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Mass. Legislature Trying To Curb Correctional Officer Suicides

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Correction officers across the country suffer from high rates of suicide and poor mental health.

Now, a special commission in the Legislature is trying to better help Massachusetts correctional officers seek mental health resources and avoid taking their own lives.

We spoke with Essex County Sheriff Kevin Coppinger, a member of the state commission who works with correctional officers, about how the state can help prevent these correction officer deaths and about the difficulties correctional officers face every day.

Here are excerpts of the interview, lightly edited for clarity.

Interview Highlights

On the stresses of a correctional officer's job

The average correctional officer sees a lot in his or her career that can really affect their well-being. They could be in a housing unit with over 100 inmates and there's just two officers patrolling that particular unit. So a lot of things can happen in there.

We have gang activities in our communities; our bigger cities have gang activity. Well, they get arrested and come to jail. Now we have to be careful inside a jail that we don't put rival gang members on the same housing units, let them intersect. Right there, their guard is up because there's a lot of fights. And these fights can become very violent in a very short period of time. So the officers have to jump right in immediately in order to maintain safety.

On how officers cope with the stress

Well, you know, for years it was the old macho attitude. You know, "nothing bothers me. I'm a tough guy. I don't want to talk to anybody about my concerns. I'm going to go home and I won't even talk to my spouse. I'm just going to keep it inside."

And what history has taught us [is] that doesn't work. And a lot of times, correctional officers will resort to substance abuse. Alcoholism is a big problem with individuals. These days, and part of what this commission is all about is how do we prevent these incidents where officers are taking the stress and letting it eat them up inside, and give them a chance now to get that out.

On encouraging correctional officers to seek help

I was meeting with the head of our peer support team earlier today. She and her team have spoken to 98 officers who have reached out for help. They reached out to their peer supports. Ninety-eight referrals to the peer support team since May. I think it's astounding. The message is getting out that the help is there.

Sometimes I get things like, "Hey, sheriff, off the record, can you check on 'Joe Jones'?" Sometimes when something happens, and an officer has to be disciplined, and then you get to the root of the problem. You say, "Oh, here's what's going on." Sometimes you marry the two things. If you've got to instill discipline, you do it. But you also try to bring in the mental health treatment options there. So, sometimes that's just a wake-up call that some folks need before, God forbid, they go to the extreme and they start thinking about suicide.

On the commission's findings

Sixteen correctional officers had committed suicide between 2010 and 2018, if I remember right, statewide. Most of those were before 2015. Now, that's about the time these employee assistance program and these peer support team options really came to life and really started to grow and be accepted. That's telling me this is working. Anyway, at least we're making progress, and those suicides have been — knock on wood — the last three years have been much lower than they were all those years prior to [2015].

On what supervisors must do better to help correctional officers

I think we're doing a good job getting the correctional officers to speak to their peers, but we also need the supervisors to kind of recognize [that] those possible suicidal tendencies might be coming to the surface, and see if they can see that. So, if they see somebody that's off their game — Officer "Smith" comes to work every day and he's kind of happy-go-lucky and he does his job, it's never an issue. Now, all of a sudden, he's looking disheveled, or he's got a bad attitude. He's just grumpy. Or things like he starts to give away possessions. Or, on the other hand, you've got a guy who comes to work grumpy every day and then all of a sudden he's happy. What's going on here? And those are some signs with suicidal tendencies maybe developing inside his head, and that's where you want to reach out.

And I think we need to train the families. This is a job [where] you just can't go home and turn off the switch at the end of your shift. Sometimes it stays inside of you and maybe the spouse just needs to give the individual, the officer, just a few minutes to kind of, like, decompress. And hopefully, that will just keep the home front on a good note.


Resources: You can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) and the Samaritans Statewide Hotline at 1-877-870-HOPE (4673).

This segment aired on November 14, 2019.

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