Corrections_Today_March_April_2023_Vol.85_No.2

C

orrections and law enforcement are stressful occupations. It is impossible to avoid stress, but we can manage stress and greatly reduce chronic stress, which does serious harm to staff. Some of that harm manifests as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, marriage problems, PTSD, depression, anxiety and a shortened life span, along with low staff morale and suicidal thinking. A contributing factor in every one of these conditions is isolation: isolation from the community, isolation from intimate relationships within the family, isolation at work due to a lack of trust and isolation from self because of being trained to disconnect from our own emotions in order to do the job. This isolation in relationships is caused more by organizational stressors than operational stressors. To counter this isolation, we need to create a sense of a trusting community with connection among staff, in other words, we need to de-isolate staff.

There are two approaches to reducing chronic stress: improving organizational resilience and improving individual staff resilience. The former was presented in a previous article on “Improving Morale,” ( Corrections Today , Sept.-Oct. 2019, “Micromangement: The enemy of staff morale” ) and the latter is the subject of this article. There have been other articles on personal resilience, but they have been limited in scope, e.g., yoga, meditation, diet and exercise. There is much more we can do to improve individual staff members resilience, which will improve the resilience of their teams, units, facilities and ultimately the organization as a whole. Significant long-lasting change comes from the bottom up, from the staff rather than from the top down. Policies are important, but they are only part of the answer. The culture in the organization needs to change and that happens by changing relationships among staff. As many of us know, “culture will eat policy for lunch.” →

Corrections Today March/April 2023 — 23