Unlocking stress

Wayne Torres was drawn to the work of a correctional officer as a boy, visiting his grandparents who lived near the Ash Street Jail and Regional Lockup in New Bedford. He was fascinated with the imposing red-brick complex built in the 19th century.

“It became like a mystery to me,” said Torres, now the assistant superintendent at the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office. “What’s on the other side of that wall? What’s going on?”

Twenty-one years into his career, Torres, now 51, well knows Ash Street and the Jail and House of Correction in North Dartmouth. He knows the mark those places can leave on the people who work there.

He can show you a photograph of himself lying in a medically induced coma at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge in November 2014 as he began recovering from some five years of heavy drinking that nearly killed him. 

He knew the job was part of the problem. When he emerged, and put the uniform on again a few weeks later, he had an idea that he thought could benefit his fellow officers. 

He’s been trying to get this off the ground since 2016, but could not get the administration’s support. Last fall, under the new sheriff, Paul Heroux, he got the backing he needed to establish a unit of officers who are on call for colleagues in distress. After learning some basic counseling skills, those officers now offer their ear, their thoughts and, if necessary, referrals to professional help. 

Torres sees it as a way to help officers cope with the complexities of a workplace that can take its emotional and physical toll. 

The officers know it, their families know it, and research shows it.

“Correctional officers perceive that working in a jail or prison is a direct threat to their health and these perceptions are accurate,” criminologist Hayden P. Smith wrote in an introduction to a special edition of the journal Criminal Justice Studies published in 2021 that was devoted to “correctional officer wellness and resiliency.”

Smith summarized research going back to the 1980s showing poor mental and physical health for correctional officers compared to others in criminal justice, emergency response, and security. 

“In fact, when researchers from other disciplines study correctional officers they are surprised by the chronically low levels of mental and physical health,” Smith wrote. 

He cited research showing average life expectancy among correctional officers of 59 years, about 15 years less than the general population. That mortality figure takes account of the suicide rate, nearly 40% higher for correctional officers than the working-age population as a whole, and twice that of law enforcement officers. 

Years of research show that about a third of correctional officers suffer with post-traumatic stress disorder. Smith cited a study of jail and prison officers in Washington State showing “‘astronomical rates of PTSD that not only surpass rates in law enforcement, but also war veterans.” 

For officers in distress, members of the 12-officer Bristol County Stress Unit are on call at a dedicated phone line. So is Pastor Stephen G. Thompson Sr., the department chaplain, director of inmate support and a member of the unit. 

“The environment is a tough environment; it’s gotten more tough over the years,” said Thompson, who has worked for the agency for more than 20 years. “It’s got to be one of the toughest professions going right now.”

A corrections officer’s defense: your mind and your mouth

This spring, some 290 officers, sergeants and lieutenants are working three shifts at North Dartmouth and Ash Street. Moving through corridors painted various shades of gray and white, they keep an eye on their charges, many of whom are substance abusers, some suffering a psychiatric disorder, some struggling with both. 

Between the two places, their charges number about 700, all but about 50 of them men. 

Nearly 300 are serving sentences for offenses punishable by up to two-and-a-half years. The officers see a lot of sentenced multiple offenders on drug charges, burglary, shoplifting, simple assault, and domestic violence. Their pre-trial detainees, numbering about 400, are being held for everything from murder to armed robbery to passing bad checks. Officers usually have no idea who they’re dealing with, at least not at first. 

“Nothing is the same every day, that’s for sure,” said corrections officer Alex Saltzman, 38, a member of the Stress Unit, who has worked for the Sheriff’s Office since 2012.

He and other officers who are Stress Unit members say if you’re working a housing unit, you’ll confront fights breaking out, drug overdoses, and inmates complaining of health problems. At worst, you’ll encounter an inmate suicide. More likely, you’ll have a run-in with inmates seeking some little edge in their daily routines, to make life a bit more bearable. 

“Every day it’s going to be an argument,” said Lt. Felicia Carvalho, 34, a Stress Unit member who has been with the department for 10 years.

This past winter, a Women’s Center inmate attacked her, scratching her in the face. 

“I think she might have been high,” Carvalho said, recalling the woman saying, “if you come near me, I’m going to kill you.”

“Ultimately, she hit me,” Carvalho said. The woman soon apologized: “She said, ‘I don’t know why I did what I did.’”

Lt. Jordan Sandel, a Stress Unit member, recalled that a few years ago, in the unit for newly arrived inmates, a man he later learned had a psychiatric condition approached him at the officer’s control station. It must have been 3 a.m. Why was this man awake? Sandel recalled wondering.

“He came up to the desk, cracked me in the face,” said Sandel, 35, who joined the agency 11 years ago. “He hit me good. I saw stars. I was able to tackle him. We fell down the stairs.”

In the end, the inmate ended up in solitary confinement, or “restrictive housing,” for about a month. Sandel, who was promoted to lieutenant just a few months ago, was out recovering from his injuries for three months. 

Last New Year’s Eve, an inmate suddenly tossed a heavy plastic meal tray at a female lieutenant. He was lashing out over some problem with his computer tablet, which inmates use to make calls, read and watch movies. He was shouting about his family, and seemed to be having trouble contacting them. 

Carvalho said she heard about it on her radio and headed over. 

The inmate was resisting the efforts of an officer and the lieutenant to put him into handcuffs and move him to a restrictive housing unit in the same building. Carvalho, slender and standing about 5-foot-3, faced this man who probably stood 6-foot-3, weighing about 300 pounds, she recalled. 

She carried the customary gear: a radio and handcuffs. Officers ranking above lieutenant and those responding to certain emergencies carry pepper spray, but otherwise, unlike police officers, correctional officers do not carry weapons. The practice is meant to protect officers — always outnumbered in the housing units — from being overpowered and having weapons turned against them. 

Imagine, Carvalho said: “you go into the worst neighborhood in the city and the only thing you have to defend yourself is your mind and your mouth.”

In this case, that was enough, especially for Carvalho. She was a natural for Torres to contact when he was mustering his Stress Unit. She’s known as easy to talk with, for both inmates and fellow officers. The sheriff last month tapped her for his hostage negotiations team. 

Those skills served her well in the New Year’s Eve encounter. 

“He was tensing up in a fight stance, ready to attack,” Carvalho recalled. The episode unfolded in one of the housing units where inmates get a fair amount of time out of their cells. Carvalho spotted other inmates gathering to watch. 

Carvalho and the inmate started talking. She asked him to step into a cell, away from the inmate “audience.” 

She urged him to think about his family. If he assaulted an officer, it could mean more jail time, more time away from his family. Who would be the victim here, if not his family?

Soon the inmate calmed down and submitted to the handcuffs. He apologized to her. The next day he apologized to the lieutenant, who chose not to press further charges. 

The encounter might not fit the popular image of the prison officer controlling inmates with brute force. But that’s not the image inmates see, Carvalho said. The interaction is more a constant stream of talk, often negotiation. As a corrections officer, you’re their relative, “their psychologist, their nurse, their lawyer,” Carvalho said. 

In their exchange of chatter, officers and inmates can develop personal connections and trust. It’s where officers often feel they can do the most good. Carvalho said she’s seen officers go to court to advocate for inmates. 

The talk can also breed mistrust. Depends on the talk.

Lt. Carlos Ares, a unit member, said a housing unit can be a hall of mirrors.

“It’s hard to differ between what’s real and what’s not,” Ares said, “because we’re always getting conned.”

Torres said he’s found that persistent sense of unreality as disturbing as anything. 

“You’re surrounded by deception, lies,” from inmates seeking some advantage or favor, said Torres. 

He recalled one woman about 30 years old, newly arrived at North Dartmouth, having what appeared to be a seizure. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she thrashed and foamed at the mouth. Several officers helped her onto a mattress as she lay on the floor. A nurse came by, had a look, and quickly told her: no, she was not going to get a certain medication to treat her symptoms. She snapped out of it, cursed at the officers, and walked away. 

“I couldn’t believe it,” Torres said. 

Overtime strains

The most incessant strain, reported by one officer after another, is involuntary overtime. 

Members of the Stress Unit said officers often work two or three 16-hour stints a week. 

“My biggest challenge,” said Torres: “I put in a full shift and I enjoy it. At the end of a long day you get a call that you have to do another shift.”

According to Superintendent Joe Oliver, the current crew of 290 correctional officers, sergeants and lieutenants is 156 short of a full complement. 

Reports supplied by the Sheriff’s Office for 29 days between March 18 and April 15 show the department constantly relying on forced overtime to cover three shifts. During that stretch in North Dartmouth, between 7% and 22% of officers were on forced overtime. At Ash Street, between 14% and 47% were on forced overtime. 

Sheriff Heroux said he recognizes that forced overtime is a serious problem and a significant part of stress on his staff. He’s taken a number of steps to hire more officers, including assigning a captain as a new recruitment officer and more than tripling the signing bonus for new hires to $5,000. 

Working conditions have been improved for new officers, who are assigned for their first two months to first shift rather than third. That gives them more contact with senior staff and chances to learn on the job, Heroux said. In months three, four and five, new officers rotate shifts, to see all aspects of the operation, and vacations are allowed in their first year. Previously, new hires wanting vacation time had to wait a year. 

At the end of May, after completing the 11-week academy, a new class of 24 recruits graduated from an original group of 37. That was the largest incoming class since 28 recruits started the class of January 2018. The Sheriff’s Office has started posting a call for recruits for the September class. 

At the same time, officers are retiring. Filling the ranks will take time. Meanwhile, the overtime may be lucrative, but the tradeoff very often is tension at home, and compounded physical and mental strain. 

The brain’s “uh-oh” in overdrive

Susan Radcliffe, a Maryland-based yoga instructor, offers classes for inmates and correctional officers and writes about stress in prisons and jails. In her view, much of the trouble flows from a portion of the brain called the limbic system. 

Composed of several structures, including the hippocampus, hypothalamus and amygdala, the limbic system processes and regulates emotion. The amygdala — almond-shaped, with one lobe on each side of the brain — controls physiological reactions to extreme situations, regulates fear and the “fight or flight” response. 

A self-described “brain geek,” Radcliffe calls the amygdala the “‘uh-oh’ part of the brain.” 

Sensing a threat, the amygdala sends biochemical signals, triggering a chain of physiological responses: faster heart rate, rising blood pressure, secretions of adrenaline and cortisol, “‘amping’ the body so that the CO is ‘puffed up’ and ready to go,” Radcliffe wrote last year in the journal American Jails.

This is supposed to happen for short periods, followed by rest. Trouble is, for the corrections officer on constant alert for risk, the rest is hard to come by, or it doesn’t happen at all. The “uh-oh” is in overdrive.

“There’s always some crisis,” Radcliffe, based on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, said in an interview. “It doesn’t end …The brain is not meant to be in this kind of environment.”

This can make it difficult for a corrections officer to relax, even after the workday ends, Radcliffe wrote. Excess cortisol, she wrote, “linked to a myriad of behavioral changes a correctional officer feels after months of being on the job: not remembering things, feeling irritable and agitated, not trusting others, and being excessively vigilant.”

It’s worth noting also that unless they’re escorting inmates out or doing some other work, Bristol County officers cannot step away from the complex in Dartmouth or New Bedford for a respite. Unlike a police officer who might be able to get out for a meal even if they’re on a desk job, correctional officers cannot. They can use the break room and walk out to an exercise yard, but once they’re inside the perimeter that’s where they remain for their shift, whether it’s eight hours or 16. 

“You can’t not be affected” by the experience of this environment, Torres said. “You’d be lying” if you said you weren’t. 

“I know how it is to be alone in the dark …”

When Torres returned to duty in 2014, he said he wanted two years sober before he pitched his idea. In 2016, he said he first approached the higher-ups with this notion of having a core group of officers learn about counseling and work as a unit to support their colleagues. 

Some officials sounded supportive, Torres said, but he never got a meeting with then-Sheriff Thomas Hodgson. 

Still, Torres said he established a hotline in 2017, and put out the number that could ring to his personal cell phone. For a few years he had a few officers working with him informally, but without support, the effort languished. Torres continued to take calls and talk with officers in person, but that was all. 

When Heroux took office in January 2023, Torres said he tried again. Heroux agreed it was a good idea.

Last year, officers took sessions with a therapist in North Dartmouth covering basics on how to listen and talk with people in emotional distress. Officers also took a two-day workshop with Struggle Well, a national program designed to help law enforcement officers cope with job stress and traumatic events.

Now there are 12 officers, including Torres, and Pastor Thompson. They’re connected to that same hotline number, posted in the jail so all officers, including academy recruits, can see it. Torres said unit member names have also been distributed, and a number have been contacted by their colleagues through social media. 

If you call the hotline, a recording tells you the line is for Sheriff’s Office employees, and if this is an emergency, call 911. That’s followed by an options menu, including a list of unit members and a number to press to contact each one. As it stands, there was room for only 10 options, so Torres and one other unit officer are not included in the menu. Torres said he can also be reached on his personal cell phone, and the other unit member who is not listed can also be reached via social media and email.

Members do this on their own time, Torres said, without a set schedule. If they’re on vacation, or cannot take a call, they can refer the call to other members. There is no count of the total calls they’ve taken so far, he said. 

Lt. Ares’s phone rang at about 11 one night late last year when he was home in bed watching TikTok Christmas videos. A colleague was seeking help. Their talk slipped past midnight into the next day. 

The caller was reporting difficulties managing work-related tensions at home. They must have talked for about two hours, said Ares, 39, who has worked for the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office for 11 years and recently was promoted to lieutenant. Ares said he mostly listened, but also offered suggestions based on his own experience. 

“I think he just needed tools, how to handle things,” Ares said. “I know how it is to be alone in the dark with nobody to talk to.”

Stress Unit members and research on the subject all say officers prefer to talk to a peer who knows their experience. While their colleague may refer them to a professional counselor, the first contact with a colleague can help soften a potential barrier to seeking help. 

Research on barriers to officers getting help reported in 2021 in the journal Criminal Justice Studies shows that a stigma about seeking counseling remains a potential obstacle, especially in the male-dominated world of a jail or prison.

Pastor Thompson, and other members of the Bristol County Stress Unit, said heightened concern about projecting strength in a stereotypically “masculine” way seems not to be as prevalent among the younger generation of officers. Unit members were more focused on their status as peers and sustaining strict confidentiality as ways to encourage officers to contact them. 

Indeed, unit members would only speak about their contacts with their colleagues in general terms. The six members interviewed for this story said they had all either received calls or spoken with colleagues in person. 

All said they were keen on listening. Saltzman said he was paying particular attention to “make sure they’re not in a mindset of wanting to hurt themselves.”

Torres said unit members have referred a number of officers to professional counselors, including a number who reported substance abuse. Three were referred just last month, he said.

Torres said training for Stress Unit members will continue, and their status is affirmed with a small touch Heroux approved: modest uniform shoulder patches with initials for Employee Assistance Unit and Bristol County Stress Unit.

“Because we’re focused on the mental health of the inmates,” Heroux said, “it only made sense to focus on the mental health of employees.”

Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at [email protected].

More stories by Arthur Hirsch

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