I had a situation last time I worked at a particular unit. I am curious as to whether any of you experience the same, and what did you do....or what would you do? We had an inmate in the psych observation cell that was in a psych crisis...hearing voices, hallucinating, talking to people that weren't there, hurting himself...etc.
This was day 2 of this, and he had been brought into the cell the day before due to cutting himself. His hallucinatory problems were becoming worse, and of course he was refusing his meds. Psych had not talked with him yet, as it was the weekend, and they never visit on weekends. Now the C/O's weren't shaking these guys down, because there had been a couple in a row that still had razor blades on them. This guy that I am referencing did too. He had cut his arm the day before, and the provider sutured it (long, but relatively superficial laceration down the length of his forearm), plus some other misc. cuts from sawing with a blade. Well, he showed us through the tiny window of the psych cell that he still had a razor blade. I was standing right there with the C/O when he showed it to us and told us that he was going to cut himself again. Well, the C/O, when I asked if they would go in and take it away, just kind of laughed at me. He said, and I quote "We aren't going in there unless he decides to use it". I replied that we "kinda knew that he was serious", not to mention his personal history of such behavior since he was in his early teens. I just could not believe that they would just sit back and wait for him to do something before they would go in and get him. And that is exactly what happened. The only reason they FINALLY went in to get him, after he opened his sutured laceration back up, and added a few more, was that the inmate made an allegation of a sexual assault. They said they had to have him examined and take his statement due to that allegation. Otherwise, they would have just let this dude sit in the psych cell dripping blood all over. It was more than frustrating. And this was the top ranking officer on the premises at this time, so there was no one else to call. So, what have you done, if you have encountered this type of behavior?
Specializes in I have watched actors portray nurses.
Captain, Lt...... all the way up to the Warden is just more of the same. The guards are often experts at all kinds of abuse including psychological. They all "cover" for each other and are usually dirty all the way to the top. Some of them become "heroes" to their peers by starving, emotionally torturing, or beating the living daylights out of an inmate and gain promotions from their evil activities.
The only way to gain any attention to such a problem is to report it outside of the institution.
What you are describing here is a system that is fundamentally faulty; it is a system designed on the wrong foundation. The "us vs them" mentality that permeates the typical correctional system is one that indoctrinates (programs) correctional officers and correctional employees toward a somewhat unnatural, inorganic conclusion -- the dehumanization of humans. Granted, it is arguably couched under the veil of "security," and "safety," but in the end it is only what it is.
Look up the Stanford Prison experiment from the 1970s.
If, however, the system was designed such that humans -- even the lowliest of the low -- retained their right to their own humanity, then everyone (including the correctional employees guarding them), would elevate their outlook, raise the standard on every-day dignity, and ultimately retain the sanity needed to stand fast on a slippery slope dividing the "us" from the "them."
Power and authority are the two most dangerous things that exist inside a correctional system. Who, inside, has these? .. The inmates and the correctional staff.
Specializes in Occupational health, Corrections, PACU.
Excuse me a bit if I inject a comment here, but tbrd-for all your lamenting about the system and how dehumanizing it is to the poooor inmates, where I work, the majority of the inmates are there because they either murdered someone in cold blood or raped little children. The others are, granted, non-violent drug offenders.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly agree with erroridiot and FL.
Specializes in I have watched actors portray nurses.
Excuse me a bit if I inject a comment here, but tbrd-for all your lamenting about the system and how dehumanizing it is to the poooor inmates, where I work, the majority of the inmates are there because they either murdered someone in cold blood or raped little children. The others are, granted, non-violent drug offenders.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly agree with erroridiot and FL.
Yes, Katkonk, many people incarcerated are murderers and rapists. And, for what it is worth, it is also a fact that the overwhelming vast majority of all incarcerated Americans never murdered anyone nor raped anyone. The percentage of non-violent incarcerated Americans is staggering. It shot up throughout the 1980s and 1990s when the whole "get tough on crime" mentality (the "us vs them" mentality) swept our nation in what appears now to have been a fanatical feeding frenzy of biblical proportion. States are starting to wake up. I believe California, for example, has begun to reexamine the whole three-strikes laws on the books -- to recognize them as inherently wrong.
Many people only murder after they get incarcerated; they do so to join a gang to protect them. They do so to avoid dying. Some inmates rape other inmates just to avoid being viewed as weak themselves thus exposing themselves to targeted attack. Inmates often ramp up the brutality, bravado and rebellion precisely because they want to continue to live and remain safe. Think about that, seriously. What type of system is that?
It is a failing of society that we do this to people -- we put them in "gladiator domes," house vulnerable inmates with murderers and rapists because it facilitates overall controll, and neglect their needs under the pretense of manipulation and attention-seeking. It is a failing of the system. We put men in situations in which they must murder to live. It is disgraceful that we herd men together in dangerous living arrangements and then stand back and say to ourselves ... look at how evil they are. We feed an "us vs them" way of thinking, we increase the number of people locked up, we privatize human dignity to the lowest bidder; and then we in free society like to stand back and marvel at the brutality of the "them" in the grand equation.
That said, however, the point is that it is all irrelevant in the context of this discussion. The correctional employee (officer, nurse, counselor, administrator, etc.) was not hired to punish anyone. This is a fundamental concept that has to be embraced by anyone that wishes to work in corrections. Also, please remember that it is a mathematical certainty that some number of those convicted -- some percentage that consistently rises in proportion to the rising raw number of incarcerated -- are truly innocent people wrongly convicted.
If you have worked in corrections for any significant length of time, you likely dealt with such a person, or many such people. You just don't know it. Think back.... imagine one, two, maybe three or four guys you dealt with in your past correctional experience. Can you honestly say you have no regrets about how you dealt with any of them, assuming you learned tomorrow some were truly innocent? If you can answer yes to that hypothetical question, then you are on the right track. Now, imagine one of them was your son. umm... does that change things?
Regardless of all that, however, it doesn't matter. If a correctional employee is not capable of delivering humane, decent oversight, care and protection of/to the lowliest of the low, then he/she needs to get another job immediately. (This is particularly true of a medical provider - a nurse -- operating under higher ethical standards). The stakes are too high. People everywhere need to be treated like people, all the time, period.
I know it isn't always easy as we sometimes let our own emotions drive our actions. However, for the incarcerated their sentence was incarceration. It was not whatever disregard, abuse and neglect an individual correctional employee can think up. There are too many Lynndie Englands out there to tolerate such failing system.
Their sentence was the incarceration itself. They are humans with very little rights inside -- rights we take for granted in free society. If a person is raped in free society, he/she can likely remove him/herself, prosecute and then rebuild his/her life. If an inmate is pressured under the threat of abuse and/or rape, his life is not in his own hands. He has to hope the 8 hour per day, high school graduate correctional officer believes him. He has to hope the autonomous nurse doesn't discount his plight, assuming he gets to see her in a timely manner.
This sounds like an inmate we used to have...he cut his AC open and bled out about 3 liters, it was bad...He also was trached when he swallowed a dry erase marker and he swallowed random stuff like spoons, pens, etc...
But in regards to your situation, if you are a contracted company within the jail I would have called your HSA 1st and then had her call the powers that be, but I know that was frustrating for you!!
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tbrd450
154 Posts
What you are describing here is a system that is fundamentally faulty; it is a system designed on the wrong foundation. The "us vs them" mentality that permeates the typical correctional system is one that indoctrinates (programs) correctional officers and correctional employees toward a somewhat unnatural, inorganic conclusion -- the dehumanization of humans. Granted, it is arguably couched under the veil of "security," and "safety," but in the end it is only what it is.
Look up the Stanford Prison experiment from the 1970s.
If, however, the system was designed such that humans -- even the lowliest of the low -- retained their right to their own humanity, then everyone (including the correctional employees guarding them), would elevate their outlook, raise the standard on every-day dignity, and ultimately retain the sanity needed to stand fast on a slippery slope dividing the "us" from the "them."
Power and authority are the two most dangerous things that exist inside a correctional system. Who, inside, has these? .. The inmates and the correctional staff.