Somewhere in the US....

[Tinkerbell456]

....a graduating class of corrections and rehabilitation officers decided to do a Nazi salute in the class photo. Disgusting! They are going to sack all 37 of them, quite rightly. Some said they were intimidated into doing it, which makes me feel some sympathy for them, but even so.

the Nazi salute adds an interesting insight into their mentality and attitudes.. The fact that some pressured into performing the Nazi salute and complied is actually very worrying IMO. Does not bode well for the future standards of the service

ok

How very appropriate they were only following orders. Disgusting creatures.

At least no one in charge is excusing them. I hope they use this to reflect on their training and the quality of the ‘graduates’.

In case anybody else is wondering what the OP is talking about...

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/30/prison-guard-trainees-were-photographed-giving-nazi-salute-whole-class-got-fired/

The article gives a bit of context. Always useful.

I think it was the correct decision to sack them all, even the ones who initially resisted. I'm not so sure about sacking the 3 who can be seen to have formed a fist rather than the Nazi salute.

You cannot be a prison officer and allow yourself to be coerced into behaviour that is against your better judgement. What happens if they are guarding someone who was in a position of power before being incarcerated or someone with money? Do they turn a blind eye to misbehaviour and kowtow to the prisoners?

How awful. Right decision to sack anyone who would do this, coerced or not. But who coerced them, and have they been arrested/investigated?

You cannot be a prison officer and allow yourself to be coerced into behaviour that is against your better judgement. What happens if they are guarding someone who was in a position of power before being incarcerated or someone with money? Do they turn a blind eye to misbehaviour and kowtow to the prisoners?

This!

I’d feel more sympathy if those that disagreed walked out in protest. This picture would have been hung up and given out to people. I would have been livid if I saw my sons doing this. I would have felt that I had failed somewhere if they thought this was ok or still did it knowing it wasn’t.

Agree with Rottnest. I originally thought along the same lines as ohprettybaby and felt a bit bad for the ones who initially resisted - they said the photo was reshot multiple times until they all either made the salute or clenched fist, which suggests a lot of peer pressure in between. However actually I think it's worse - to have just gone along with it originally suggests those students might not have really understood/cared about the significance of what they were doing, whereas if you initially refused to do it suggests they fully knew how wrong it was but were (fairly easily) persuaded into doing it anyway, which is more disturbing.

Interestingly, googling the story led to a related items in my search about the footballer Wayne Hennessey, who had a charge of making the same salute found not proven by the FA in 2019 because after interviewing him they found he didn't know what a 'Nazi salute' was - they said it showed a "lamentable degree of ignorance." I'm slightly younger than him and find it mad that he couldn't know, but it ties in with another story I read in the paper in the last week or so, where 66% of 'Millennial' Americans didn't know what Auschwitz was.

Very scary. Especially for non-white prisoners in American prisons.