Canadian Occupational Safety

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018 15 ate in the evening of Dec. 25, 2011, fami- lies across the country were cosying up by the fire and getting children ready for bed after a Christmas Day filled with eating cookies, playing with toys from Santa and enjoying the company of close friends and family. But Joanne Rutley was holding a severely bleeding man in her arms at Millhaven Institution. Another inmate had slashed him in the throat with a piece of a broken TV screen. "Whatever his crime was, at the end of the day, he is a human being and my hand is on his neck and I am not going to have someone die in my hand, literally," says Rutley, a correctional officer who has worked at the maximum-security institution in Bath, Ont. for 16 years. The man's jugular vein let go while he was in emergency, but he managed to survive. Earlier that year, on March 20, 2011, there was a violent altercation among inmates at Millhaven. Jordan Trudeau was in the midst of brutally stab- bing another inmate when he was shot and killed by a correctional officer. Rutley was by her colleague's side when he pulled the trigger, and she took the rifle away from him. Rutley herself was on guard, ready to shoot, for nearly five hours, she says. In July 2012, Rutley's roommate and colleague left for work, but never showed up. Police searched for him for 12 hours and they found him dead in his vehicle. "He had shot himself in his truck in his uniform. I was the last one to see him alive. I was like, 'Have a good shift. See you tonight when you get home,' but I never saw him again. That was rough," Rutley says. Shortly after losing her roommate, Rutley went off work and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Rutley is not alone when it comes to regular exposure to traumatic events at institutions and community correctional centres across the country. More than one-half (54.6 per cent) of correctional workers in security and non-security roles report symptoms consistent with at least one mental dis- order including: PTSD, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and alcohol abuse, according to the "Mental Disorder Symptoms Among Public Safety Personnel in Canada" study published in the Cana- dian Journal of Psychiatry in August. The survey was completed by more than 600 correctional workers across the country, which included a variety of job titles, including correctional officers, parole officers, program officers and administrative support. But if the survey were to look just at correctional officers, the numbers would be much higher, says Rose Ricciardelli, associate director for community and institutional corrections at the Canadian Insti- tute for Public Safety Research and Treatment and one of the researchers for the study. "The correctional officer occupation is hands-on all day, every day. Where I think there is still trauma, etcetera, experienced and still stress and caseness experienced among administrative and other sectors and it's significant and high, I do think that within the institutions it will be higher," she says. "The stuff that's dealt with on the day-to-day is much more challenging and the lack of resources in the insti- tution, the strain that is placed on the officers, the expectations… is going to have an effect." Of particular concern to the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers is that the rates of PTSD are going up. A 1992 study published in Forum on Corrections Research found 17 per cent of the 122 Ontario correctional officers surveyed "experienced effects severe enough to be clinically diagnosed as suffering from PTSD." A 2003 survey of 271 correc- tions employees in Saskatchewan found 25.8 per cent reported "symptom levels of PTSD suggesting a probable clinical diagnosis of the disorder." In May 2016, Lori MacDonald, assistant deputy minister for the federal Department of Public Safety, said about 36 per cent of male correctional officers have identi- fied as having PTSD. "I'm not surprised that these rates have increased because of the lack of treatment programs and, to a certain degree, it's a bit of a new phenomenon… There's more awareness about this," says Jason Godin, the union's national president. "When I started in corrections you used to see violent inci- dents and you know, 'Suck it up and go home.' That's how the game was played in those days." One reason why the numbers are so high is because correctional officers work in a confined environment, says Ricciardelli, who is based in St. John's, N.L. They are in the same place, dealing with the same issues and the same people day after day. "It's not like you're a (police) officer and you respond to a call and it's really stressful. The chances are you can never go back to that same place. (Cor- rectional officers) may cut down a prisoner and prevent their death by suicide and they still have to walk by that cell and check that cell and work in that exact environment. So I expect the degree of trauma to be higher," she says. Rutley believes the vast majority of correctional officers will experience a mental health issue at some point in their careers — it's just a matter of time. "Eventually, the cumulative events that occur in terms of the violent incidents at work, they eventu- ally erode any healthy psychological well-being that you have. Eventually your bucket gets full," she says. "There will come a point where they've had enough." Correctional officers are subject to physical abuse, such as hitting, punching, spitting and having feces thrown on them, as well as verbal abuse, includ- ing receiving threats against themselves and their families. They respond to incidents where inmates are mutilated, severely stabbed and bleeding pro- fusely. There have even been cases where correctional officers were stabbed, held hostage, murdered and sexually assaulted by offenders. According to statis- tics from the Government of Alberta, 33.5 per cent of all assaults in prisons and jails are committed against staff by inmates and in a 20-year career, a correc- tional officer will be seriously assaulted at least twice. The recurring exposure to traumatic events such as these can lead to PTSD. "They are accumulating these traumas and it's taxing their mental health and it's not necessarily the big trauma that gets them, so to speak. It might be a bad encounter with a boss; something you and I would look at and say, 'You're faking it,' because clearly this shouldn't have caused a problem. But it's because we didn't understand the framing," says Nick Carleton, scientific director at the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment, who is based in Regina. It's important to keep in mind that there are sig- nificant individual differences when it comes to experiencing potentially traumatic events. One worker might develop PTSD, while her co-worker will not. "It's really important to not downplay the experi- ence of other individuals," Ricciardelli says. "What maybe one person can handle, another can't and we can't hold a person responsible personally for how they are affected by their experiences. We can't control it. We can't turn off our emotions." Additionally, the risk can vary based on circum- stances for a particular individual. For example, if an individual is going through a difficult time in his life — working long hours, having problems with his spouse or his child is struggling in school — he may be more at risk for a mental health issue than if everything is going smoothly. "We want to say that it's suicides or stabbings or fecal fire bombs. We want to say it's one of these things, but it's so much more complicated than that," says Carleton. "And if we isolate it to a specific set of things, we are at grave risk of stripping people of resources who need it or telling people they are sick or potentially sick when they may not be." PRESUMPTIVE LEGISLATION To illustrate the difficult events correctional work- ers experience that can lead to occupational stress injuries — psychological difficulties resulting from operational duties — the Union of Canadian Cor- rectional Officers produced a compelling 30-minute video as part of its Working on the Edge campaign. The video reenacts real-life scenarios that correc- tional workers face, including responding to an inmate who had been stabbed, locking themselves in a safe room after a riot, being verbally harassed and cutting down an inmate who hung himself. As part of the campaign, the union is calling on the federal government to support a national strategy By Amanda Silliker

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