Moral Injury: Prison staff face executioner stress and are told to suck it up

A recent article by the Death Penalty Information Center, has reported how prison staff have been adversely affected by executions of prisoners they have spent years looking after and continue to face mental health challenges.

Earlier this year, Oklahoma officials asked the state’s high court to increase the time between executions from 60 to 90 days citing the “lasting trauma” and “psychological toll” of executions on corrections officers. However, this was dismissed by Judge Gary Lumpkin telling officials that prison staff needed to “suck it up” and “man up”.

The article goes on to report that executions can cause prison staff to suffer psychological distress and in a 2022 investigation, corrections officers faced symptoms such as insomnia, nightmares, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, personality changes and substance abuse. 

Further, it was reported that psychologists use the term “moral injury” to describe how committing an act that contradicts one’s deeply held beliefs, such as causing another person’s death, creates a severe psychological disruption.

Read more about the impact of the execution itself and correctional officers facing executioner stress here