Correctional Staff and Facilities

¶ … institutional correctional staff experience, particularly as it mirrors the experience of inmates confined to these institutions. Search the Internet for at least one personal narrative of a corrections staff member other than the three videos you watched. Share the web link and comment on what you learned. Describe any differences in the experiences of male and female correctional staff.

In a review of the experiences of correctional staff members before the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, the Commission asked Joe Baumann, a state correctional officer from Southern California with 19 years of experience working in prisons to testify before the committee. Baumann's experience was unique because although he was a male "his work has included two years spent in a mental health unit for women where there was a single staff psychologist caring for 700 inmates" (Baumann 1). Baumann testified as to the lack of adequately-trained mental health professionals within prison settings. Prisons were under-staffed and unable to deal with the serious mental health needs of inmates. Both corrections staff and inmates had similarly traumatic experiences dealing with the consequences of living side-by-side inmates with untreated mental illness: in this sense the experience of both guards and many inmates mirrored one another in terms of their stressors.

Much of what Baumann witnessed was horrific, including attempted suicides and violent and deranged inmates housed in inappropriate locations (such as with the general population) simply because of a lack of space (Baumann 4). Baumann's experiences were centered in California, one of the largest prison systems in the U.S. He noted that the California prison system was often under legal and political fire. In one case, Coleman vs. Wilson, "it was alleged that the department's mental healthcare was inadequate in several areas, including intake screening, access to care, treatment and records-keeping and constituted cruel and unusual punishment" (Baumann 5). Baumann concurred, stating his belief that to deny inmates needed treatment for their mental disorders was indeed cruel and unusual, making it impossible for them to recover. It was also 'cruel and unusual' from the perspective of other prisoners who were housed with patients who had severe, untreated mental disorders. The experiences of having to live with potentially violent mentally ill patients could be extremely traumatic for inmates: "as a correctional officer, I've helped to disarm and restrain a suicidal inmate who was slashing his wrists with a box-cutting razor blade, using nothing but a mattress because we lacked to put men in training to do it any other way," he stated (Baumann 4). Even after many years, Baumann still found such sights harrowing.