‘You can’t un-see what you’ve seen’: An ex-prison officer's autoethnographic account of suicide and self-harm in a UK male adult prison

Abstract

Internationally, prisons are challenging environments for officers and prisoners, and suicide and self-harm have ramifications for both parties. Suicide and self-harm in prison far exceed prevalence in the general population and officers experience many psychological and emotional impacts including distress, bereavement, guilt, shame, accountability, desensitisation and PTSD. This article explores relational and institutional dynamics and cultural expectations placed upon officers when dealing with suicide/self-harm. Prison officer culture can be limited in supporting officers around trauma and it can be perceived as stigmatising and a weakness to seek help. This article explores a former prison officer's experience of dealing with trauma around self-harm and suicide including the first experience of suicide, moral conflict and the impact of losing a colleague to suicide. I worked as a prison officer at a category ‘B’ local prison in the (UK) between 2003 and 2009 and kept a reflective journal during service. Drawing upon Autoethnography (AE), I seek to explore the lived experience of trauma from an ‘insider perspective’ using prison research to interpret retrospective accounts. Concepts around emotional labour, occupational morality and prison officer occupational culture/ socialisation are used to highlight the complexities of prison officer work around suicide/self-harm. The prison service (UK) needs to reduce stigma in officers who need help and support around mental health and coping with trauma, with strategies like peer support programmes, regular supervision/mandatory counselling and extensive debriefs to support officers in the aftermath of traumatic critical incidents.