Thank you for that.
I think the things that we ask prison officers to do are complex and difficult. We often underestimate the magnitude of their task, especially when we're trying to tell them to be rehabilitative as well when they're in situations where there are people who have got their way through life using manipulation, menace, and standover tactics as the ways of getting the things they want in life, as offenders are wont to do. That is a difficult world in which to live and to face when you come to work every day.
I think the other group that prison officers talk about having real trouble coping with are people who do things like chronic self-harm and behave in irrational ways that they can't understand. Coping with people with severe personality disorders and maladept at coping styles are also very difficult for prison officers. That can result in very significant emotional burnout and hardening of attitudes, and the interpersonal distance that comes from that in any institution. That's true of a secure hospital just as it is of a prison. The more staff under pressure, under threat and menace, then the more risk of negative staff practices emerging, as well as staff burnout and inappropriate use of authority or bullying.
How to create interpersonal environments where people can grow is what we're expecting of the inmates, and a healthy work environment for staff to come into who don't get burned out is very important. Good staff training, good levels of staffing, and good staff supervision are all crucially important to that, and having specialized units able to cope with people with particular levels of difficult need is also very important.
Some officers will be better at dealing with people at different phases of recovery. Some that I've worked with over the years are extremely good at working with mentally ill people in custody. Other officers will say they don't want to have anything to do with that inmate group, but they'll be very good in the minimum secure places and the work gangs and other areas like that. So I guess it's having emotionally and HR-sophisticated personal leadership that can provide staff with the training and support, staffing levels and awareness of the workplace hazards, the risks of burnout, the risks of malign behaviour, the risks of gangs to prison staff members, of intimidation, of threats to staff.
It's a tough place to work. It's very important work. The sophistication with which we can bring support structures around prison officers so they can understand that, so they can do things like develop people more, use things and pick up on issues like motivational interviewing that they're often hungry for, is really important.