Pursuit of ‘non-stop executions’ causing psychological distress to corrections staff as states urged to widen gap between executions
The relentless pursuit of “non-stop executions” by a rump of US death penalty states is exposing prison staff to extreme levels of psychological and physical stress, according to traumatized corrections officers who are appealing for help.
Though capital punishment is generally on the wane in America, with only five states carrying out executions last year, those states that remain active are showing a renewed determination. In some states, the pace of judicial killings is now so intense that prison guards are kept in an almost permanent state of readiness, with mock executions staged on a rolling basis.
In Oklahoma, officers at the state penitentiary in McAlester, which houses the death chamber, are so stretched by the schedule of 25 executions set in 2022 by the Republican-controlled state that the state’s own attorney general and the head of the prison service have appealed to the courts for a more staggered approach. They have requested that the gap between executions be widened from 60 to 90 days, so far to no avail.
The unprecedented move to try to cool the pace of executions followed a joint letter to the state’s attorney general, Gentner Drummond, from nine former senior corrections officials. They warned that staff were being subjected to “lasting trauma” and a “psychological toll” that included post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol abuse and distress due to the “non-stop executions”.
25 per year (call it one every two weeks?) really doesn’t seem that high, esp with their wording of “non-stop executions”.
Guess that really speaks to how messed up these execution methods are.
As I type this, I can’t help but wonder how the mass executions during the French Revolution affected people’s psyche (seems like a well built guillotine would be able to go through closer to 25 executions per day). Anyone have info on that?
I mean yes the headline is sensationalized but that still averages to one every 2 weeks, enough to be considered a pretty regular occurrence. Imagine if every other week your work has a power outage that needs a 4-hour manual reset to fix. After working there for a year would you describe it as an every so often problem or “our power is fucked it goes out all the time”?
In those days most people would be considered heavily traumatized by modern standards. The kind of thing that would send you to multi year therapy these days was just a regular Tuesday back then.
I’ve never killed anyone. So yeah, one per two weeks is high.
Even most soldiers kill 0 people.
And I would argue that this is different than if a soldier kills someone.
Like, when you kill as a soldier, generally the other person is trying to kill you (or you can at least tell yourself that afterwards. When you’re an executioner…well let’s just say they are known for wearing hoods for a reason.
I don’t know if it affected their psyche, but seeing old ladies knitting in front of a guillotine and being completely unflinching about getting coated with blood gushing out of the neck that just had a head severed from it would freak me the fuck out.