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Somewhere during our interview, Sonny Silva paused to paint this frightening scenario:
Imagine that a major fight breaks out in the chow hall, and one inmate is stabbing someone on one side of the hall while another set of individuals are stabbing each other on the other side of the mess hall. There are 200 inmates in the chow hall and only a couple of officers. As soon as the fight begins, the gate is closed, and when you look around, it’s just you and the other officer with all those inmates fighting.
You can’t break up a fight with multiple people fighting, so you have to wait for first responders to come break it up. Then, the inmates need to be escorted to their cells and the staff does rounds. After all the units have checked in, you hear the directive, “Resume normal activity,” over the PA system.
“I was in that chow hall,” Silva said. “That’s my story.”
Unaddressed Trauma and Burnout in the Prison System
Silva, who today is a national outreach liaison for FHE Health, was describing a common experience among corrections officers: “You see a traumatic event, it gets quelled, and before you can even be debriefed, you’re resuming normal activities.”
Unaddressed, cumulative trauma is a major source of burnout for these first responders, and the unique stressors of the job only contribute to the heavy mental health burden. We asked Silva to share his insights from 32 years with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. Silva worked 27 years inside the walls of the DOC. He then was a member of MADOC’s Employee Assistance Services Unit for five years and then served as the director for the last nine months before retiring. What follow are highlights from our interview.
Job and Workplace Stressors That Corrections Officers Face
What are some workplace stressors that are unique to the job of a corrections officer?
Lack of Public Appreciation and Recognition
“It’s a thankless job. Nobody wants to go into this line of work. The only time you hear about a corrections officer is when he has done something bad like used excessive force” Silva said. “What a corrections officer does daily isn’t reported to the public. They don’t know they cut down a suicide or broke up a fight. Nobody knows what we do.”
As further illustration, Silva noted the more visible role that other first responders play: A firefighter responds to a fire and saves a life, or a police officer responds to a robbery and catches the culprit. Once the fire is out the Fire Fighters leave the area or the culprit is caught , the police lock him up and then they have no contact with the cuprit. Corrections officers, on the other hand, regularly do heroic things and fulfill an important public duty, only behind closed doors and hidden from public view. That isolation can take a toll. Silva described it this way:
As soon as you walk into a prison facility, there’s a door that slams behind you and then one opens in front of you. You’re incarcerated yourself and working with a dangerous population; and in a state prison, you’re working with dangerous felons, murderers, rapists, manipulators, and there’s a chance of a physical or mental assault and the chance you may not go home.
Silva added that corrections officers are often stigmatized as less educated among first responders. One reason is that the job is frequently a “steppingstone” to becoming a local police officer,a state trooper of a fire fighter.
A Hostile and Dangerous Work Environment
Like police officers and firefighters, corrections officers must respond to hostile and dangerous situations, with one critical difference. They also go to work where the danger is and then spend all or most of their working hours in that hostile environment.
“We work in an environment where most of the people you deal with don’t like you, and yet your job is to provide care, custody, and control over these individuals—and the biggest piece is the care piece,” Silva said. “You’re dealing with a population that’s attacking you verbally, throwing feces and urine at you, and you may have to intervene in a fight involving a person who doesn’t like you.”
Staffing Shortages and Mandated Double Shifts
Dire staffing shortages also greatly contribute to workplace stress. Existing staff must frequently work double shifts as a result, and these mandated double shifts are a leading cause of burnout, according to Silva. He said younger, newer recruits are often the most susceptible to this form of burnout. They might take the job, having been enticed by a generous bonus, only to discover that the work is unrelenting and prevents them from having a family life.
Insufficient staffing can compromise the safety of corrections officers and exact an enormous mental health toll, too. As illustration, when you are one of two corrections officers tasked with watching over 200 inmates in a chow hall, the lack of adequate backup can increase your likelihood of getting hurt and cause more on-the-job stress and hypervigilance.
Unsafe and Unsanitary Work Conditions
Work conditions can be “inhumane,” Silva said. Corrections officers often work in ancient, poorly maintained buildings that are infested with rats and cockroaches and lack basic amenities. Silva recalled working for one facility that dated back to the 1800s and had no indoor plumbing. He said many officers get dressed and leave their uniforms at work to avoid bringing insects home with them.
Common Mental Health Issues Among Officers
Conditions like these lead to depression and fights, Silva said. Here he cited a former Georgia inmate’s testimonial in a report by The Marshall Project: “It’s absolutely detrimental to everyone’s mental stability,” she had said, and Silva was quick to note that her observation also applied to corrections officers.
In 2023, there were 40 homicides and 38 suicides in Georgia state prisons alone, the same report stated. What many don’t know is that corrections officers are the first to respond to these critical incidents. They are the first to break up the fight that kills an inmate and the first to cut down a suicide by hanging.
This chronic exposure to trauma inevitably affects mental health. Silva said corrections officers, whose average life expectancy is just 59, have the highest rates of suicide among first responders. He quoted research by the National Institute of Justice, which found that the average suicide rate among Massachusetts Department of Correction officers was at least seven times higher than the rate of the population at large.
“Officers are exhausted, traumatized, and often ignored or shunned for expressing weariness about the work they do,” Silva said. “They have high rates of PTSD, which are more than double the rates that military veterans experience.”
“One factor that plays into [the high rates of] PTSD, anxiety, and depression is that we’re a paramilitary agency. A huge majority of corrections officers are also military personnel who have done tours or who are called to active duty and then back to corrections,” Silva explained.
Not surprisingly, “the higher the level of security, the higher the likelihood of witnessing and experiencing violence,” Silva went on. “In a maximum-security prison, you have to protect inmates from others, and if you don’t know inmate A is an enemy of inmate B, that can cause major disturbances—and it’s not just one inmate but their gang members.”
Potential Signs of Burnout in a Loved One
If you’re concerned that your loved one in corrections may be dealing with burnout, what are some signs to look for? Silva named several:
- Isolation and not wanting to participate in family events
- Less talkativeness
- A short fuse
- Higher consumption of alcohol or drugs
- Avoidance of crowded areas
Mental Health Supports for Corrections Officers
What mental health supports are available to those who need help navigating stress and burnout? Silva recommended contacting one’s peer support team first, “because most peer support teams have different activities or immediate resources that can help the individual.”
Silva also recommended finding at least one person to talk to: “What helped me was to find someone I work with who I can trust and who I can share those experiences with.” In Silva’s case, his ride home from the maximum-security prison where he worked was with co-workers he trusted. They did their own debriefing during the commute home.
“That let me go home without bringing all of that stuff home,” Silva said. His advice: “Find a mentor or someone you trust who works with you and who you can be open with about what you’re experiencing.”
Individual therapy can be another useful support as long-term self-care and mental health maintenance. “The younger, newer population coming in is not afraid to say they’re in therapy,” Silva said. He added that sometimes “the most respected, toughest officers” also come forward and say they, too, have been helped by a therapist. This goes a long way to destigmatize mental health issues and normalize therapy among this population.
Self-Care Advice for Families
When he offers counsel to corrections families, Silva encourages them to prioritize time together and family activities. Families can also benefit from contacting the peer support team, he said.
Silva emphasized the importance of keeping and maintaining outside friendships. He noted that it’s not uncommon for corrections officers to begin hanging out only with other corrections officers, and “the conversations become exclusively about work.”
“Having friends away from work will give you that break from the stressful work that you do,” Silva said.
Advocating for First Responder Mental Health
When we asked Silva what motivates him to be an advocate for first responder mental health, he returned to the memory of his sister, a police officer who died from alcoholism. She was a detective, worked in the sex crimes unit, and was a domestic violence officer. She was good at her job, Silva said, and then became a victim of domestic violence. She and Silva were the two first responders in the family, but when Silva’s sister fell into a hard season of life and developed substance use issues, she was afraid to seek help through her employer’s peer support unit. That’s why Silva is passionate about spreading the message that “peer support is not going to hurt you—they’ll support you.”
One Way to Support and Advocate for Corrections Officers
We concluded the interview, having come full circle—to the reality that corrections officers are the “forgotten” first responders. Though they fulfill a much-needed public service, one that is equally important, their contributions often go unseen and unrecognized. Here, Silva had a final suggestion:
If you go to a parade in your town, anywhere, you’re going to see police officers, firefighters, and EMTs marching. These folks in the parades, I encourage them to invite correctional staff to participate and to wear their uniforms. Back in the 90s, we participated in some of these parades, and it showed a different side to the community, because we’re usually so quick to take off our uniforms. Participation in parades will give us a sense of pride and belonging. When you see a correctional officer, thank them for their service. They, too, keep you safe.
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