title: Walking a fine line: Forensic mental health practitioners' experience of working with correctional officers.
abstract: This paper explores mental health professionals' experiences working with correctional staff--one aspect of an interdisciplinary phenomenological study of ethical practice in forensic psychiatry. Professionals describe this relationship as coexisting within the system, despite their often conflicting roles. In correctional officers' overt concern for custody and control, practitioners can perceive a "paramilitary mentality" with which they struggle to work. Conversely, practitioners can experience conflict with security personnel for appearing "too caring" or "too sympathetic" to offenders--being "con-lovers." The balance practitioners establish between working with inmates and working alongside facility security is one of walking a fine line.
authors: Faculty of Education, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
authors: Danille
authors: D
authors: Lazzaretto-Green
authors: Wendy
authors: W
authors: Austin
authors: Erika
authors: E
authors: Goble
authors: Lisa
authors: L
authors: Buys
authors: Tom
authors: T
authors: Gorman
authors: Marlene
authors: M
authors: Rankel
mesh_terms: D005555:Forensic Psychiatry; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D009726:Nurses; D016495:Police; D011330:Prisons; D017009:Professional Autonomy; D024382:Professional Role; D011570:Psychiatry; D011584:Psychology; D012947:Social Work