FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Amy E. Lerman, PhD

Email: alerman@berkeley.edu

California Correctional Officers at High Risk for Depression, PTSD, and Suicide, Finds Landmark Survey

August 20, 2018

BERKELEY, CA—“We need to talk about suicide.” That is the message of a new movement being waged by criminal justice organizations across the country. In the wake of a series of high-profile celebrity suicides, serious mental health issues have been making headlines in recent months. The issue of suicide in law enforcement, however, remains largely undiscussed. With few exceptions, the lives and well-being of correctional officers have been excluded from academic research and absent from policy discussions about correctional programs and reform. As a comprehensive 2013 Department of Justice report aptly summarized: “Health and wellness among those who work in correctional agencies is an issue that has always existed, but is just starting to get the increasing attention that it deserves.”

This week, researchers at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy announced the release of FULL results from the California Correctional Officer Survey (CCOS) on Health and Wellness. The survey is a large-scale effort to gather individual-level information on the thoughts, attitudes, and experiences of more than 8,000 criminal justice personnel, providing a vast cross-section of officers across all of California’s correctional institutions and parole offices.

The report summarizes the results of the CCOS across a set of broad categories: mental and physical wellness; exposure to violence; attitudes towards rehabilitation and punishment; job training and management; work-life balance; and training and support. At the same time, it documents the difficulties of encouraging law enforcement personnel to seek the assistance they need.

Highlights of the findings include:

• Officers are exposed to violence at very high levels. More than half of correctional officers report that violent incidents are a regular occurrence at the prison where they work. Almost 30% reported being seriously injured at work, and 85% reported seeing someone seriously injured or killed.
  • Work-related stress has significant health consequences. Fully 50% of officers say they rarely feel safe at work, and officers who don’t feel safe at work are more likely to report experiencing headaches, digestive issues, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease than other correctional officers (whose rates of stress-related illness are already higher than average).
• Depression is a way of life for many law enforcement personnel. In fact, more than 1/3 of officers report that someone in their lives has told them they have become more anxious or depressed since they started working in corrections. Fully 28% report often or sometimes feeling down, depressed or hopeless, and 38% have little interest or pleasure in doing things.
• 1 in 3 have experienced at least one symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. Moreover, 40% of officers report that they have experienced an event so frightening, horrible or upsetting at work that they have had nightmares about it.
  • Ten percent of correctional officers have thought about killing themselves. The rate of suicidal ideation is even higher for retired correctional officers (1 in 7). Of those who say they have thought about suicide, 31% report thinking about it often or sometimes in the past year. However, 73% haven’t told anyone, meaning that many are suffering in silence.

In California, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the California Correctional Peace Officers' Association (CCPOA), and the CCPOA Benefit Trust Fund provide resources to support employees’ mental and physical well-being. However, only a minority of officers say they have ever used the state-sponsored programs. For example, only 18% reported ever having used the Employee Assistance Program (EAP), and only 3% say they have made use of the Peer Support Volunteer program. A primary explanation for relatively low participation rates in these and other programs is concern about confidentiality. Fully one-fifth of correctional officers say they worry about repercussions if they were to reach out to EAP for help with work-related mental health issues.

In response, CCPOA and the CCPOA Benefit Trust have recognized the growing need to prioritize the wellbeing of their membership.  Together, these organizations are working to pass Assembly Bill 1116, which would make it easier for officers to seek and receive crucial behavioral health assistance by enabling confidential services. “The best solution seems to be having a highly trained peer support program that can connect troubled officers with mental health professionals,” according to Daniel Beaman, a correctional officer and Vice Chair of the CCPOA Benefit Trust Fund. Additionally, the CCPOA Benefit Trust Fund has been holding regional mental health awareness events throughout the state to promote the issue and better equip their officers with helpful wellness tools and resources.

“Corrections is extremely difficult and emotionally demanding work,” says Professor Amy Lerman, the lead author of the study, “and we are just beginning to understand the huge range of mental and physical health issues that can result from exposure to violence and untreated toxic stress in the workplace. Agencies around the country are starting to look for ways to better support personnel—for the good of their employees and their families, the incarcerated population, and the system as a whole.”

The full report is available for download here.