Abstract
The work of parole officers who supervise sex offenders rarely comes to the public’s attention unless something goes wrong. Research suggests that those providing postrelease supervision of convicted sex offenders likely experience trauma as a result of their work and that little support is available to respond to their emotional needs. This manuscript explores parole officers’ and parole officer supervisors’ experiences of the symptoms of secondary trauma, defined as the emotional and cognitive experiences of hearing stories that recount one or more traumatic events. The qualitative study described here builds on existing literature by providing a detailed exploration, presented in their own words, of the experiences of specialist parole officers, about how they cope with the symptoms of secondary trauma, and about what they need to help them continue to do the job that the public and the politic want done well. Recognizing and understanding the symptoms of secondary trauma among supervising officers have important implications for maintaining a healthy workforce and for providing effective management of sex offenders in the community.
Notorious acts of sexual offenses have been the subject of public comment and political action in the United States for decades, particularly where children have been victimized. Whether the day care center cases of the 1970s and 1980s or the abductions, sexual assaults, and murders of Polly Klass, Megan Kanka, Jessica Lunsford, and many other children, there are few other acts of (in)human nature that so capture the attention and visceral reaction of the public. The trauma and aftermath of sexual violence are well documented for victims, and in recent years more resources have been developed to support the recovery of the survivors of these assaults (Office of Victims of Crime, 2010). The detailed stories of sex offenses often continue to haunt victims’ families and their communities, and politicians have responded to their pain with proposals for more severe criminal justice system responses such as closer monitoring, specialty supervision, and long—or life—sentences for convicted sex offenders. For many people not directly affected by sexual violence, the details of these events are soon forgotten, and life goes on without the interference of charged memories, at least until the next Amber Alert is issued.
There is, however, another group of people that bears witness to the trauma imposed by sexual violence and which receives little comfort in response. The work of probation and parole officers who supervise sex offenders rarely comes to the public’s attention unless something goes wrong. Research suggests that those providing postconviction and postrelease supervision of convicted sex offenders likely experience trauma as a result of their work and that little support is available to respond to their emotional needs (Catanese, 2010; English, Pullen, & Jones, 1997; Mitchell & Melikian, 1995; Moulden & Firestone, 2007). The purpose of this manuscript is to explore, as one portion of the findings of a larger exploratory study, parole officers’ and parole officer supervisors’ reported experiences of symptoms consistent with secondary trauma.
Background
At the end of 2009, 5,018,855 adults were being supervised in the community under terms of probation or parole. Of this total number, which equates to about 1 in every 47 adults in the United States, 67,114 were on probation and 58,546 were on parole for sex offenses (Glaze & Bonczar, 2010). Although the number of probation and parole officers who supervise sex offenders is constantly changing, recent evidence suggests that most probation/parole agencies have specific policies that address the supervision of sex offenders and most of those agencies also have designated officers to provide sex offender–specific supervision (DeMichele, 2007). However, little information exists about parole officers’ experiences supervising sex offenders and, specifically, about their reports of symptoms consistent with those of secondary trauma.
Definition of Secondary Trauma
The terms vicarious traumatization, compassion fatigue, traumatic countertransference, and secondary trauma all relate to the emotional and cognitive experiences of hearing stories that recount one or more traumatic events. These terms are relevant to the psychic and somatic symptoms reported by professionals working with traumatized clients (Cunningham, 2003; Figley, 2002; Moulden & Firestone, 2007), but virtually any person, professional or lay, who hears or reads of the initial traumatic event is at risk for these experiences. Although these terms are often used interchangeably, they each have a slightly different meaning.
Vicarious traumatization was first defined by McCann and Pearlman (1990) to describe the negative changes in clinicians’ cognitions that result from listening to clients’ victimization experiences over time. Vicarious trauma is distinguished from compassion fatigue, which refers to the emotional exhaustion resulting from the demands of the job and from the persistent barrage of countertransference that occurs naturally in the worker–client relationship (Figley, 1995).
Secondary trauma, first defined by Figley (1993), refers to the emotional distress experienced by clinicians working with trauma survivors, and is marked by symptoms almost identical to those common to posttraumatic stress disorder (Figley, 1995; Newell & MacNeil, 2010). Those symptoms include (a) recollection, dreams, and sudden reexperiencing of the event; (b) avoidance of thoughts, feelings, or activities; (c) detachment or estrangement from others and activities; (d) emotional difficulties or outbursts; (e) concentration problems; (f) physiological reactions (e.g., difficulty sleeping); and (g) hypervigilance (Figley, 1995).
It has been argued that vicarious trauma and secondary trauma differ in that the term vicarious trauma emphasizes cognitive responses and symptomatology whereas secondary trauma refers to emotional and social reactions to disturbing sensory stimuli (Jenkins & Baird, 2002). Some researchers explain that secondary trauma is manifested more through changes in behavior than changes in cognition (Newell & MacNeil, 2010). However, others have conceptualized secondary trauma more expansively as pertaining to the emotional, cognitive, and physical consequences of providing professional services to clients who have experienced or perpetrated trauma (Figley, 1995; Salston & Figley, 2003).
Consistent with the more recent descriptions, for the purpose of this article and the exploratory study it details, we define secondary trauma as the emotional, cognitive, and physical consequences of providing professional services to victims or perpetrators of trauma.
Secondary Trauma and Clinical Professionals Working With Sex Offenders
Studies of mental health clinicians suggest that between 46% and 80% of those working with sex offenders experience symptoms of secondary trauma in some form (Bengis, 1997; Edmunds, 1997; Jackson, Holzman, Barnard, & Paradis, 1997; Rich, 1997; Shelby, Stoddart, & Taylor, 2001; Steed & Bicknell, 2001). Although personal responses to traumatic material vary, clinicians report experiencing bad dreams, sleep disturbances, somatic reactions, and feelings of depression (Edmunds, 1997; Jackson et al., 1997; Rich, 1997; Thorpe, Righthand, & Kubik, 2001). Clinicians are sometimes psychically bombarded with the images of offenders’ descriptions of the abuse they perpetrated and of their fantasies involving sexually deviant behaviors (Bengis, 1997; Ennis & Horne, 2003; Way, VanDeusen, Martin, Applegate, & Jandle, 2004). Moreover, working with sex offenders has been shown to result in changes in cognition with accompanying schematic shifts (from assuming the best about people to seeing a perpetrator lurking around every corner), which significantly impacts the worker’s view of the world (Cunningham, 2003; Ellerby, 1997; Iliffe & Steed, 2000; Jackson et al., 1997; Lea, Auburn, & Kibblewhite, 1999). Although the parole officer is not a clinician in the therapeutic sense, parole officers and clinicians share one thing in common: They both hear the details of sexual violence and victimization. From whom they hear these details may also sometimes differ but whether perpetrator or victim, the description of sexual violence affects the listener in unavoidably personal and visceral ways (Catanese, 2010; also see Mouldon & Firestone, 2007, for a detailed review of the literature in this area).
Although empirical evidence exists regarding the effects of secondary trauma on sex offender therapists, there is, unfortunately, very little literature available to date that explores the existence and experience of symptoms of secondary trauma among parole officers whose caseloads are either exclusively or partially made up with sex offenders. Three exceptions are the documents produced by Catanese (2010), English et al. (1997), and Pullen and Pullen (1996), which raise the issue of the experience of secondary trauma among parole professionals, but each quickly deals with this by suggesting that work environment and training are keys to either preventing or minimizing the impact of hearing the stories of sexual violence.
The qualitative study described in the following pages adds to the existing literature by contributing a detailed exploration, presented in their own words, of parole officers’ experiences of the symptoms of secondary trauma. It is important to note that the effort of this study was not directed to producing a diagnostic impression of parole officers and their supervisors. Indeed, accounts of the experience of trauma symptoms were spontaneously volunteered by participants in a series of focus groups. Understanding the symptoms of secondary trauma among these supervising officers has important implications for maintaining a healthy workforce and for providing effective management of sex offenders in the community.
Research Questions
This exploratory study of parole officers and parole officer supervisors was guided by three research questions:
Research Question 1: How do parole officers describe the personal effects of their supervising sex offenders?
Research Question 2: What type of coping mechanisms do parole officers use to manage the impact of working with sex offenders? and
Research Question 3: How is secondary trauma addressed in departmental policy and training?
Method
This research is part of a larger study undertaken to explore the sex offender management procedures, processes, and outcomes in one midwestern state. A collaborative relationship between a state department of corrections, its sex offender treatment provider (a private contractor), and a major research university paved the way for an exploration of clinical and supervisory perspectives in the management of sex offenders in the state.
The larger evaluation was funded by the Center for Sex Offender Management, an agency in part funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. In this substudy, a qualitative methodology was identified as being useful for exploring parole officers’ reported experiences of the symptoms of secondary trauma. Qualitative methods are good for studying such complex phenomenon (Miles & Huberman, 1994), and in fact, qualitative inquiry has been recommended for exploring and clarifying concepts related to the secondary trauma experienced by clinicians working with perpetrators and victims of violence (Ben-Porat & Itzhaky, 2009). Qualitative research is likely to illuminate the circumstances and context in which the symptoms of secondary trauma emerge, and it is well suited to assess the interactional process of community-based supervision of sex offenders that may contribute to the likelihood of parole officers developing trauma-related symptoms. Inquiries into parole officers’ experiences of trauma symptoms are only now being undertaken; thus the timing is good for this initial exploration.
Sample
All parole officers supervising sex offenders and all parole officer supervisors in one midwestern state were recruited for study participation. Parole supervision offices in this state are located in urban as well as remote rural areas, and sex offenders are found in every locality in the state. This census recruitment strategy ensured that experiences related to geographic or locale-specific characteristics would be represented. A total of 49 parole officers and supervisors (approximately 90% of those recruited) participated in one of seven focus groups. In total, there were five focus groups with parole officers and two focus groups of parole officer supervisors. Focus group sizes ranged from 4 to 14 with an average group size of 8. In every focus group, officers working in rural and urban centers were included as were officers who had supervised sex offenders for as little as several months to as long as two or more decades. This study was approved by the University’s Institutional Review Board, and every participant was asked to sign an informed consent statement prior to the commencement of the group.
Data Collection
Each focus group lasted between 1 and 2 hr during which time participants (n = 49) were asked about various aspects of their experiences with supervising sex offenders and also about related departmental policy and training. The focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were stored in a common word processing format. A research assistant also took notes on nonverbal cues and group dynamics. For example, these notes reflected instances in which several people in the group agreed with a comment made, in which case the research assistant noted that the majority of the group agreed with a given statement.
The focus groups with parole personnel were conducted between September 2004 and December 2004. The participants were asked questions about their experiences providing postrelease supervision of sex offenders, including their perceptions of risk assessment procedures and findings, treatment strategies, and the efficacy of supervision practices (see appendix for the focus group questions). Participants were also asked about the personal supervision strategies they used and about the availability of departmental sex offender management training and support. Unless the subject was raised by group members, participants were not asked about secondary trauma or about their symptoms, if any, of secondary trauma. The researchers also did not define secondary trauma in any of these groups. Remarkably, however, issues related to, and descriptions of, symptoms of secondary trauma spontaneously surfaced in every focus group.
Data Analysis
Data analysis was completed by four researchers. The transcriptions were first collectively reviewed for thematic content analysis. Specifically, a set of coding themes was agreed on by the research team in advance to frame the analysis. The preidentified themes were based on an a posteriori review of the extant literature on symptoms of secondary trauma in therapists who work with survivors and perpetrators of sexual abuse. The research team also created themes based on anecdotal experiences of the research team members. Then, using the preidentified themes, each of the researchers independently read and coded text into the themes. The researchers also identified subthemes that surfaced during their independent analyses. Coding was focused at the content level. The researchers reconvened over three meetings, and differences in coding were discussed until consensus of the coding of the data was reached.
The findings are presented and discussed in terms of the parole officers’ perceptions of their supervision of sex offenders and the ways in which such perceptions affect the supervision strategies they use and their personal lives.
Results
As a whole, the parole officers and supervisors reported having thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors consistent with the symptoms of secondary trauma. They described high levels of stress associated with their interactions with sex offenders and the ways in which this stress influenced their supervision approaches and personal lives. The parole officers discussed the various coping strategies used to deal with job stress and their perceptions of receiving only a limited amount of support within the department of corrections. These parole officers also reported experiencing high levels of work-related intrusion into their personal lives and revealed an absence, or a limited use, of coping techniques outside of the work setting.
These sentiments are detailed below by theme and supported by representative comments recorded in each of the focus groups. Where there were contradictions or disagreements about certain statements made, these too are reported, but the reader should be aware that there were few disagreements about the strong sentiments expressed in these interviews.
Impact on Supervision
Participants described a persistent and heightened level of stress associated with supervising sex offenders that influences the way they manage sex offenders compared with how they have or would manage other types of offenders. As the parole officers explained, the often high profile and manipulative nature of sexual offending makes officers hypervigilant toward, and untrusting of, their supervisees. Many officers described feeling as if the sex offenders were attempting to groom the officers, much as they would a potential victim. The officers also described the burden of feeling a societally imposed personal responsibility for preventing sex offenders from offending again. The officer accounts indicate that the stress of supervising sex offenders is manifested in their own physical and emotional reactions.
Officers’ physical and emotional responses
The parole officers were candid about their physical and emotional responses to supervising sex offenders and their struggle to muster compassion for some offenders after reviewing the detailed reports of the offense(s). Discussing the nature of some of the offenses committed by supervised sex offenders, one officer said,
I’ve only come really close to throwing up two times. Especially when you have, in detail, investigative reports right here in front of you. It’ll get to you. And if I treated that person, I would destroy a person like that. I wouldn’t even . . . I don’t care.
The officers described a struggle to use information from files and meetings with sex offenders as supervisory tools and not allow the interactions to influence the officer emotionally.
One officer indicated feeling victimized by reading the sex offenders’ files. But every time you read their files, that victimizes you. I’ve read that officers dealing in . . . sex offenders, they need a break every so often because they are so victimized every time you look at them . . . . I try to know the basic—okay, I know what he did, this is what I need to look for. But I don’t dwell on it, but it’s there.
Being groomed
Other officers reported feeling victimized when meetings with sex offenders felt similar to how the sex offender might have selected and victimized his or her primary victim. The officers reported that those feelings make them distrustful of even the most positive actions of a sex offender supervisee and indicated that this distrust differentiates supervision of sex offenders from the supervision of any other type of offender.
Sex offenders will use mind games to try and manipulate you in virtually the same way they would try to manipulate their victim to get you to do what they want you to do . . . . That’s because they’ve practiced. That’s how they had their victims, whether it be a child or adult; they’ve practiced. And they know how to manipulate, it’s different, it is very different. Officers in all of the focus groups reported something similar. And uh they won’t listen . . . they’ll be grooming me just like they’d groom a victim. Well, more times than not they call for things they don’t need to be calling for. Just seems like they are checking up on me to see to if I am really involved in their case to [see] what they can get away with as well. The way I see it, what they talk about most of the time, I look at that as grooming. Because they’re trying to create a relationship between me and them. And helping them, they will start asking questions about what am I doing this weekend or, you know, did I have a good Thanksgiving or something about family. So we got that buddy–buddy thing. Or do you not ask that question or to overlook or try to make you look at them in the right way. I’m a good guy, I didn’t do this, I didn’t need to, or I’m better now. They think that they are manipulating me into believing that they are doing what they are supposed to do when most of the time they are not. It’s their grooming techniques.
One participant summed up the sentiments on a positive note: “Yea. You get a lot of phone calls. That’s not a bad thing. Lucky they can just use me to a point.”
Sense of responsibility
The parole officers described an elevated level of pressure and sense of responsibility for the offender’s actions.
I think that the difference that—that I’ve seen, I’ve experienced, and I’ve seen officers experience, um, if you get into being—feeling traumatized, it’s that realization you’re working with a caseload of high profile offenders. And then if they reoffend, it’s gonna be newsworthy, typically. So officers have added stress . . . and I’ve seen a lot of officers I, I wouldn’t say necessarily traumatized, but that’s a great deal of stress on them.
One seasoned parole officer talked about the shock new officers experience when first reading case files in preparation for meeting with offenders.
Sometimes new officers, you know, I—they’ll read through the profile report or they’ll read then they’re like, fallin’ outta their chair . . . . I mean, I don’t think you actually have, you know, posttraumatic stress syndrome goin’ on because of it, but—yah, they’re—everybody seems, when they’re new, seems t’ be, “Oh, my God!”
The added level of stress associated with supervising sex offenders resulted in some officers’ inability to ever fully end a workday.
Well, sometimes, it’s the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep and the first thing on my mind when I wake up. You can’t help it, if you’re dedicated and you care and you try to do your job the way it should be done, the way you know you want to do it, you have those feelings.
One supervisor recounted his experience with an officer who became so stressed that both his work performance and emotional health were disrupted.
I had an officer who, uh, worked with us . . . [and] he started going out in the middle of the night and checking up on his sex offenders cuz he was worried about them; afraid that they were going to do something. Um, he ended up havin’ to go on medication . . . and had to be transferred.
Impact on the Officers’ Personal Lives
Frequent reports that supervising sex offenders interfered with their personal lives were recorded in the focus groups. Although officers appeared reluctant to expand on these reports, across groups officers commented on how they felt they were negatively affected by their job duties. The bulk of these comments indicated a sense of pervasive stress associated with sex offender supervision that officers were not able to ignore even after their workday ended.
Officers described feeling hypervigilant in their personal lives.
You’d be walkin’ down the street and you’ll see an old man with a little kid and you start thinkin’ [whispered], “he’s a sex offender.” . . . and I am very overprotective with my own children.
Indicating interference with personal intimacy, one officer asserted, “I don’t think there’s anyone in this room that knows what normal is sexually anymore.” Many in the room concurred, with another member adding,
But now when you turn on the news and then there’s something and people, like, that are at your house are like, “oh, my god that’s so terrible,” it’s like, “ah no I can top that.” And you know, “I can’t believe that happened” and it’s like, “that happens everyday, you just don’t know it.” You know, society just doesn’t know a lot of the things that goes on so they’re just so appalled or whatever when it’s in the paper.
The emotional impact on parole officers of supervising sex offenders did not escape their supervisors, one of whom described officers as, “having awful dreams at night; just can’t stop thinking about it and it really affects their personal life and such.” Differentiating these experiences from his own, this supervisor added, “Although it doesn’t happen to me.”
Coping Strategies and Departmental Support
Officers’ discussions in the focus groups suggested that they had limited coping strategies and that those used entailed various forms of avoidance. They also described negative perceptions of the amount of departmental support available to them and the belief that the support that was provided was superficial and tentative.
Coping strategies
With the exception of statements such as “you just pray every night when you go home that it ain’t one of yours [that reoffends],” the officers did not reveal many specific coping strategies used in their professional and personal lives. One officer reported that the only way for him or her to cope was to switch units.
I’ve been dealing with them [sex offenders] for 8 years and that’s been exclusive. And it’s been very challenging, but I’m just switching over to a generic unit, a rural unit, because I’ve just burned out. You are their victim also.
Another officer reported coping by actively managing his perceptions and thoughts about the offender:
I think sex offenders, you can’t have an opinion, you can’t personalize, otherwise you can’t do [supervision] effectively and you can’t . . . it just makes it hard to even do your job, just to cope with it on a day-to-day basis. I don’t think there’s any crime that’s worse than a sex crime. Not murder, nothing. . . . And if you internalize it and let it bother you, if somebody has kids or anybody else has kids and the offense is against the kid, it makes it a million times worse. . . . And I don’t ever treat anybody as a sex offender. “You are a sex offender.” I don’t scream that; I don’t require they have to tattoo it on their forehead.
Alternately, a parole officer supervisor encourages his supervisees to cope by actively managing their behavior: “Greet someone at the door and call ‘em by name rather than immediately go, ‘okay this is the guy who raped a 3-year-old.’”
Some officers coped with the stress of managing sex offenders by trying to limit the amount of information read and remembered about the crime and the offender.
I deal with mine as an offense. I don’t put it in my mind. I’ve read through their file, I know the file material. Give me 30 seconds and I’ll know what the crime was and what their victim’s age was. But I do not put it in my mind, I do not remember each time they come in who their victim was, the age, or the circumstances. Because I don’t want that in my mind.
One officer indicated that remembering as little about the offense as possible was the only way he could cope with some of the offenders and provide effective supervision.
You can’t look at them when they are in your office. You do have to continue to see them as an individual, as a person, as a human, even though they committed this horrible crime. Otherwise, in your mind, they’re going to become monstrous.
Other officers use joking as a coping mechanism. Some officers perceived joking as necessary but also somewhat abnormal.
Usually we lose it. At some point in the day, [when] just maxed out, we’ll just lose it for about 10 minutes [a string of profanity followed]. We have to joke about it just to keep from going crazy [with general agreement from others who murmured “right”] and if somebody else heard some of our jokes and stories (another participant said, “they would think we are very stilted”) they would run screaming [laughter of the entire group followed this comment].
Departmental support
The officers consistently indicated that they felt little departmental support in general, “And ugh, dealing with all of that [sex offenders] . . . . the department says they have help for us, but they really do not.” Some officers described negative experiences with departmental supports.
I have experienced crisis intervention one time . . . but that was a complete mistake . . . everyone in the office knew what was going on.
Officers in rural areas may have more difficulty finding support at the departmental and the local level.
You know the books that teach you how to manage sex offenders and the different solutions on how to deal with that, which one of the solutions is to have a team of officers who supervise sex offenders and that way you can bounce things off of them and they can take over seeing an offender and give you some relief. . . . The problem is, the way I cope with it is, since I’m the only officer in the office who’s solely supervising sex offenders, I tell all of my coworkers who absolutely love hearing my gory, gruesome stories. But when you get into these small offices, the rural offices where you only have a few on your caseload, you may have one other person, if that, in the office with you, you don’t have that release of being able to get this out and tell somebody because this is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard. So the department is not looking at the officer’s well-being except for in the bigger, urban areas.
When asked about training around the stress related to managing sex offenders or on issues such as secondary trauma, the officers generally responded by shaking their heads, and indicated that no such training had occurred.
Discussion
Summary of Focus Group Content
In essence, without prompting, in every focus group, participants described having personal emotional reactions to their work, which are consistent with the symptoms of secondary trauma discussed in the extant literature (Bengis, 1997; Edmunds, 1997; Figley, 1995; Jackson et al., 1997; Rich, 1997; Thorpe et al., 2001). The parole officers reported a variety of experiences, including somatic reactions, disrupted sex lives, pervasive thoughts, a loss of innocence, and hypervigilance in both their work and personal lives. Many studies have identified personal coping mechanisms helpful in mitigating the negative personal effects of working with sexual offenders (Bell, 2003; Farrenkopf, 1992; Figley, 2002; Giovannoni, 1997; Iliffe & Steed, 2000; Mitchell & Melikian, 1995; Salston & Figley, 2003). Some of these helpful behaviors relate to exercise/diet (Trippany, White Kress, & Wilcoxon, 2004), spiritual beliefs and practices (Dane, 2000; Giovannoni, 1997; Rand, 2004; Trippany et al., 2004), having a strong outside support system through family and friends (Ennis & Horne, 2003), involvement in leisure activities (Salston & Figley, 2003; Trippany et al., 2004), receipt of personal counseling or therapy (Bell, 2003; Figley, 2002; Salston & Figley, 2003), utilizing ones strengths (Bell, 2003; Salston & Figley, 2003; Thorpe et al., 2001; Trippany et al., 2004), and maintaining a sense of humor (Salston & Figley, 2003; Thorpe et al., 2001). The officers reported using some of these coping mechanisms such as joking, repressing details of the offense, and using work-based informal support networks. However, they reported having little departmental support or training available geared toward preventing or coping with symptoms of secondary trauma. The officers’ experiences of high levels of professional and personal stress related to managing sex offenders and their perceptions of having limited departmental support and training raise important questions about officers’ ability to effectively supervise sex offenders. The experiences described by the officers and their supervisors in this sample suggest that symptoms consistent with secondary trauma are present and common in this work and that these symptoms are largely ignored—not by the supervisors but by the agency itself.
Limitations and Strengths
Although this study is exploratory by design, it has limitations. This study was the subset of a larger evaluation, and the original purpose of the evaluation was not to examine experiences of secondary trauma. Therefore, the study is a point-in-time focus group design, and the questions asked during the focus group were broadly conceptualized. A study designed specifically to explore symptoms of secondary trauma may have revealed more detailed information about officers’ experiences. Furthermore, because of the sensitive and personal nature of the research questions, individual interviews may be implicated as being a more appropriate approach, one that might yield more detailed data as well.
While acknowledging these limitations, it is important to recognize that this study has particular strengths as well. Because the researchers had access to all parole officers and supervisors in the state, the sample was obtained using a census recruitment strategy. This sampling approach resulted in a high level of participation by officers and supervisors and so increases the confidence in the representativeness of the data. Knowledge and understanding of the experiences of secondary trauma among community-based supervision officers is only in its formative stages. Because this qualitative design was well suited to the preliminary nature of investigations of the symptoms of secondary trauma among officers, it allowed for several important implications of the study to be revealed.
Implications and Next Steps
The management of sex offenders has been the subject of discussion in political and societal debates in the United States for many years but perhaps more now than at any time in the past. As legislators work to pass more stringent sentencing laws and regulations that impact the intensity and duration of postrelease supervision, the pressure on the professionals who provide supervisory services cannot be underestimated. Couple legislative changes with a growing public demand for more accountability from those who supervise sex offenders, and it is not difficult to imagine the training, mentoring, and debriefing opportunities that need to be afforded to probation and parole officers who work primarily or exclusively with sex offenders.
The limited knowledge base regarding officers’ experiences of secondary trauma point to some basic, but critical, issues that need further attention from researchers, policy makers, and administrators. First, it is important to learn more about the prevalence of secondary trauma among supervision officers and the impact of the experience of secondary trauma on officers’ personal and professional lives. The development of a questionnaire or secondary trauma assessment scale normed on parole officers would greatly facilitate understanding of the extent and degree of secondary trauma in this population. Second, a focus on how specific training might attend to the issue of secondary trauma followed by the development of substantive training content seems wise. At a minimum, it is important to legitimize the experience, that is, to talk about the likelihood of experiencing a traumatic reaction to a parolee’s behaviors, past and present, and normalize the experience in ways that make it easier for probation and parole officers to seek help when needed. Forms of support that have been shown to be effective include supportive supervision (Jackson et al., 1997; Pearlman & Mac Ian, 1995; Salston & Figley, 2003; Steed & Bicknell, 2001; Thorpe et al., 2001; Trippany et al., 2004); debriefing, education, and training (Sexton, 1999; Steed & Bicknell, 2001; Thorpe et al., 2001; Trippany et al., 2004); providing mental health benefits (Bell, 2003; Trippany et al., 2004); monitoring caseload size (Figley, 2002; Thorpe et al., 2001; Trippany et al., 2004); maintaining a positive work environment (Bell, 2003); and addressing safety concerns (Bell, 2003; Bell, Kulkarni, & Dalton, 2003). Psychological debriefing was found effective for lessening the impact of traumatic events when the debriefing group provided support, normalization, health education, stress management, and assessment for follow-up within a 1 to 3 hr intervention period (Everly et al., 2003; Ennis & Horne, 2003; Iliffe & Steed, 2000; Salston & Figley, 2003).
As mentioned at the start of this article, we have been careful to note that no diagnosis of secondary trauma is being made here. Instead, our focus is on the symptoms that parole officers and their supervisors report experiencing in the course of supervising sex offenders. The reality is that these symptoms, in and of themselves, are disruptive to the lives of these officers and their families and friends. This is a reality that can be addressed more satisfactorily through agency action, that is, the dissemination of more detailed information about sex offender management and supervision, the availability of external and confidential help, and more measured responses from the agency and public when, for whatever reason, the sex offender reoffends.
Beyond training, which realistically can only address a certain part of the traumatic stress experienced, there are fundamental questions that can only be answered by ongoing qualitative and quantitative research. This research should seek to determine the appropriateness and effectiveness of officer specializations in sex offender management. Furthermore, one might hypothesize that officers who supervise sex offenders should have term limits, so that the question to be answered has to do with whether there is an optimum amount of time for one person to manage a sex offender caseload and if so, what it is. Finally, from the agency’s perspective, whether a state corrections’ department or a local probation office, is or should secondary trauma-specific and confidential support for officers supervising sex offenders be made available?
The risk for the experience of secondary trauma exists in many types of jobs and, indeed, as a part of otherwise ordinary life experiences that might be had in the normal course of a day. What sets the experiences of specialist parole and probation officers apart from many others is the emotional, political, and bureaucratic environments in which the occasion of secondary trauma is likely to surface. Charged with providing supervision of a convicted sex offender, the officer is subject to hearing the details of the offense (sometimes from both the offender and the victim) and the offenders’ fantasies of offenses yet or never to be committed. At the same time, the officer is charged with the responsibility to make the right decisions about the offender: when to trust, when to violate, and when to simply hope that nothing goes wrong with the supervision plan. If something does go wrong, officers undergo administrative scrutiny that although legitimate, is also designed to be critical—and, when something goes seriously wrong, legislators, advocates, lawyers, judges, and juries often have something to say about what happened.
In the last few decades, the notorious cases of child sexual violence—whether family, community, or church based—have yielded one uniform response: The public wants to know who is responsible for this segment of public safety. The answer? The person charged with providing the supervision. The study described here provides new and important information about the experiences of specialist parole officers, about how they cope with symptoms consistent with secondary trauma, and about what they may need to help them continue to do the job that the public and the politic desperately want to be done well.
Footnotes
Appendix
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
Margaret Severson received funding from the Kansas Department of Corrections for sex offender management work and related research.