co-authored by Matt Goeckel, Solutions Engineer, Cellebrite
Law enforcement takes a toll on officers’ mental health. When you spend a few decades of your life handling one crisis after another, it’s no surprise that the cumulative impact can be damaging to one’s state of mind. However, there’s a subset of law enforcement officers – the investigators and forensic examiners who dive deep into evidence – for whom mental well-being can be even harder to maintain.
In the world of examiners, evidence of violent crimes, or crimes against children, offer visceral and painful images and messages that can be very hard to shake if we don’t take care of our mental health on an ongoing basis. (And that’s not to exclude the frontline officers, who have to face the suffering of victims every day.)
Whenever we’re asked by law enforcement officers for one piece of advice about their careers, we say, “Don’t be afraid to seek help. Get a therapist, and do whatever you need to do, because if you don’t, this will take you down a hole you don’t want to go down.”
If physical wellness is important, why not mental well-being?
Law enforcement people at all levels tend to focus on the physical aspect of well-being. That certainly makes sense, especially on the front lines, where physical strength can stop crimes in progress or protect victims from violence.
At the same time, there tends to be a stigma in law enforcement about caring for mental well-being. Many officers don’t stop to think, “I need to also take care of my mind and make sure that I’m getting the help that I need so that I can continue to function as a human in society.” Police officers don’t show their feelings much.
Many officers end up being very withdrawn from society in general because they aren’t addressing their mental well-being. Cops tend to only socialize with other cops, because they believe only their colleagues can understand their unique challenges.
In law enforcement in general, sometimes there’s not enough downtime to give mental health much thought. This is certainly true for forensic examiners, especially in today’s world, where there’s a growing backlog of digital evidence. Examiners don’t have time to take a half-day off to decompress from a difficult batch of evidence, even though this might really help. It’s their job to find the information needed to serve justice, which means viewing all of it – including image after image for cases involving crimes against children and other heinous crimes. That takes its toll on you.
How to standardize mental well-being support
Fortunately, there are signs that law enforcement agencies recognize the pressure examiners are under, and the value that mental health services can provide. Particularly for examiners looking at evidence from cases involving crimes against children, some Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) teams require that examiners meet with mental health professionals on a regular basis.
Hopefully such requirements will spread out to more forensics teams, as well as other law enforcement departments. Certainly, we’ve seen law enforcement agencies quickly bring in mental health professionals for frontline officers in the wake of traumatic events such as school shootings.
Here are our suggestions for bringing mental health awareness and assistance into forensic examiner teams.
Destigmatize the need for help. Examiners need to receive messages from higher-ups that it’s OK to talk to someone about the stresses of the job.
Offer mental well-being programs. Departments that see fit to offer counseling after traumatic events or complex criminal cases can go one step farther and establish well-being programs for examiners and officers. Such programs can publicize the availability of mental health resources and actively encourage officers to use the resources.
Pay for therapeutic help. Simply pointing officers and examiners to resources is a start, but it’s not enough. Departments have to put their budgets behind this vital task, providing therapeutic help to officers for no or little cost. This also means examiners and officers should be able to see doctors and therapists of their choice – not just one on-call therapist who’s always booked. When it comes to choosing therapists, one-size does not fit all. An officer/examiner needs to be able to work with a person they feel comfortable with, so they should be able to have options.
Approve time off. There are times in the day when an examiner may say, “I’ve seen enough for the day. I can’t do any more of this. I need to go out and take a walk,” or a half-day off. Leaders need to understand the necessity of taking mental-health breaks.
Why go through the effort to prevent examiner burnout? For talented staff, you want to keep them at their jobs as long as it’s mentally healthy for them to do so. If examiners get zero mental-health support and can’t take the strain of nonstop evidence viewing, your agency will have to contend with a revolving door of forensics staff.
If examiners are properly supported, but they reach a point where the forensics work is simply too much, an agency with a program that monitors examiners’ mental well-being can see the signs of burnout and recommend a job rotation – a smart way to retain a talented colleague, instead of waiting until examiners simply crash out on disability. An enlightened agency can not only prolong the careers of its examiners, but it can also prolong their lives.
Forensic's monthly column, Digital Intelligence in the 21st Century, is authored by Heather Mahalik, Senior Director of Digital Intelligence at Cellebrite. With over 18 years of experience in digital forensics, Mahalik has been an expert of choice for many law enforcement and intelligence agencies. She has worked high profile cases from child exploitation to Osama Bin Laden’s digital media. Matt Goeckel worked in law enforcement for over 18 years before joining Cellebrite. He spent 10 years in the digital forensics laboratory and has worked cases of all types. He is particularly passionate about mental health and how law enforcement work can affect it. Check every month for more digital intelligence as Mahalik takes on managing and sharing data, testing and validation, highly encrypted phones and more.