A qualitative exploration of stress in a criminal investigations section

Padilla, Kathleen E.; Rockwell, Alexis R.; Huff, Jessica

doi:10.1080/15614263.2023.2185242

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 30 publications

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“…The combined impact of culture and stigma within law enforcement is a meaningful phenomenon worthy of exploration, and officer perspectives on these issues are understudied. The research that has been conducted tends to look at law enforcement in the aggregate sense while Padilla et al (2023) emphasized the importance of considering specialized units' experience and management of stress, as their findings suggest there were similarities with investigators and patrol officers, but investigators in specialized roles have sources of stress that are unique to those roles. Studies have identified the difficulty and stress of working child abuse cases in law enforcement (see MacEarchern et al, 2011;Violanti and Gehrke, 2004;Wolak and Mitchell, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Law enforcement perceptions of job stress and barriers to supportive resources when working child sexual abuse cases in the southern United States

Nichols,

Bowen

2024

PIJPSM

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to examine law enforcement officers' perspectives on job stress and barriers to supportive resources when working child sexual abuse cases in a large southern state. It is well documented in the literature that professionals who work in healthcare, emergency services and law enforcement face tremendous amounts of stress and consequences to their physical and mental health. Little research has been done to examine how child sexual abuse investigations impact law enforcement, and how these specialized officers perceive access to supportive resources.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study was part of a larger quantitative study and included 20 law enforcement officers who participated in anonymous, semi-structured phone interviews.FindingsFindings included (1) child sexual abuse cases are difficult, specialized and disturbing (2) barriers to supportive resources include law enforcement culture, the stigma of asking for help, awareness and accessibility of resources and leadership as gatekeeper to the resources and (3) officers perceive both formal and informal resources to be helpful and at best should be proactively available to all officers in the state. A model of the findings was developed to illustrate the implications for practitioners and scholars.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was not without weaknesses, specifically the small number of participants, volunteer sampling does not represent the general population and the sampling technique means some demographics may have been missed by researchers.Practical implicationsThis study adds to the literature on law enforcement mental health, occupational health and mental health resources. It confirms established research in the literature and provides insight into officer perspectives about barriers that prevent access to informal and formal supports that could improve their emotional well-being.Originality/valueThis study is the first of its kind, to our knowledge, that asks detectives and investigators of child abuse cases about mental health resources. These law enforcement officers are at high-risk for traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and burnout due to the specialized cases they investigate.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%