CJ 720 Trauma & Crisis Intervention Blog

Prospective Research

Crystal Harris

Blog Post/ final

CJ Trauma 720

Research of “60 days In” contestants:

            In 2016, A&E began broadcasting a television show entitled 60 Days In. This program, produced by Gregory Henry, Kimberly Woodard and Jeff Grogan, was created as a response to some issues occurring inside of the Clark County Jail in Indiana. It consisted of several average people, with criminal justice backgrounds, entering into the jail as prisoners, unbeknownst to the guards and other prisoners. These “inmates” job was to obtain insider information on how the prison was being run. They were to witness the occurrences in the jail and report back to the sheriff.

The following is a list of specific questions I would attempt to answer in my research in order to better understand the trauma of incarceration. As these individuals do not have a stake in my research and can leave the prison anytime they wish, I believe their answers will be more forthcoming. They will lack much of the blame tactics that we would find if we were to ask regular prisoners the same questions. These questions would also help to understand the different personality changes that occur due to incarceration. While writing my research questions, I became more enthralled in finding out their answers and have determined that this is what my final project for this class will be on. I am very excited by this prospect and what ideas I can come up with.

How did their family dynamics change?

Did you become more patient or less patient with your family?

Did you become more or less domineering?

Did they experience any feelings of being a real prisoner?

Did they forget they had volunteered for this?

Did they exhibit any prisoner like behavior?

Did they gain a gang mentality?

Did they participate in criminal behavior?

Did they participate in the bullying of other prisoners?

When they were released, did they feel shame for their actions in the jail?

Did they experience any trauma by the loss of freedom, even though they chose that loss?

Did the belief of “not being weak” roll over into their normal lives?

Did it affect their interactions with others around them?

What changed their thoughts about how prisons are run?

Did their thoughts change?

Did the spying, that they had to do in the jail, roll over into their regular lives?

Did they feel guilty about spying on the inmates?

Did they feel guilty about spying on the guards?

The Overlooked Victims

The Overlooked Victims

She grew up in a wonderful home.  Her parents were college graduates with advanced degrees.  They had been married for over 25 years.  They vacationed together, spent holidays with extended family and spent week-ends doing fun things together.  High School was over and she was a freshman in one of the most prestigious schools in the state and on one of the most beautiful campuses in the country.  In a few short weeks her first year would be behind her.

She was sitting in her foreign language class when they heard a popping noise.  The instructor stepped out into the hall and looked the shooter in the eye.  She rushed back in; the students attempted to barricade the door.  There were no locks.  They shoved a large desk against the door and laid on the floor trying to hold the desk against the door.  He pushed on the door and shot through the small gap.  Without a word, without showing any emotion, he walked away.  More popping sounds.  Then quiet.  They moved the desk.  The stairwell was just outside the door.  The professor stepped out and checked the stairwell.  There seemed to be no way out.  The popping started again and she ran back in.  They had barely pushed the desk against the door when he was back.  Pushing and heaving against the door.  They lay on the floor, praying, keeping the pressure on the desk, holding the door closed.  He gave up trying to open the door. Pop, pop, pop.  The bullets are shot through the door.  It seemed there were thousands of them.  It seemed to go on forever.  Bullets flew over her head.  He was shooting about waist high.  Stay on the floor.  Don’t panic.  He walked away again.  More pops.  Then silence.  Someone is trying to push the door open again.  Don’t let the desk move.  Don’t let them in.  Please go away.  Someone is saying something.  He says he is the police.  Don’t move the desk.  How can we be sure?  He walks away.  In a few minutes, he comes back.  Please open the door.  It is the police.

The police come in.  No one in our room is hurt.  Not physically.  We can’t go down the stairwell close to the room.  We have to walk to the other end of the hall.  Don’t slip.  The floor is wet.  Cell phones are ringing.  Dozens of cell phones won’t stop ringing.  Why are we having to walk this way? Police are everywhere.  Where are they taking us?  Be careful, don’t slip.  The phones are ringing.  It’s only a little after nine in the morning.  They take us to another building.  They want to talk to us.  But it will be a little while.  It’s noon.  No one is talking to us.  No one has questioned us.  Why can’t we leave? The t.v.’s are on.  It’s all over the news.  I’m so tired.  It’s one-thirty.  Finally they want to talk to me.  I’m not physically hurt.  I’m not shot.  No one in my class was shot.  I don’t get counseling.  I don’t get an advocate.  I’m not a ‘victim’.

She buried herself in school work, majoring in mathematics.  She earned a Master’s in Operations.  She earned a second Master’s degree in Economics.  Math, numbers, calculations, thing’s she can control.  Control, she needs to feel like she is back in control.  Her menstrual cycle stops.  She is only 24.  She needs to feel like she is in control.  She marries.  She is happy.  But she is not in control.  She is vigilantly watching doorways.  With hypervigilance she people watches.  She is never comfortable in a crowd.  She can’t control the crowd.  Crowds are terrifying.  Small rooms more so. She lost weight.  Too much weight.  But it’s been eight years since the shooting.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can come from a single traumatic event, such as a criminal act, as well as from chronic exposure as in the military.  For crime victims their level of trauma comes not only from the event itself but it can be exacerbated by the way they are treated following the event.  Law enforcement officers must be trauma informed.  “With a foundational knowledge of trauma they are better armed to address victims at crime scenes… in a way that is beneficial and can possibly begin to reduce the incidences of PTSD following and event” (Rousseau, 2017).

Victims, like this student, “must also battle with the ‘secondary’ injuries that occur when there is a lack of proper support” (Trauma of Victimization, 2017). To reduce the levels of trauma, and reduce the incidences of PTSD, victims of such a traumatic event such as a school shooting are in need of immediate crisis intervention.  Dr. Marlene Young, in Victim Assistance Frontiers and Fundamentals, described a Three Phase Model for Crisis Intervention.  The first phase is safety and security.  Even though this victim was taken to another building and was removed from the danger, her comfort needs were never met and she sat for hours with no information, other than that provided by the t.v. news, and was never placed in contact with victim service providers. The second phase of the model is ventilation and validation.  During this phase, the victim should be allowed to share their account of the event and should be reassured that their reactions, no matter how intense or mild are normal.  Some of this may have occurred when she was questioned about the event. And lastly, the victim should be provided prediction, preparation and information.  The victim needs to know what happens next and their safety needs must be addressed and resolved.  This phase also did not happen for this victim.

The brain of a 19 year old college student is still developing and growing.  Trauma changes the brain.  “After trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system.  The survivors energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their life.  These attempts to maintain control over unbearable physiological reactions can result in a whole range of physical symptoms” (VanDerKolk, 2015).  For this victim her trauma and PTSD manifested itself in an eating disorder (another facet of her life she could ‘control’) and well as the cessation of her menstrual cycles.  She would not realize she was suffering from PTSD until she entered counseling for the first time, some eight years after the event.  She never went to counseling because those in the criminal justice system told her she was not a victim.  She was not shot, she did not die, so she was not considered a victim.  It was not until she and her husband wanted to have a child that she realized she must consider mental health counseling to get her physical health back.  Fortunately, she was able to find a trauma informed clinician, who was able to treat her PTSD, and she and her husband have a beautiful baby girl.  We must never overlook the fact that someone who witnesses such horror, even though they escape unscathed physically, they have not escaped without the physical and psychological injuries of trauma. And they should never be subjected to the horror of ‘secondary injuries’ incurred from a lack of proper support.

Enhancing Law Enforcement Response to Victims. (2009). Retrieved from International Association of Chief's of Police: http://www.ncdsv.org/images/IACP_Enhancing-LE-Response-to-Victims-Training-Supplemental_revised_2009.pdf

Rousseau, D. (2017, March). Module 3 Lecture Notes. Retrieved from MET CJ Trauma and Crisis Intervention:https://onlinecampus.bu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_34642_1&content_id=_4896066_1&framesetWrapped=true

Trauma of Victimization. (2017, April 23). Retrieved from The National Center for Victims of Crime: https://victimsofcrime.org/help-for-crime-victims/get-help-bulletins-for-crime-victims/trauma-of-victimization

Van Der Kolk, B. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Penguin Books.

Baking Therapy

Nine months ago I moved to Washington, DC in search of a job in the criminal justice field, which is why I am currently baking full-time for a local cafe. I hope you furrowed your brow at the end of that sentence; if not, re-read it. After weeks upon weeks of networking and writing cover letters, I've taken a job search hiatus to throw myself into menu designing and early-morning baking at a struggling coffee shop down the street. It's in my nature to want to revive things that are broken. Before, the shop was sparsely stocked; the dwindling customer base would came in disappointed to see stale, dry muffins and no desserts. It's my goal to turn this around. It's also in my nature, and at times it is a fatal flaw, to put my entire soul into something that ignites my passion and makes me feel I'm making a difference, even if it doesn't entirely make sense. Maybe the difference I make is only one muffin at a time, but it is gratifying to see my food nourish others and brighten their days as they grab their morning coffee.

Now here's the real reason I was willing to take a detour on my career track: I believe baking has the power to heal, and some ambitious part of me envisions creating a self-sustaining nonprofit that provides mental health treatment and peer-to-peer support, as well as employment in a bakery, to citizens returning from prison.

In this course, we have talked about the healing powers of yoga, EMDR, and other traditional medical approaches that don't necessarily fit into the Western "boxes" of psychotherapy. Yoga, for instance, teaches centeredness, self-awareness, spiritual awareness, and bodily awareness. Likewise, baking for others has the power to heal, to demand mental and bodily focus, and to restore the creative senses.

In a Huffington Post article I recently read on the psychological benefits of baking, a professor at Boston University is quoted explaining: “There’s a lot of literature for connection between creative expression and overall wellbeing. Whether it’s painting or it’s making music [or baking], there is a stress relief that people get from having some kind of an outlet and a way to express themselves.” (The brackets were not conveniently added by me, by the way, if that's what you were thinking!).

One therapist has even created a Culinary Art Therapy program and describes the following benefits:

• Gaining insight into one's behavior
• Learning about social skills/cues
• Increased awareness about health and nutrition
• Improved communication skills
• Stress management
• Time management
• Increased self-esteem
• Brain development through using the senses

Another nonprofit, The Depressed Cake Shop (take a look -- their baked items reflect the name just as you'd expect) works in assisting individuals overcome anxiety and depression. It creates popups of high-quality baked goods around the world as a means of combatting the stigma of mental illness.

Beyond what baking can do for the individual, it can also be a method in restorative justice. Baking can be a means of caring for others. A nonprofit that allows formerly incarcerated people to bake for elderly homes, the homeless, or sick community members, for instance, could create a space where returning citizens give back to their communities in a very positive way. In turn, this boosts their own self-image and allows them to feel the effects of restoring their immediate community.

I'm gradually forging my career path, including considering another degree. But I have a feeling my lessons from baking will never leave me. I've never had a job where every day I come home happy and creatively motivated, no matter how tired I am. I think this would be a positive thing to share with returning citizens: change comes with patience and it comes with diligence; we can't be afraid of the messes we make even when trying to measure ingredients precisely. Baking is about love, thinking of other people; it is creation over destruction, even in just a minor way.

I remember a novel I read as a kid that used this as a metaphor -- each baking ingredient, by itself, does not taste very good. Flour is dry, baking soda bitter, buttermilk is sour, and salt is...well, you get the idea. When you look at the ingredients piece by piece, there are far more bitter ones than saccharine. But the finished product is somehow beautiful, sweet, and satisfying. Such is life. Often we have bitter ingredients to work with, but we can try to balance those out and create a product worth putting our names on. Even for those who have lived through serious trauma and insurmountably negative experiences, it doesn't mean the final products - who we are - have to be the sum of all the bad things.

People With Disabilities, Willowbrook, and Trauma

Abuse and trauma among people with disabilities is something that I have deal with for seven years I have been in the Human Services field. People with all types of disabilities are considered a vulnerable population, especially those who have limited intellectual capacity. History is wrought with stories of abuses against individuals who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. Thankfully, there are now laws and agencies in place to offer protection from abuse and neglect. However, the trauma of the past is still apparent in many of the individuals who have survived.

Prior to about 1800, people with disabilities were seen as problematic. Individuals were cast away from their families, locked away in prisons or sanitariums, or completely ignored by general society because of their differences. It was not until the 19^th century that disabilities began to be studied and people began to take notice of the issues surrounding the treatment of the disabled. Institutionalism became increasingly popular and remained so until the 1970s. Willowbrook State School on Staten Island was one of these institutions that housed developmentally disabled children and became one of the major reasons for the institutionalization overhaul in the United States. Geraldo Rivera headed an exposé into the horrific living conditions of the 5000 children in Willowbrook (Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, n.d.). The severity of abuse and neglect in the institution was so awful that it prompted investigations into other institutions. The disabled children were kept in cribs constantly or housed in a single open area with no privacy. They were naked and sitting in their own excrement. To make matters worse, they were the subjects of state-sanctioned experiments that included feeding the children live hepatitis viruses. The effects of the abusive and neglectful treatment made already vulnerable and fragile individuals regress even farther into their disabilities, while others did not survive their time at the school.  Those exposed to the despicable living conditions have had to overcome speech and language issues, behavioral issues, as well as serious medical implications from contracting hepatitis (Geraldo Rivera, 2017). The exposé by Rivera was only done in 1972, and many of the individuals from Willowbrook are still alive and living throughout New York State and other parts of the country (Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, n.d.).

One of the best achievements that came out of the tragedy of the institutions was the enactment of legislation to protect individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities. In particular, the Developmental Disabilities Act of 1963, The Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 1975, and the Civil Rights of the Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980 (The ARC, n.d.). One of the most recent protections put into place in New York State was the establishment of the NYS Justice Center in 2012. The NYJS is designed “to protect the health, safety, and welfare of vulnerable New Yorkers.” (The New York State Senate, 2015). Special accommodations are also made for the survivors of Willowbrook, including intensive case management. This case management has much stricter guidelines for monitoring and protecting the Willowbrook individuals than non-Willowbrook. These guidelines were put into place to help ease some of the effects of the trauma that the individuals were exposed to.

Protecting the rights and lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities is an ongoing process and the programs that serve these individuals are ever-changing to reduce the risk of abuse and neglect. Trauma can impact those with disabilities in different ways than people without disabilities and it is important to ensure that they have the necessary supports to both address trauma and to prevent it from happening as much as possible.

Office for People With Developmental Disabilities. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2017, from https://opwdd.ny.gov/

Geraldo Rivera. (2017), From Geraldo's book, Willowbrook: A Report On How It Is And Why It Doesn't Have To Be That Way. Retrieved April 22, 2017, from http://geraldo.com/folio/willowbrook

The ARC. (n.d.). Public Policy and Legal Advocacy. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.thearc.org/what-we-do/public-policy/know-your-rights/federal-laws

The New York State Senate. (2015, October 05). Senate Passes Legislation to Protect People With Special Needs and Disabilities From Abuse and Neglect. Retrieved April 24, 2017, from https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senate-passes-legislation-protect-people-special-needs-and-disabilities

Resiliency

Resiliency is an amazing thing--one's ability to bounce back from an event that had a traumatizing effect on them. The power to overcome an incident meant to break us and instead grow from it. The capability to rise above what would shatter others.

A friend of mine, Tristan, was in a car accident 6 weeks ago. He is only 19 years old. Tristan was hit by a drunk driver on the wrong side of the highway--both drivers were going 70 miles per an hour. He was med-flighted to the closest hospital where his parents were told they should hurry to see him--they were preparing his organs for donation. The accident broke his nose, cheek and jaw bones, along with his ribs, sacrum, pelvis and femur. He lost teeth and shattered an eye socket. His family was told to prepare for the worst.

Six weeks later and Tristan is not only alive, but he is thriving. He has been released from the hospital and is home, walking on crutches. His jaw has been unwired shut and he is already able to eat food that doesn't come from a syringe. The doctors say that he is nothing short of a miracle. The first responders say they have never seen anyone survive an accident as horrific as his. No one can believe the tremendous progress that he has made in just over a month.

Everyone's questions is HOW? How can he be making such strides given everything that has been thrown at him? The answer is resilience.

"I have a positive attitude, a positive outlook on life. And I never blamed the other guy or questioned why this all had to happen. Instead I concentrated on getting to my next achievement," Tristan told me when I asked him what gave him his motivation to push to get better. First he wanted to stand. Then he wanted to walk with a walker. Then he wanted to walk with crutches. Then he wanted to be taken off the feeding tube. Then he wanted to go home. His drive is amazing and he has had thousands of people cheering him on as he has met every one of these goals.

Through this whole ordeal, I have never seen Tristan without a smile on his face. He could still be laying in a hospital asking "Why me?" But instead of focussing on all the bad that has happened to him, all he can talk about is the good that will be happening and the positive things that have come from his trauma. At one point he even said to me, "I'm glad it was me and not someone else. I know a few of the girls from my school passed him on the way up the highway. I'm just glad it wasn't them he hit instead."

Focussing on the future and not the past is what has made Tristan so resilient. He has a drive to be the best that he can possibly be and he knows that in order to do that, there is no room for dwelling or pointing fingers. "It came from everything I grew up knowing and believing in," Tristan said with a smile on his face. A real life example of the power of resilience.

Escaping Employment Stressors

People who hold positions in law enforcement are not alone in dealing with a multitude of work related stressors.  However, those working in a law enforcement capacity can more frequently be exposed to traumatic situations.  It is how a particular person is able to deal with these experienced traumatic situations that will determine the ultimate longevity  of their career.  In the past, police departments did not place as  much effort into the mental well being of their officers as they do now.

The implementation of critical incident stress debriefings (CISD) and peer support groups have changed the ways officers can deal with stress and exposure to trauma.  Prior to the recent push in ensuring the mental well being of officers, officers would deal with their stress  and experiences alone and on their own terms.  For example, officers could find themselves drinking more often than usual,   becoming agitated more easily, isolate from their family, experience moodiness, have trouble sleeping or concentrating,  and also experience other physical ailments that could be attributed to dealing with stress or trauma.  As the use of CISDs and peer support groups continues to increase, officers now have a start to dealing with their stress and trauma without having to internalize it and deal with it alone.  CISDs and peer support groups allow officers who have experienced traumatic events the time to discuss with other officers the event and their individual actions along with the reasons they acted as they did.

In order for law enforcement officers to  remain at the top of their game they must be aware of both their physical and mental health.  While many departments provide gyms for officers to work out and maintain their physical health, the discussion about mental health well being has been hidden behind closed doors and not really discussed until recently.  As time progresses more and more law enforcement agencies across the country are implementing employee assistance programs, CISD teams, and peer support groups to further benefit officers.  These programs provide access to resources in order for officers to maintain a healthy mental  state and to assist in the processing of traumatic experiences that happen while on duty.

There has long been stigma associated with mental health illness both in law enforcement and the general population.  The education regarding mental health illness it's treatment is vital in the reduction of attached stigmas.  Within law enforcement, officers fear losing their job, losing their ability to carry a weapon, or be transferred within a department to a different position.  These fears although real possibilities can prove beneficial to an officer's healing process after a traumatic experience where one feels the effects of PTSD.  It is imperative for law enforcement agencies to continue educating officers and department managers in the importance of seeking mental well being as much as physical well being.  Mental well being can be sought both through self-care and reaching out to others for help.  In order for an officer to decide to use physical strength,  they must have the proper mind set to make such a decision and determine if that is the right course of action.  If one is not of the proper mindset, they may jump to an irrational decision creating the potential for discipline that could have been avoided.  The awareness that officers possess in regards to their own self both mentally and physically is extremely important to performing their duties to the best of their ability and creating the safest mind set to perform such duties.

Davis, Joseph A. 1998. Providing Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) to Individuals and      Communities. The american Academy of experts in Traumatic Stress, Inc.

Social Amnesia and American Corrections and Rehabilitation

Just as individuals have mechanisms to forget inconvenient truths or traumatic events from the past, so does the community, nation and globe.  Just as the child violently abused might loose recall, so may a society loose the truth of its past.  So can institutions.

Because I throw the term "social amnesia" around so freely, I want to take a little time to give it a chance to become part of your tool-set for interpreting the world at large.  As amnesia is one of the defense mechanisms of man (or woman) so social amnesia is a defense against collective traumas.  Perhaps it is most like our reactions to vicarious trauma which is at some distance from the individual.  Perhaps its course is like the background violence that (still) surrounds life in many settings too much like the "nasty, brutish and short" Hobbes supposed of earlier times. If you believe Hobbes was looking back from the city on the hill of modern enlightenment, please remember that they still hung convicts in cages and left heads on stakes on London Bridge and other places for the people to see.

A careless Wikipedia read could lead you to think Russell Jacoby coined the term in the mid 1970's. This professor was still at home or going to his first school when Velikovsky, a doctor trained in psychiatry by Freud's pupil Wilhelm Stekel, came up with "cultural amnesia." Alas, the doctor has been a victim of the process. The story goes that his sidelining was because of bad geology (sin of anti-uniformitarianism) and orbital science (the effects of electro-magnetism along gravity, a theory since rehabilitated).  Catastrophes just never have happened as he enquired of in Worlds in Collision, they screamed. Myths are myths, not edited history, they whispered.  It's one thing to disregard an old man doubling down on his writings out of his expertise.

It's another to ignore the reason he was interested and to forget his area of study back in Vienna. It was his expertise that made him view an inability to accept past catastrophes as the source of man's aggression.  He theorizes the greater amnesias take a time to develop. Just as with some persons, all seems to be going well, the wound healed until one day something triggers the full blown response. Hold off the forced ignorance of Freud’s early suppositions, bear with me through a little Barthes and we will end up in current America, recycling the past with new labels and calling it progress.  We will even find it easily relatable to penal reforms.

The essays of Roland Barthes are about modern myth making. The Nazi made a mythic history for their race, although Aryans are technically from the far steppes and dark skinned. The Iranians and the average citizen of India are typical "Aryans." Author Winfried Sebald recounts his Bavarian school experience of being shown holocaust photos which no one could explain or contextualize. He remarks of the amnesia for 600,000 mostly civilian deaths from our carpet bombings.

Amnesias of the United States are seen with histories of who came her and why.  It is easy to not ever know that several off the first vessel to live in that Thanksgiving celebrating first colony, were mutineers on board and eventually hung after returning from exile.  They don't teach that at the D.A.R.  The south is will rise again (it was never much above swamp level for many and others had clay not productive farmlands). We are going to make America Great (again) even as we have always had to fight to keep the drowning alive (unless they were natives - noble but in our way), even as forecasters on the rooftop tell us we are in a post-industrial world and living wage manual labor is truly retired without pension. Educators are still designing systems to pop out better citizens.  Few parents are familiar with the names Steiner and Montessori who already invented the basic design of that wheel.

Two more phrases need to be introduced: "forceful repression of memories" and "willful ignorance." Pictures of Stalin often had once allies taken out the scene, a history of Pacific Northwest canneries had plates depicting the Chinese reworked into Norwegians.  Not only have books been banned in the USA, but one scientist’s books were burned in the early 50's.

The German war machine kept revising schedules as the allies advanced and even as bombs hit the work camps, delivery date promises were put to the calendar.  In its declining years the evil Soviet empire had the joke about the people pretending to work and the government pretending to pay them.  As they lost their collection of soviet states, the annual government cookbook, celebrating all the union's cultures edited the ingredients so they could be made with the limited canned goods of those who stood waiting for the potato trucks, the farm trucks or word of their arrival.  These were the free people, not those in an eastern front WWII camp! The cookbook was full color illustrated.

Barthes proposes mythologies as social control and a way to separate society from reality (the actual circumstances of the present) and place it in a dreamlike, timeless state, "once upon a time."  In this state the ills are promised to be leaving us, the goods returning, and all the while we hear no solid plans, we have nothing to critically examine and evaluate.  It is like so much ad copy - all sizzle and no steak. It is an attempt to "keep it all together."  Trauma degrades executive function, the intelligence that plans and schedules and follows through. Traumatized individuals also have trouble with recounting their live on a time line, remembering if a year was one of the good, or not. If this sounds like the dissociated identity and sensorium of severely traumatized persons, you are getting the idea.

A journalist from various war zones claimed its time to buy an exit ticket and avoid a national psychotic break when a certain hyper-nationalized music that simultaneously sounds like from anywhere on earth takes over.   The first time I heard recording of this phenomena I was astounded. He understood what Barthes was warning about, a confluence of the local and a universality. He was less trusting mythology could contain the repressed or was even intent on doing so. He was not going to fall for the local mythic version of the Spectacle and die.

Barthes only knew French style wrestling when he wrote of the parallels to mediaeval morality plays.  He does an excellent, convincing job.  I personally find it impossible to forget President Trump's relation to World Wide Wrestling, and my memories of Iron Sheiks, Capitan Americas German "Huns” and a whole theatric repertoire who played emotions for all the family, like a revival preacher, or a recruiting agent for the good guy’s forces.

Isis is repeating the Old Man of the Mountain (Hassan al Sabbah) while Lord's Army promises child soldiers sex and drugs while on duty not just after. Books remind us of the short psychic distance from Hassan, whose name gave us the words assassin and hasheesh, to the Muslim Brotherhood (they have not hit the news here since the Egyptian Spring).  It’s a span of roughly half a millennium.  Yet we ask where Isis came from "all of a sudden.

Gruder's Law of Political and Social Amnesia says we forget at the same accelerating rate at which our knowledge increases.  In his calculations we are down below 10 years for a doubling of forgetting and he is appalled at how much political history some forget in a year

I have a friend, Kathy Day, who attends national conventions or appears before congress in the persona of Dorothea Dix as a reminder of how long (about 175 years) we have retread the same grounds of reforming the treatment of our mentally ill and attempted to remove them from our prisons.  She focused on the indigent ones.  Today we have the term street people and we recognize the prevalence of mental illness among them. Today the three largest mental institutions are Riker’s Island and the Jails of Cook and Los Angeles Counties. Interventions come and go from favor. So much just gets ignored (“it’s just how the world is”) or repackaged (“new and improved”) and put back under the Christmas tree.

In 1843 Miss Dix addressed the Massachusetts Legislature: "I proceed, Gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of Insane Persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience."   Think solitary confinements, the restraint chair and large canisters of riot gasses.  Think suppression of symptoms, not healing.

In the book American Penology, Karol Lucken explains social amnesia as "the tendency of American penology to ignore history and precedent when responding to the present or informing the future... discarded ideas are repackaged; meanwhile, the expectations for these practices remain the same." One might, as I do, not accept his premise that the reasons for all the work was to increase control over the nation rather than provide for life liberty and happiness, it is easy to accept his reading of the history of repackaging.  It is easy to accept counter mythologies that take hold in reactionary periods of retributive justice and erase the past as meddling by some opposed polity.  Not surprisingly he notes the disparity between promises and deliverables.  Programs that never are well funded or quite as personally matched as they should be.

In 1954 the American Prison Association became the American Correctional Association. Offenders were carefully filtered into the just right placements and courses of corrections to rehabilitate them.  Soledad was built with fences, not walls.  Today of course they have razor wire.  Chino was pointed out as an exemplary therapeutic community.  It was composed of small, decentralized units, each with a resident therapist.  Evaluative research at the time indicated it worked to resocialize its "consumers," to use the latest term that has come into vogue. Today there is the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.  Three year recidivism hoovers around two thirds.

Meanwhile, though the rhetoric remains, rumors of turning the tide are still premature.  Were the programs bad?  Did the parties fudge their findings? Did the Grinch decide he had to intervene?  It all mixes in our Corrections/Rehabilitation system and it is common to hear laughs or potshots over the use of either word. Though it all, for this century, we have understood, and sometimes admitted, that incarceration is criminogenic.  We now whisper that it harms the jailer as well as the jailed.  We are starting to have the discussion that both are traumatized merely by seeing it from the inside.

Willful ignorance and refusal to know what is really going on are not traits of only those regularly abandoned, beaten, used for sex or otherwise betrayed by parents or other full grown people or brutes.  Spinning stories to divert distress can happen to societies.

The Mortality of Authority

A few days ago, I was sitting in my office when a co-worker came in.  We began a conversation when he noticed a copy of Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men sitting on my desk.  He looked at the book, picked it up, and asked, “What is this about?”  For a moment, I found myself voiceless.  I recalled every piece of information contained, and yet it was as if I could not formulate a narrative.  After a brief moment or so, I found myself humbled with definition.  With silence I replied, “mortality.”   

Browning’s book is can be summarized by the title.  It questions how ordinary men became such ruthless killers of war.  Throughout this course, we have learned a great deal of information into the depths of behavioral psychology and trauma.  In order to look to studies on behavior and authority, many scholars look to Stanley Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo and the experiments that they conducted.  Milgram and Zimbaro’s experiments have allowed us to see scientific approaches to human behavior and their compliance within authority.  In summary, both these experiments reflect one single word, conformity.

Stanley Milgram’s experiment demonstrated the human desire to conform to authority. In short, he tricked test subjects into pressing a button that they believed was causing another person pain.  Even though they believed the person was suffering at their hands, they proceeded to press the button when told to do so.   Phillip Zimbardo’s experiment at Stanford University demonstrated the human desire for authority.  He placed college students into roles of prisoners and correctional officers.  In a mock prison setting, Zimbardo filmed most of the interactions with the guards and inmates.  

While each experiment was vastly different, they are closely correlated.  Milgram demonstrated that once a person acquires a role or a position, they believe they must carry out what is expected of them.  Even if they are being made to do something that has consequences. The same goes with Zimbardo’s experiment of the prison guards.  This directly relates to Browning’s understanding of the role of Reserve Battalion 101 during the Holocaust.  Within the battalion, these men were trained to believe that they must follow orders at all costs.  As Browning discusses, these men received detailed and clear instructions.  The amount of structure provided a sense of purpose or mission to be achieved.  “Mass killing on such a scale required planning and preparation” (Browning, 1992:137).  It is important to note that the men of Battalion 101 did no go out and randomly commit acts of mass murder.  This was a well thought out and successfully planned mission.   In order to achieve this result, a person must be made to separate themselves from their own person.  They must identify themselves within their role, as an officer in this case.  Forget everything they know about themselves.  Every feeling, everything they have ever learned as a person and immerse themselves within their role.    

Zimbardo’s experiment is one of the most famous behavioral scientific studies.  Although heavily scrutinized, It demonstrated how if you take perfectly normal human beings and provide them with roles, they are going to act within that role.  He explained how a person carries out their mission.  In his book, Browning discusses how the guards were classified within the experiment.  In a sample of eleven guards, about one-third was classified as cruel and tough.  They went above and beyond the mission in order to harass and enjoy their newfound power (Browning, 1992:168). The next group was classified as tough but fair.  They played by the rules and carried out the mission as needed (Browning, 1992:168). The last and least populated category was those described as good guards, or those who chose not to punish the prisoners (Browning, 1992:168).  

Browning goes on to compare Zimbardo’s classifications within the ranks of Reserve Battalion 101.  He describes the enthusiastic killers who went out of their way for murder, the next and larger group of those who simply did as they had to, and then those few who refused and attempted to evade (Browning, 1992:168).  From Browning and Zimbardo’s work, you see that the person identifies within the role and carries out the mission in direct reflection of their personality. 

You have to respect what Zimbardo, Milgram, and Browning have done here.  Within their own ways they have provided a scientific approach for human behavior within atrocity.   It is easy to reflect on actions of those from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, but when a person is indoctrinated with beliefs, or simply provided to perform within a certain role, how can they be judged?  Is it fair to judge the actions of the prison guards any differently than those of Battalion 101?   This area of study directly separates the human factor from argued learned behavior. Is the person acting within their role or as themselves? 

What we see here and what I propose for discussion is why do you believe humans have a desire for authority?  Why as people are we willing to lose ourselves or risk so much just to be able to have control?  If this is the case, if this is fact, then do we really ever have control at all? 

Browning, C. R. (1992). Ordinary Men. New York: Harper Perennial.

Self- care

Self care is very important. Without it we can not take of others nor ourselves. Taking that extra time to de-stress and do something for yourself whether it be exercise, a walk, reading a favorite book, talking with a good friend, crocheting, karaoke, or just going for a joy ride can help us to regather our thoughts and feelings. We can breathe and close our eyes for a minute and let the normal everyday stress we experience, just float away.

If we do not take care of ourselves when we should then we are taking a big risk that can ruin so much. By not paying attention to minds and bodies we are more apt to make mistakes; ones like saying things we don't mean, messing up our responsibilities at our job, increasing the likelihood that we will get sick, increasing our chances of depression or aanxiety, having more aches and pains, subjecting ourselves to feeling like there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

I know from personal experience that when I do not take care of myself I feel terrible. I often will become very aggravated, exhausted feeling, I find myself being snappy to anyone that talks to me. I get aches and pains, it becomes a chore to do anything, because I need a break and I failed at taking one, so now my body and mind are letting me know that I'm boiling over. I try to use my ride to work as time I can "escape" from all my duties and I just turn up the radio and sing and have fun. I put everything else to the side for 30 mins each morning and I do the same every evening on my drive home. That is my "me time". I'm sure once my kids get older I'll have more "me time" but for now I have an hour a day, Monday through Friday. I consider myself to be lucky since a lot of stay at home mom and dads do not get that. I know this because I was a stay at home for 9 years.The sad part is, this world is so busy all the time and everyone is rushing around like they are late for everything. No one is getting proper amounts of sleep so we feel tired all the time. Some people take medicine to sleep and then take medicine to stay awake. We rush to get ready to go to work every morning, then rush home, rush to make dinner, rush to eat, rush to run errands, rush to get kids in bed, and then we are so exhausted and we still have more to do before bedtime. It is like a neverending cycle. I also have a tendency to feel bad for taking time for myself if I do. I think about well... "I should be doing something with the kids or my husband, I should be washng clothes and dishes, the house really needs cleaned up...". I will talk myself out of any downtime I may have had planned. I think a lot of us do this. Our daily schedules are so packed with things to do and there just aren't enough hours in the day.

Things we can do in order to regroup and charge ourselves back to 100% are:

• Meditation
• Yoga
• Walking
• Running
• Reading
• Visiting with a friend
• Going on a weekend getaway
• Go on a long drive
• Listen to your favorite music
• Go out for karaoke
• Eat healthy balanced meals and snacks
• Drink plenty of water
• Take the scenic route to work
• Focus on your breathing
• Take a longer hot shower or bath

Listening to our bodies is the key to staying healthy and energized. Energy shots or drinks will not help, they only make it worse by overloading your body with sugar and caffiene and then dropping us into exhaustion like a star faling from the sky. The right way to achieve energy and balance is to eat right and get the right amount of sleep. Getting between 7 and 9 hours can do a body good. Try to at least do some stretches in the morning to get your body unstiffened and ready for the day, make a balanced meal for lunch, a lite dinner and try 20 mins of exercise like yoga. Take that last hour before bed to relax your mind and body. Read a book, watch a show, write in your journal. Those are all great ways to keep yourself from drowning in the pool of stress. Even though for some of us this sounds much easier to read then actually do, we could at least give it a shot and do our best because it is important. It really makes a difference to ourselves and those around us. We all have people who count on us whether it is a spouse, our kids, our family, our patients or clients, and most of all we need ourselves.

Do You Care Enough About Yourself? Do You Practice Self-Care?

Trauma does not discriminate. Anyone can experience a traumatic event regardless of who they are and where they come from, and we have to be aware that this trauma affects people differently. Society today has to acknowledge that these traumatic experiences can take an emotional and psychological toll on anyone, especially for those who work within the criminal justice system. For this very reason, people within the criminal justice field (whether that is a survivor, advocate, law enforcement officer, etc) need to get involved with trauma-informed care programs that encourage healing and empowerment. The Department of Justice refers to these as “programs [that] identify and limit potential triggers to reduce their retraumatization and protect mental and emotional health” (2014) – I honestly cannot think of anything more important than protecting our health, regardless of if you work within the criminal justice field or not.

Unfortunately, in today’s world, there is a very strong pre-disposition against admitting the fact that people in the criminal justice field need help. We are the ones that are supposed to be strong and the ones that should be able to handle anything and everything that comes our way, but often times, we forget about taking care of ourselves. Unfortunately, there is a common stigma that says that if we are willing to publicly admit that we need help due to the stress imposed by our jobs, then we are not able to perform them in the way we are expected to and we are simply deemed “weak”, “pathetic”, or “disappointing”. This very thought imposes reluctance in us to seek assistance and therefore makes it impossible to encourage other people to take care of themselves too.

Let’s be real – our jobs are tough. Our jobs are difficult on us and the people around us. Our jobs, as rewarding as they are, are exhausting and strenuous. We need to realize that coping strategies are key in our lives, or we could ultimately turn to negative coping methods, such as self-medication and thrill-seeking behaviors, that could lead us into an even more negative path (like depression, PTSD, suicide, alcoholism, bankruptcy, divorce...).

Every workplace is a different environment, so we also need to realize that the coping skills and self-care methods that work for one workplace may not work in another. However, these are some self-care ideas that I have witnessed from experience that I believe will encourage positivity and help in most work places within the criminal justice system:

1. Take a break – Do not spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week at work, or you will lose perspective of your life and the real world. Being in the field and forgetting that you are an actual person who needs to do other things will cause you to forget about the fact that you matter just as much as the people that you are helping and protecting. If you do not help yourself, who will?!
2. Read – Reading can provide us with an alternative world that is not as traumatic as the one we work in every day. It gives us the opportunity to learn and to enjoy other topics that we may not get a chance to explore otherwise. It also encourages us to ignore social media for a bit, which also tends to be very negative. Social media networks are quick to make us believe that we are not doing our jobs well, and we may even end up believing this if we do not put them to the side more often.
3. Exercise and a proper diet – This applies to everyone! Fitness is crucial, not only so that we can keep up with the physical requirements in our jobs, but it also helps us be aware of our bodies and our strength. It allows us to release stress and fuel ourselves with the right things that will spark a higher energy in us. We have to keep our bodies healthy, as well as our minds. Exercise and a good diet allow for both.
4. Sleep – As much as we would love to some times, we are not robots and we need to rest and recharge, or we will not be able to do our jobs successfully. Actually, there are many studies that show how sleeping improves memory, attention spans, and your overall mood (this link talks more about the benefits of sleep for law enforcement officers: http://www.copsalive.com/the-importance-of-sleep-to-police-officers).
5. Counseling – Find a safe space for you to be able to decompress, vent, and express your true feelings within the job. Many times, we are afraid to do this with our co-workers or family members because of the fear that they will look down on us for admitting we need help dealing with our stress or simply want to talk about the negative aspects of our jobs. Counseling, regardless of if you have a mental health issue or not, is a healthy way to release those emotions and gather yourself and receive feedback. I believe this should be mandatory in all workplaces, especially in the criminal justice field.
6. Look out for our peers – be proactive and ask your co-workers about any of their concerns. Be willing to not only notice any negative attitudes or behaviors, but also be willing to point them out so they can address them. Those negative attitudes and behaviors may very well be the result of a situation they were not ready to admit or get help for. Be the friend and co-worker you would want to have.

Do not forget how important balance is and recognize that the trauma we are exposed to is not the norm. These traumatic experiences we go through can affect all of us negatively if we are not careful. It is OKAY for this field to take a toll on us and it is OKAY to seek help to deal with how this trauma affects us. If we cannot take care of ourselves, we cannot take care of anyone else!

Reference:

https://www.justice.gov/ovw/blog/importance-understanding-trauma-informed-care-and-self-care-victim-service-providers