How do prison/forensic staff cope?

[Laaaaa]

I mean like having to look after Ian Huntley, Rose West and others who have committed awful crimes.

I'm guessing a lot of detachment.

Could you do that job?

There must be some mumsnetters that work in these sort of services

No idea & they must have found lockdown hard going in the prisons. No wfh for them!

I've working in a mental health forensic unit with serious offenders.

Even when someone has committed an awful offense that is not the sum of all they are. There are other aspects to them too.

It is further complicated by time - I worked with some people who had committed offenses 40 years before I met them. They weren't the same men who had committed the offense any more.

That's not to say I was ever fully relaxed in the company if someone I knew to be a murderer or rapist of course.

Personally I disassociate. That person becomes just another person you work with. They are an individual and I treat them as such. They are being punished for their crimes by the state not by me.

It's odd. But yes, I too disassociate. I've worked with some serious offenders, including child sex offenders. I do think it changes you though.

I think I could do it. Disassociation is something I do in general

I absolutely could do it (and hope to one day).

Ive worked with ex offenders who have killed people and raped. I found it fairly easy to have two levels of thinking - one that treats them well, is interested and empathetic to them and another that is always on my guard whilst not allowing this to show to the client.

In my work them feeling trusted was important but actually giving them full trust could be dangerous.

I’m not sure if I’ve explained that well!

I've worked with rapists and murderers. Mostly they're making tea or watching telly. You never forget but it's not all you're thinking king about.

I have met a couple of properly worrying men though. Hair on the back of the neck raising. Not always the worst criminal records either.

I work with offenders, including murderers, paedophiles and other sex offenders. I approach them like people, with dignity and respect, because that’s my job. I am interested in public protection, risk management and where possible, rehabilitation. You don’t get any of those things by being disparaging, dismissive or critical. They have already been sentenced and judgement has been passed. It’s not my job to question the rights or wrongs of that. It’s my job to focus on the future, and ensure that all that is possible can be done to help someone live safely in the community when the time is right.

I worked a low secure unit with patients who had committed serious crimes including murder, rape (including children) and arson.

Some were harder to deal with than others. Women who had killed their own children were hard on a personal level. It started to affect me outside of work, so I left that area of healthcare completely and will never go back.

I work as a nurse in forensic mental health, similar to PP, with serious offenders. I’ve done it for 7 years but it’s recently taken it’s toll. I’m off work with stress, anxiety and burn out at the moment, but that’s more down to the shitty management than knowledge of what the service users have actually done. I think you just become really desensitised, nothing really shocks me anymore - I think that’s really sad though. One good thing to come of it, is that I’m a lot more cautious about people and risk averse, especially since my daughter come along.

My friend was a forensic mental health nurse. However, she had to leave after a few years as she felt too unsafe to continue working there.
She found it helped understanding and researching the mental illnesses they have and thinking about that as the cause of their behaviour. Not just thinking they are evil people, but that they are ill people who have done awful things when unwell.
I don’t get how she could even speak to someone who had eaten their own mother’s internal organs though. That takes a lot of strength.

Mental health nurse here but never done forensic or prisons. Substance misuse is amazing come join us!