Former National Corrections Chief Warns of Dangers Federal Execution Plan Poses for Prison Personnel

A for­mer high-rank­ing fed­er­al cor­rec­tions offi­cial has warned that the fed­er­al government’s plan to exe­cute five pris­on­ers over a five-week peri­od in December and January risks seri­ous­ly trau­ma­tiz­ing cor­rec­tion­al work­ers. Allen Ault (pic­tured) is a for­mer chief of the Justice Department’s National Institute of Corrections who also served as cor­rec­tions com­mis­sion­er in Georgia, Mississippi, and Colorado, and as chair­man of the Florida Department of Corrections. In a July 31, 2019 op-ed in The Washington Post, Ault says, ​“I know from my own first­hand expe­ri­ences, super­vis­ing exe­cu­tions as a state direc­tor of cor­rec­tions, that the dam­age exe­cu­tions inflict on cor­rec­tion­al staff is deep and far-ranging.” 

Ault’s op-ed describes the men­tal and emo­tion­al toll that exe­cu­tions take on cor­rec­tions offi­cials, includ­ing those who do not direct­ly par­tic­i­pate in the exe­cu­tion. Execution team mem­bers, he says, have report­ed ​“night­mares, insom­nia and addic­tion” and have devel­oped post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der (PTSD) as a result of tak­ing part in executions. 

The ​“com­pressed sched­ule” pro­posed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment presents addi­tion­al chal­lenges. Three exe­cu­tions are sched­uled in a five-day span in December 2019, with two more in January 2020 just two days apart. According to Ault, this sched­ule ​“caus­es an extend­ed dis­rup­tion to nor­mal prison oper­a­tions and pre­cludes any attempt to return to nor­mal­cy fol­low­ing an exe­cu­tion. It also pre­vents any mean­ing­ful review by exe­cu­tion team mem­bers and oth­er offi­cials to address prob­lems or con­cerns in the exe­cu­tion process. That increas­es the risk that some­thing could go hor­ri­bly wrong in the next exe­cu­tion. And if a ​‘rou­tine’ exe­cu­tion is trau­ma­tiz­ing for all involved, a botched one is devastating.” 

“Psychologists have described the impact of exe­cu­tions on cor­rec­tion­al staff as sim­i­lar to that suf­fered by bat­tle­field vet­er­ans,” Ault writes. ​“But in my mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, there was one major dif­fer­ence: The ene­my was an anony­mous, armed com­bat­ant who was threat­en­ing my life. In an exe­cu­tion, the con­demned pris­on­er is a known human being who is total­ly defense­less when brought into the death cham­ber. Staff mem­bers know that he has been secured safe­ly for many years before his exe­cu­tion and pos­es no threat to them per­son­al­ly.” Other cor­rec­tions offi­cers are also affect­ed, Ault says. ​“The trau­ma extends through the many cor­rec­tion­al staff who inter­act every day with death row pris­on­ers, often form­ing mean­ing­ful bonds over the course of many years and, in many cas­es, wit­ness­ing their changed mind-sets and pro­found remorse.” He reports that exe­cu­tions can cause ​“depres­sion, anx­i­ety and oth­er men­tal and phys­i­cal impacts” in oth­er mem­bers of the prison community. 

Twenty-three cor­rec­tions offi­cials, includ­ing Ault, warned Arkansas about these dan­gers when the state sched­uled eight exe­cu­tions in an eleven-day peri­od in 2017. Ault argues that “[t]here’s no good rea­son for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to move for­ward with exe­cu­tions. There hasn’t been a fed­er­al exe­cu­tion since 2003, and the pris­on­ers under fed­er­al death sen­tence have been safe­ly man­aged by the Bureau of Prisons in high-secu­ri­ty federal prisons.”