Working in the correctional system changes a person. It also changes that person’s family. Wives, husbands, and children are all impacted by having a family member employed within the prison walls. The changes are all-encompassing. Behavior, attitude, and thought process are changed. These changes affect correctional peace officers, supervisors, prison doctors, nurses, and psychologists, all prison personnel and their families. This process of change begins in basic training, when prison staff learn to develop an “Us” versus “Them” mentality. This attitude solidifies over the officer’s career. In the initial training the officer learns to hide emotions and to put on a prison guard persona. The purpose of this persona is to keep order and to keep the officer safe on the job. This persona is referred to as a “command presence.” The longer a person works in corrections, the more pervasive and ingrained the command presence becomes. Overtime, this persona becomes like a second layer of skin. The officer go everywhere with it. At work this can be a life-saver, and at home it can be cumbersome and in some cases detrimental to the officer’s health and relationships. To mitigate the negative impact of maintaining a perpetual command presence, the officer must learn how to turn off this persona after hours, just like he or she would remove his or her uniform at home. (more…)