Episode 232
Prison Officer in Danger
Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie and Emily Webb
With guest Bruce Perham
“It’s hard to imagine a job where you have to be vigilant all the time, being ready to attend to traumatic and unpredictable situations. But that’s what prison officers have to do every day. Social worker and therapist Bruce Perham has worked with hundreds of officers and he’s written a book called Code Blue: Prison Officer in Danger about trauma and PTSD in these first responders.
Through the course of his years of going in and out of prisons and hearing the day to day experiences of prison officers, Bruce came to understand that he was dealing with professionals expected to run toward unpredictably dangerous situations at any moment in the course of a work day. It’s a high risk occupation and one that we, as the general public, don’t really know much about.”