Criminology 220: Introduction To Policing
Taylor Stine
Indiana State University
10. Stress and law enforcers: explain stress and its effect on the person, stressors unique to police work, problems associated with stress, and techniques available to police agencies to reduce stress and improve officers’ performance and quality of life.
Introduction
Stress–it affects many of us daily, hourly, and by the minute. How can we deal with these overwhelming feelings in our everyday lives? Some people will create their own ways of coping by drinking, smoking, or engaging in harmful, toxic drugs that can alter their quality of life. A good number of trained physicians might tell you that just plain …show more content…
Being around notorious serial killers, arsonists, rapists, just about any kind of criminal, can be overwhelmingly stressful because any one of these criminals can snap into a psychotic frenzy that you and other fellow officers are unable to control by yourselves. You are putting yourself at risk of getting injured, even killed on the job while working around the world’s most terrifying criminals. Fights can break out at any time of day because of the hostlility between inmates or between inmates and prison guards. Most of the time, prisoners feel like they don’t have anything to lose, so they could lash out doing who knows what. Unlike most law enforcement officers, like the police, correctional officers are inside locked doors and cell houses with criminals, while dealing with potential murders, attempted and actual suicides, any kind of emergencies, lockdowns, and just about anything there is to think of (McKinley, …show more content…
One thing that has to happen, is that employees need to come to terms with the fact that they do need some kind of physical or mental therapy. Several agencies throughout the United States have made it a requirement that their police officers participate in some kind of therapy. Some even have their own programs for officers to be included in a stress reduction program. One criminal justice professional, Professor Edward LeClair, has designed a program for officers who are dealing with stress, anxiety, gender, and sexual assault (Dobratz, Graff, Marx, Wimberger,