several offenders who are in for a sexual crime; mostly against children. SOC is a close custody facility with primarily mentally unstable offenders who would just as soon kill you as look at you. Several do conduct themselves with a modicum of restraint and respect for officers.

As a veteran C/O I have seen way too many families break up after a few years at this job. I have seen drugs and alcohol devastate marriages, friendships and careers. I have seen too many people kill themselves while employed or within a few days after termination from the department. I myself have spent a night with a Smith and Wesson 686 on my lap. I put it up, and got the help I needed.

Let me start by saying I am not a doctor or licensed counselor. I am a retired correctional professional with over 20 years of experience in the field. I have worked at almost every type of facility the federal government has. I am also a photographer. I use this visual medium to capture the world around me.

I was raised in the American Southwest. I grew up enjoying the gentle summer rainstorms that brought life to the desert. I also became aware of damaging flash floods and the danger they possessed simply by too much water being dumped in too short of a time. The desert soil was not able to keep up with the downpour.

I have returned to the deserts I love in retirement. As I look at my career, I see many comparisons to growing up in the desert. The storms of work life were very similar to the storms of the desert world. Some of the rains were gentle and refreshing. The desert had time to soak in the blessings of the rain. Other rains were too fierce and fell faster or harder than the desert was able to handle. At the time I was aware of some of the damage, but not all.

Heading towards 20 years as a Correctional Officer in Australia the last thing I dreamed would ever happen to me was to come to the realisation that I had “lost the plot.”