Corrections_Today_Winter_2025-2026_Vol.87_No.4

FROM THE ARCHIVES

feeling exhausted much of the time. This staff member is most susceptible to games criminals play and needs to recognize the burn out and make a change, such as tak ing a vacation, switching job duties or possibly pursuing a career change. By ignoring the signs of burn out, staff make themselves extremely susceptible to an offender’s manipulation. Do you know the type of offender that gets under your skin? Do you respond effectively? Every correction al offi cer has certain types of offenders that bother them more or seem to trigger emotional reactions. It is important for each correctional officer to respond professionally and practice effective ways of responding. Anger out bursts on the part of correctional staff are unacceptable and lead to great compromise. Do you know when to walk away from an angry, irrational or controlling inmate? Every correctional officer needs to know his or her limits and when it’s time to walk away to gain perspec tive and to think about the best way to respond. Often, buying time is the best thing correctional staff can do. Take time to talk to other corrections professionals and determine the best way to respond to difficult inmates. Overreacting to the angry outburst of an offender only worsens the situation and leaves the staff open for compromise. Do you take noncompliance and failure of your offenders personally? It is extremely important for every correctional officer to realize that some offenders will fail no matter how effectively staff members do their jobs. It is impor tant not to take failure personally and for correction al staff to never give up and to realize there will be some offenders who fail even in the best of programs. All staff can do is to examine every failure of an offender to see if there is anything different staff could do next time to help a similar offender. Examining outcomes is healthy, but personalizing failure is unhealthy and destructive.

see how staff will respond. If staff compromise at all, larger and more serious games are played. Test ing for offenders can be a slow, subtle process. For example, in his book, The Art of the Con, Cornelius explains the following example: “A correctional officer was working at her post. The laundry trustee comes to pick-up the cell block laundry bag. Noticing that the correctional officer has a large stack of inmate request forms, the trustee compliments the correctional officer on how hard she works and comments that she never seems to take it easy. [The laundry trustee] offers to help her by taking the inmate request forms to the classification office because it’s on the way to the laundry, and it will save her a trip. Ignoring the standard operating procedure that states the inmates are not to handle inmate request forms, she says, ‘okay.’” 5 This staff member is compromised and will be a target for future game-playing, which may cost the staff member her job. It is important every cor rections staff member understands that how they respond to inmates affects the games offenders play. The following questions can be helpful when determining what type of staff are most at risk for manipulations: What about you, as an employee, makes you susceptible to being exploited? These are “blind spots” or areas in the past where offenders have manipulated staff. It may represent times where an officer has been too lenient or too harsh with offenders causing offend ers to overly focus on the officer. It is important to be able to say, “no,” and not feel guilty about why a request could not be granted to an offender. Do you recognize when you are going through burn out and need a break or change? Burn out can often show up when staff start becoming irritable, no longer find their job excit ing, have little desire to serve offenders and start

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