#94 My Favorite Episode With Brad Cohen Discussing Corrections, Mental Health, And Personal Loss

I had a tough time to choose this season but went with Brad Cohen. His authenticity, his openness, his honesty all came through during the interview. He also received many praises from other in corrections for his appearance on the podcast.

Brad Cowen worked at the Department of Corrections in Massachusetts for over 34 years. Brad worked his way up through uniform ranks, entering a management position after 20 years. He discusses what he saw from a staff perspective, how difficult it is to discuss issues, including vicarious trauma, institutional trauma, as well as the code of silence that exist even among staff. We discuss a late, great man we both knew, Robert Sweeney, as well as the murder of his daughter and how this impacted his life, as well as his family.

Brad is open, honest and clearly invested in helping others and this really shines throughout the interview. 

Transcript

Steve Bisson: 0:02

Hi, and welcome to finding your way through therapy. I'm your host, Steve Bisson. The goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy, and the wide array of conversations you can have in therapy. I also talked to guests about therapy, their experience with therapy, and how psychology is present in many places in their lives. I also share personal stories. So please join me on this journey about there. Hi, and welcome to episode 90 for finding your way through therapy. I am Steve bisa. If you haven't listened to Episode 93, it was the most downloaded episode this season and it was AMI timer. It's a great interview, go back and listen. But episode 94 was a really tough call because that's usually my favorite episode. And if I had to choose just one, I mean it was tough. And what I did is I had to create some criterias in my head, obviously to win who won the most downloaded can't be my favorite. People who have won before cannot win. And then it was still a tie with a few people. But I had to go with Brad Cohen, Brad and I have something in common. We had a friend of ours pass away he worked at the Department of Correction. And we gave him a great tribute. And I think that by giving a tribute to someone I think that becomes my favorite episode automatically. So here is the interview. Hi, and welcome to episode 85 of finding your way through therapy. I'm your host Steve Bisson episode 85. We'll be with Brad Cohen. Brad is someone I've known personally for a while. He is someone who started working in Department of Correction in 1986 and retired in February 2020. During his 34 years of employment there he went up the ranks and ended up being someone who went from Team unit leader to an IPS to a sergeant to an ACA training instructor, an auditor and also serve as a lieutenant. At the end of his career. He's worked at different places in the state of Massachusetts, including MCI Framingham, the Substance Abuse Treatment Center, MCI, surely Pineville, MCI, Northfolk, as well as the state transportation. Brad wanted to talk a little bit about the correctional staff and what they go through. And it's something that's dear to my heart for several reason. Most importantly, I worked in that field for several years. And also, hopefully, we'll talk about a couple of personal connections that both me and Brad have with the Department of Correction in particular. So here is the interview. Hi, and welcome to episode 85 of finding your way through therapy. It's also episode 21 on YouTube. So please check out the YouTube you find the podcast and if you're on the podcast, go check YouTube out. But today I want to start off by dedicating this to a good man and a good friend who unfortunately passed away last like this last year or this year, but will be last year when this comes out. Robert Sweeney was a good man I worked in correction. And he was always helping out other people always trying to reach out to other people. And ultimately, not only for the Department of Correction, he was a veteran. He did my wonderful work for veterans. He did so many great things for people who had passed away voc including a nice garden. So I want to dedicate this to someone that we both know. And I want to say that it's going to be for me, that's an emotional thing. I really liked Bob a lot. And I know that Brad did too. But let me get into who's here, right? Because you want to probably know who's here. Right? So Brad, is someone that I've worked at has worked in, how long did you work at for DLC department,

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 3:38

34 years,

Steve Bisson: 3:39

Steve 34 years. And Brad Cohen is someone who's worked for 34 years for the Department of Correction. Also someone who knew Bob very intimately, and ultimately a great guy I've known Brad for over a couple of years now. And Brad's another guy that would give the shirt off his back if you needed it. So, Brad, welcome to finding your way through therapy. And maybe you can start off quickly. I'm gonna let you go right away and talk maybe about Bob and what your memories are, Bob, because we both miss him.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 4:08

You're happy to be here. Steven, I'll tell you that Bobby was a great guy. I go to work for him. That worked with him, I should say Framingham, and we never really lost contact. He was one of those guys. He was he was a guy's guy and marine part of the Marine Corps. He did have his own battles. But when he was assigned to the employee assistance unit, for the department correction, that was like his niche, that's where he kind of belong because he had so much integrity and people just love them. He was one of those guys that could relate to anybody whether you're weak, strong, male, female, Caucasian, African American, he just he just he loved everybody. And that's kind of who he was. And he was like this, like I say, the Marine staunch biker and, and I really appreciate you recognizing him prior to this podcast.

Steve Bisson: 4:48

I'll always remember him for so many other things, too, and the people that he impacted, which you know, I've also heard many stories about. So I think that it's important that we talk about Bob and when you said framing Em just for people who may not know, Framingham, Framingham, Massachusetts is there's a Department of Correction there. That's mostly women, it's all women. And that's what we were talking about. So just for my, my international crowd, I gotta make sure they get it all.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 5:15

And we'll see we're gonna talk about the memorial after the always remember Memorial, but Bob was really, he was the backbone behind that memorial. And he, he took a personal foot when it wasn't really taken the way he thought he should be taken by correction offices. And you know, but let's say Bob was a special guy, and thank you again.

Steve Bisson: 5:32

Well, I think that we need to get to that memorial for sure. I think that there's even a personal link for for you there that we can talk about too. But how about usually start off with an introduction of who the person is say, Hey, tell me about yourself. But I think it was important talk about Bob first, I think that we need to give that dedication above and we'll definitely come back to him. But how about Brad, you tell a little bit about yourself to the audience for finding your way through therapy.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 5:57

I went over to suicide high school, I graduated in 83. While in high school, I played football, baseball's have fully athletic. And I made the decision to join the Army National Guard with a friend of mine when I was 17, to pay for my college, basically. And I went to school for criminal justice psychology with a criminal justice minor. And I ended up starting to work for the Department of Correction. And at the age of 20. My goal was really to be a state police officer, because my next door neighbor, and my best friend, was a state police officer. However, when when they started making rank in early age, I was fortunate to make rank early, like 22 years old, that was a sergeant correction all of a sudden became a profession for me. And it was the route that I took. So it was a great rule. 34 years, everybody has their ups and downs on the only way that it doesn't. But in the end, I was very proud to wear the uniform, I was proud to represent the department, it really is an amazing agency.

Steve Bisson: 6:51

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear that right is how the hell did you survive 34 years?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 6:56

Yeah, it's interesting, Steven, I think you can either. I think what helped me towards the end is believe it or not, is like when I was a security guy. So it's all about the inmates not really worried about the inmate. So what's good for them, but what isn't good for them. And, and I think as your maturity agency, and I think also return life, you start realizing that, that these are human beings, and when if you really want to look at recidivism, you want to look at people not coming back, and the purpose behind it. And that is like this guy could get out and could be your next door neighbor, your father's next door neighbor, and you want to give that person as many tools as you can to succeed while they're out there. And I think you see a lot of that, but you really have to push it down. Because sometimes security staff really, they missed the big picture. But when you talk to them, and you open and transparent and get out there and they believe in you, I think you can make certain changes that are positive for the agency, and also the individuals themselves.

Steve Bisson: 7:47

I've worked with corrections, not only on the DLC level department correction in Massachusetts, I've worked in the county level with a couple of counties around here. And I also worked with the jails and prisons up in Vermont. There is certainly a code and one of the things that always struck me and maybe you can speak to that is that there were brands but they were few and far between. Because a lot of it it was a competition competition competition. I always admired you because you you like if you elevate someone you great, I elevate someone you always want to elevate someone but I don't find that as a culture in the Department of Correction. Am I wrong?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 8:25

Yeah, I agree. Sometimes, I used to talk to staff all the time, particularly as I as I want to prank and a deputy DLs superintendent, I was able to meet with groups of staff and try to look at the culture and kind of where I came from uniform. That was a big advantage for me. Because oftentimes, folks in uniform, don't respect the folks that came up for the classification piece as much, which I'll tell you why I've worked for a lot of great people that came from the classification piece. But that's just kind of the thing would be in a person in blue. But I always tell them about how you talk about management, how management doesn't care for people. Well, oftentimes, they don't care for themselves. They don't bring each other up. They'd rather just cook shit up people. But that's that ends up being a culture and it's not everywhere. It's a different ways and different institutions. And again, working with so many institutions like I did, you see the different things, but you always tried to make things positive, I tried to make a negative environment as positive as I could, which wasn't always easy. And I don't think we have enough time to podcast over all the things. I think that there could have been improved. But yeah, I just think that trying to take a negative environment and turn it as positive as we can, I think would be the best call when that actually creates a safer environment for staff as well as the inmates.

Steve Bisson: 9:37

Well, I think if you want to think about we don't have to do just one podcast, I run the show, so maybe one day we can talk about that because because as much as I had a I was mental health. I was not a Department of Correction staff. I was never a Worcester County or Middlesex County. I was never their staff. I was a mental health guy who worked was contracted But I definitely had different types of situations with people. And I know that Department of Corrections sometimes struggled with people coming from the outside. Do you think that that culture still exists? Or do you think it's changed? Oh, absolutely.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 10:16

So I think the problem with culture is, I think in society, we've looked at the mental health, downfalls so much greater, like closed roads, mental health facilities, yes. Back to like, oh, we shouldn't have closed them. And now, you know, when I first started, mental health was part of the Department correction if you wanted the medical, but they didn't have the voice that they have today. So I know, the mental health directors in every meeting in the morning, we talked about every case in the morning, we talk about every inmate in the morning, not every me, but every inmate is on a watch in the morning.

Steve Bisson: 10:42

But I still think people wear watches before we go on because oh, well,

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 10:45

my apologies. So So you have a 15 minute watch was a close watch. And you have a an eyeball watch, or a one on one watch, which is a constant watch. And those are the folks that are having trouble dealing with either society life, nations sad because they're in prison, but life or personal issues that they're dealing with, which is way above my paygrade. However, especially as a superintendent, I'm supporting the mental health staff with you know, we want to get the inmate off the watch as soon as we can, because it is creating overtime, is creating issues. But more importantly, we can do it for for the individual themselves. And sometimes I think that's the piece that's missing, I think sometimes we look at. So for instance, mental health can even make decisions on sanctions for disciplinary action. So if the disciplinary board says that the inmate should have 10 days isolation, which means evanesce, without the TV, mental health kids can turn around and say, well, that's really not good for his mental health. And I don't think we should change change in isolation to maybe room detention. Well, that doesn't really go very positive. With the uniformed staff, especially folks, if if this inmate threatened somebody or did something very inappropriate. It's not a positive thing. However, the mental health professionals looking at the me personally and what their needs are. And I think because they are a private contractor, and it is a contract, they want to be awarded the contract when it comes up again. So sometimes I think they give in a little more than they really need to, but that those are tough decisions. That's for sure.

Steve Bisson: 12:11

You know, the stuff that I can tell you from my experience is that I think I showed this prior to us recording here. You know, I remember being called in a max area, and saying, Steve, we need to do an evaluation, it was an act of suicide attempt. And they made me wait at the door, because there's like three doors to get the max obviously. And they opened the door eventually, because the janitor was there. And this the janitor went in and I thought I was going in like, no, no, he goes in. So I always joked around. And it's not even a joke, when you really think about it that the slush bucket goes over mental health sometimes?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 12:46

Well, I think part of that is you have to have meetings with different disciplines. So when you start looking at an agenda, you want to pass so say, say you want to do something with movement, in a movement to make it more fluid, you have to bring in mental health, you have to bring a medical, you have to bring a meeting, you have to bring in everybody and you have to create a team. You know, it really is a team. And when we talk about the memorial that was a big part of the of the memorial was that everybody who worked into the monitor correction would be recognized if they in fact passed away. So that's up to the upper administration to create this team and not create division. We all know about division, how to split this country, unfortunately, we have a lot of division. But you can't have that division inside. And I also do not believe in the me versus staff mentality, either. I think part of that needs to be together too. I think the needs of the inmates are important as well. And whether people want to think I'm a white hat, and I This bothered me, I look at what's best for the institution, what's best for people in general. And, and sometimes these people never just never had a chance.

Steve Bisson: 13:45

Right. And I think that that's a little bit of what we want to talk about too, in general is that we want to know what these men and women face regularly when they're in the jail and that the public might not know and one of the things that I always found interesting is I tell people like, like I would go into XYZ jail will say in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, I'd go into Bridgewater, Massachusetts, when I went into the jail, it might as well been Zimbabwe or China or it was a complete different culture and you needed to adapt as a mental health guy, but also the culture of the OSI and the culture of the county jails. What else should the public know in regards to the men and women who work in those type of environments?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 14:27

Swanson it's, it's interesting. I was talking with a friend of mine just yesterday about how cold it's been. And I said, you know, are you better off being homeless? In the city of Boston with a with a cardboard box and maybe a blanket? Freezing your butt off? Are you better off committing a minor crime and going to jail where you're gonna get three hot meals you're gonna get heat you're gonna You don't have to work and get up when you want you know? Because it's an environment that really isn't that bad like when granted you lose all your freedom. But honestly, in my 34 years and people listen to this podcast may not think I'm being honest, but but I really am like, inmates were not mistreated. They really weren't. I did not see a cultural systemic issue of inmates being mistreated. I think the state of Massachusetts also very liberal. And I think some of the things I didn't always agree with, but like, the reason the releases were parole, like they want everybody released, especially for non violent crimes, and, and I always believe in a second chance, but unfortunately, there are some folks that really aren't ready to be released. They're not ready to release. But if they take advantage of the opportunities to go through anger management, certain trainings and and possibly get involved in religion, which I think is important, then they can be a better product when it gets to society. But sometimes they just want to get out and then we see him back three months later, and Nevermind the addiction side addiction was a totally different thing for me. But I really truly believe that's the thing I would love to pose to people is that do all these advocacy groups and athletes This is the worst thing in the world at the correction also walking on ability clubs, to hit people left and right and and honestly I I did not see that I'm I'm telling you, we didn't see verbal abuse at times. But that happens everywhere. You know, when a lot of times that was created by by the inmate due to his actions, which after a while if you make conforms to the policies or procedures of the institution, that's going to also go to the wayside to this like people always said when I worked in North Florida, we had 1400 inmates and out of the 1400 700 Well lifers that was the place for the lecturers have always been off

Steve Bisson: 16:26

work. And if someone doesn't know what a lifer is, what's doing natural

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 16:30

life doing first degree, and possibly second, but we had 701st up lifers, which

Steve Bisson: 16:35

I got. Some people might not know what we're talking about.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 16:39

Oh, absolutely, my friend. Thank you. And so with that said, people, often times it's oh my god, you went to like 700 life. That's amazing. Today, the easiest population to deal with, because they know that this is they know that this is their home. And this is where they're going to live for the rest of their life. So they want to make the best of it. They don't want to lose their single cell. They don't want staff coming in and tearing apart the room because they used off language to somebody. So they were the best. They were the best population. I like you worked in the county, Steve, I never did. I always found counties, county inmates because they always wanted to be that alpha male, and they always wanted to prove themselves. That was a tougher environment. And when I say working with life is that's the best population to deal with.

Steve Bisson: 17:17

I agree wholeheartedly. i For those of you who get YouTube, you saw me pointed Brad, because I worked with lifers that were second degree. So they have a possibility of parole, they would come out on parole. And a lot of people like, oh, you worked with murderers. I'm like, those were the easiest ones to work with, because they knew the consequences of their actions. And I think that what I've always said to people I'd rather work with 20 lifers locked the door and work with them, because I'll be fine. Then work with five people with a history of assault battery, because they don't know the consequences of their actions. And I don't know if you had the same experience, but that's certainly

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 17:49

well, no, I didn't. And I remember talking with a life who I've known for years. Again, I start when I was 20. So I started really, at a younger age. And some of these guys were 20 themselves. But when I'm 30 years old, that means anyone if I've known him for 10 years, I'm 35. I've known for 15. But they've been behind a wall I've been coming to visit. And so I had one high profile individual who was brought back on a parole violation that he really had nothing to do with but it was something to do with New Hampshire in a murder. But I remember talking to him, he said, you know, come on, he said, When I get out that was scary, you know, the alarm went off, it scared the crap out of me because I never heard an alarm before. He said, I don't know how to work the VCR back and we have VCRs. And then you know, I was always a runner. So I went down run. And he said in the house that was there before wasn't there, it was a different color. There was another one that was built in its place. The cause was so much faster, it was tooting horns, he said, I'm gonna run it back to the house. You said it was scary being out there. You don't have to be in so institutionalized. And getting into society was tough for him. And then society, you also have the responsibility of now they have to work to get rent, they have to work to get food and it's just difficult environment for him.

Steve Bisson: 18:51

And I think that when you talk about that, the first thing came to mind is on parole. I had someone who did two consecutive, what they would call manslaughter for 10 years. And he came out I had a conversation. He did reentry stuff. About three days in he came in crying into the office. And I'm like, what's going on? We'll call him George. He's like, the machine will give me money. Like, you mean a money machine. I'll give you my I went to the ATM. And then they give me money. And I said, Okay, I'll go with you. It's not far we'll walk over what you walked over with him. He thought that he had to speak to the machine and the machine would give him the money. Because he never knew to put in the card, putting in his pin. He knew nothing of that. And I always tell people like the things that we take for granted. And what I consider outside life is something that when you're doing 20 years straight, you know you lose sight and ATM then exists in 1984 when this guy went in, and so I think that that's absolutely one of the things they face. What about like he talked about men and women what else do they face inside that people don't really get outside here?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 19:58

So a lot of things that like you think of or when you, when you respond to an emergency, especially the yard, the chow hall areas that are frequented by so many inmates or large groups of inmates new over the airways, you're there's a fight in the chow hall. And most of the time when it's called in, it's not called in like, it's a fight in the chow hall, it's, it's not your job. And you can tell the excitement. So right away, your blood pressure is going up, and you're responding to, you know, fight or flight we know about the old fight, you know, so we respond, and then you get there. And it's over with this. It's working out he's cuffed. And second one works out, he's cuffed. Steve, what do you do when you have all this adrenaline built up? And what do you do with it? What do you do when you when you want to sell and sell is just full of blood, because you may was involving self self injurious behavior. And what they will tend to do is mixed the blood would water which made it a larger volume of blood, but still the whole, the whole cell would be full of blood and they write on a wall. Satan lives here and take feces and and write your feces on the wall. You know, those are things that people just, they don't see that just to disguise it that live with you for the rest of your life. I remember as a young sergeant and it may put a cigarette in his eye. And after you put the cigarette in his eye, he was going to Mass sign in to me. He said, Colin, my hurts. In my mind, I'm like, oh, no, shut your address. You just turned around and put a friggin cigarette you're a when you look at that stuff. You're like, this is so abnormal guys cutting up and at the time asking for cigarettes. They're just full of baloney. Like, No, you need to give me the reason First, I need the reason. But those things that I just don't think people really know how to live with and deal with. It's the second EMT and EMT that they go to the the first Accident Incident with with somebody's dead, they'll just go to somebody that's dead dead body is not normal. It's just not normal. When if the gray in color or say it's been a hanging sleeve, and people don't realize that when when you hang your neck stretches. So if the image has been there for three or four, for a little while, we don't say it could even be an hour and a half hour, two hours. I don't know the exact timeframe. But the vertebrae could be stretched state different vertebrae, and it's just an abnormal scene. And then and then you go to the officer and he told you all so you know, do you need a break? What's the officer going to tell you? No, I don't need a break. I don't need a break. You know why? Because I'm, I'm Teflon. Nothing bothers me. And if I do need a break, then that means that I'm powder, or I'm a Doughboy and I'm weak. Right? So those are the tough things that people don't deal with so much wisdom of the job. And, and I remember that, like people going out by ambulance. Sometimes they're stressed blood pressures go high, they have an asthma attack, and we're going to take more by ambulance and offices do not want to go out by ambulance. The last thing I want to do is roll up the ambulance, especially if you're caught in, in front of all kinds of inmates, which will always avoid take them off the back or walk again. But still, it's the module was some of the job. I think people don't realize happens. You know, it's like we talked about police officers, and I was never a police officer, can you imagine being in a cruiser, and you have somebody in a high speed pursuit, and he almost hits the woman pushing the carriage out across the street? And then also, it's the baby that the woman's walking with? What does it feel when they get out of the car? You know, they got all this adrenaline and yet you're supposed to act appropriately? And what was society do? What would society do? What would the average person do when when somebody spits at you in the face? Right? You want to punch him right in the mouth. But if you punch him in the mouth, guess what? You're in trouble. And I'm not saying the punch of mouth is always the right answer. But what I'm saying is what would Joe society want to do? And I'm gonna say those actions happen all the time. But to tell you they don't, they do happen. And sometimes it's unwarranted. So those are the things I think that's the biggest thing is the trauma of dealing with me violence, you know, how many people have even seen a seizure. And even that seen a seizure before knows, like, the violent, these grand mal seizures of island? Yeah, if you've never seen one before, it's tough. And you got to kind of hold the guy down and hope that the other arm doesn't hit you in the face, because the person on the other side can't hold them down. When you're a new officer dealing with the games that inmates play, because who's going to play it and really realize the game as you become a seasoned officer because you see the inmates planet and you go up to them say, Come on, what's what's your problem, stop, relax, you know, but until you become really unfortunately, a part of that environment. When you extracted in an environment, there's a lot of work to do.

Steve Bisson: 24:15

I think it also desensitizes us. In general, I mean that, again, as a civilian mental health guy, I've had urine thrown at me, I've had feces thrown at me, spit the whole nine yards. But I think that what we're talking about here is a little bit of what I think you also want to address, which is institutional trauma. Because for me, and I'm just like, my time in inside was only a few years, but I've worked with enough correctional staff to know that there is a thought process that you can't just take like, Alright, my shifts done at four. I'm good. I'm gonna go home and I'm going to live the civilian life and I'm going to be good part of that institutional trauma in my opinion. Is there other stuff that as institutional trauma goes that you find is important for People don't know,

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 25:01

just let's just deal with the neg negative environment. Dealing with folks that click for instance, a lot of people have trouble doing dealing with sex crimes. And when you do have to read a case, and the case is so heinous, but you really can't take it out on the individual that committed the crime, you know, you really have to treat that person like they were human being. And those are tough things to get past. They really are. It's tough when you deal with a high profile inmate that shot and killed 14 People even took money away from a retiree woman's worked her whole life to build this nest egg. And then somebody would white collar crime decides they want to just take it from those are things like police officers say I deal with the individual, once you deal with the individual every day, and you do you deal with them. So it's like, it's almost like mind war, it's a psychological thing. The thing that always helped me is people say, Oh, my God, you're six foot three 280. And I used to be really into lifting weights and strong. But the physical pieces that is important is the mental piece, like you have to know how to talk to people. My quick wit helped me a lot. And then after a while, I think my compassion can really help me. When I get towards the end, and I worked in an office, the staff will say, you know, it's great, you're out here talking to us. And we appreciate it, you know, if we feel like we're pointing, which they were, they were always reminded, I'm also going to talk to the inmate population to and when I talk to them, and there's something that they need, not something more than the policy dictates for something that they're required to have. My job is to make sure that they have it. Right.

Steve Bisson: 26:25

And I think that the thing that I've seen, even in my short time working with the department of corrections that I've worked with, is that there's a lot more talk with the escalation and using words, but again, I forgot to say I worked and I worked long enough, I've never seen a baton come out and never seen an inmate get hit by a correctional officer. And even the people I've seen here in counseling, and all that I've never heard of anyone doing that,

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 26:53

will sometimes do that. Like that's a supervision thing, too. And I'll give you a good example of that. We have an issue where, where an inmate was very mouthy and threatening towards a female staff member. And one of the female staff members started it or didn't start it. You may saying that she started it. And she said, I just didn't want to where he was playing games, but make a long story short, but we took him out of the cell. The direction of her was to not be around anywhere. And I remember she was mad at me, because I asked her to leave. And I wasn't blaming her for anything. What I was saying was, what's the risk versus reward? Right, that there's a lot more risk than it was one, like get you out of here that I'm not going to have to worry about who spent a year I have to worry about using force, I'm not going to so I omitted and that's, that's part of the escalation, I give an end, it's just use a little bit of common sense. Another big piece, and I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about is some of the uniformed staff deal with a lot of poor decisions by management, or people that work for them whether they work for, for instance, somebody's never late for work, and all of a sudden, elite five or six times, and instead of talking to the officer, but you get a written warning, or you get you're going to not be we're going to instead of calling a minute find out that the person is going through a divorce, the person just lost their mother, they don't have their babysitter, there's a lot of traffic coming into work, and you try to work through and say, Hey, how are we going to get you to work on time? What do we need to do? Can you leave earlier, or just even be open to it? So it will last for like three months? We went for about three months. And that's that's how you take care of staff.

Steve Bisson: 28:20

And I think that that's goes a little bit about, you know, we talked about institutional trauma. The other thing that I think happens a whole lot is the code of silence. Yeah, yeah. And if you want to talk more about that, but yeah,

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 28:34

there's actually some states that if you're found guilty of the code of silence, you can be terminated. The code of silence is real. And it's a hard thing for me to talk about only because sometimes, you have to really stick with each other and you have to support each other. Not just to have a safe environment, but just to have a working environment with people. However, however, when you deal with a case, like you did with the police officer of Minnesota, and these hold them down in the guy and they call that positional asphyxiation, which a lot of people don't even really know about, because when you put downward pressure on an individual, they want to fight even more. Well, the other people have to come back and say, Hey, like, step off, get off one. Second, if you choose to force when I Will Teach You To force training to supervisory staff, I would always tell the supervisory staff, you really can't stop an officer from hitting an inmate once. You really can't, because you don't know that they're going to do it. But you can stop the officer from reloading and hitting me again. Right? So if the officer is not doing what they should be doing, or it's inappropriate, what he should be doing, then pull the officer away. And then hey, let's talk about this. Let's see why you did that. You may not see that the officer was being bid. You might not see that. So that could be a reason why the officer did it. But with the code of silence sometimes. I don't think that the staff are held accountable with each other enough. You know, it's like the state police. You give us the state trooper pulled somebody over artists when I was hanging out and being out of uniform. You just don't see it because if we themselves because they say, Hey, we don't do that we wear our uniform, we're professional group. But yet, I remember the times I've seen a correction officers pull into a Dunkin Donuts, they pull into a handicap spot. Their shirts open for say, to spit on the ground. And I'm saying myself, like guys, like, what are you? What are you doing how you represent the uniform? So sometimes, we need to let people know, hey, and I want to use that with this. There's another verbiage I use. But you need to assert yourself like you. I mean, you need to do need to do better. And I would oftentimes will like, if it was a property issue, I would always have the officer who wasn't making the right decision, correct it like if it me can't say happy on said, hey, you know, I'm not getting this. I'm looking. Now we talked to the officer, I told you, I'd say do a favor. By the end of the day. You get it to him, not me. I'm not gonna tell you or tell me hey, you're gonna get it. But I want to make sure that he gets what he's supposed to get, without really making a big deal out of it. So the quarter sales is prevalent. Steve, just to agree to degree, but there's a quarter sounds in government. There's a quarter sounds with the Republican Party with the Democratic Party. It's just part of life. And and I wish I had them out with the miracle answer blue because it is it is it can be an issue and can create dangerous environment.

Steve Bisson: 31:11

You know, I go back to something I've had a conversation with police officer, Jay, who's been on my podcast many times. The code of silence to me can be really worked on. When you really think about it this way. 95% of people in mental health, they're just trying to do their job. They want to make you like get better and move on in your life. And they do well. There's 5% that are schmucks hassles will treat you like crap. Mikoto silence tells me I don't cover those 5% I don't. And if we can get the police, like, the problem is the media like if a police officer does something wrong, and now suddenly, it's all cops are like that? Well, no, it's a 5% Because there's 5% of crap. Everywhere you go, there's 5% of correctional staff that are assholes. Sorry, that's just that's just how I see it. Instead of having like, if you say, well, that one correctional officer is doing that the quota science does not work for that. 5% he will see it as no, you fucked over the 99.9% of the team. No, you fucked over that 5% I want the code of silence and keep continuing. I don't know if you agree with me. But that's just how I perceive it.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 32:16

Steve, you're 100%? Like I remember staff would come to me and they would they say, you know, we're not giving enough people Christmas off. And I would say well, why don't you get the people that are out on a because they have a hangnail when you have them come back before Christmas. But it was amazing. How many will come back after Christmas? would that person be at home? Is one less person scenario wise getting the day off? Right, you know, but yet, if you go police yourself, sometimes it's a problem. But I truly believe what you said, you get that 5%. And if the 95% Tell the 5% Hey, we don't agree with your actions, and we don't work. We don't do it this way, then just create a better environment. But I think people are just afraid to upset the applecart. They really are. And I know people that take rank, they want to go home, they want to be proud. And like, you know, I'm a sergeant and I probably shouldn't be a proud thing. But part of that is when you get to work you need to supervise. When an officer doesn't do their last round. Well, you make Sergeant you're proud to be a sergeant and you need to tell the officer Hey, before you go, you need to last round, or you've been in the control room. For the last half hour, you got to be on the floor, dealing with issues we have with the chair condition this idea. Well, gotta get out there, your post is healthier. And unfortunately, that isn't the case.

Steve Bisson: 33:26

Can I play it? Can I play devil's advocate for a second? Absolutely. Okay. Because this is a story. I've been told by a couple of people. And I always go, Okay, I have my answer. But I want to hear someone who's been there done that probably has a few T shirts. So what I've been told is like, well, if I go into population, there's 100 of them, and there's four of us. So we're gonna get our asking. That's why I don't spend time there. What would you say to someone like that?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 33:49

Let's say it's a crock of shit. I'm gonna say it's a crock of shit. When you get out there, and you interact with these guys. And they know that your fear and you can be firm, but you're consistent. And they get to know who you are. It's like people would ask me, Why are you afraid to see anybody on the streets? Well, part of my past is I did eight years of investigations. There were guys who got extra time due to my investigation. So guys, they are isolation time through my investigation. So the guys that went to DDU, due to my investigation, there was not one inmate that I'm worried about seeing on the streets, because every single one of them did something wrong. I didn't plant drugs in there. So I didn't get my dirty urine when it wasn't there. I never did all that. So if you're gonna go out there and you're going to treat these guys fear, you're going to when you walk in on a tear, you walk by excuse me, thank you the words that people don't think you can say in prison. Well, that that makes it better for you. Like I was never once afraid of 100 inmates. So when I'm 20 years old, and I'm working in a prison, quite frankly, my walls are bigger than my brains, right? True story. So it's not different. I'm Tony. I'm just out of boot camp. You're I mean, it's like, I'm the king of the world. I'm just gonna knock me down. But then eventually your brains catch up with but you don't mistreat people and you treat people fairly and you see it, you hit it on the head. There's 5% and knuckleheads. They really are, there's 5%, knuckleheads that are allowed to be knuckleheads. Because the other 95% laugh at them Caduceus that 5% that when the shit hits the fan, they run the other way versus going towards the issue you have. Yeah, that's an interesting.

Steve Bisson: 35:16

Well, that's how I perceive it. Anyway, I think that if we just accepted the fact that 5% of every profession that you can think of, there's assholes. Yeah. And then 95% of them are trying to do their job, just go home at night, we would have a different perception. And I think that's what I would say about my experience and corrections, because for that slash bucket comment that I made before, I also had a lot of like, CEOs that would come to me. And by the way, just for the record, since I have this space, they're not guards, they're correctional officers for the record. And that's where the CEO is. I remember some of the guys would come over, like, Hey, that guy seems a little off. What do you think I can do? Or what would you do one minute? Can I watch you? Or was there a lot of guys were willing to do that. And there was a 5% that like, you know, fu your mental health. And I think that that's part of it, too. And I'm going to make a quick transition from that as to talk about the mental health of the correctional officers. I'm not talking about the 5%. I'm talking about the 100%. And I think that one of the things that you wanted to talk about a little bit is like how do we address the mental health issues? Because that is a big? What's the right word stigma? Because I remember getting a phone call from Bob Sweeney that we mentioned earlier. Baba, call me and say we'll invent AI. There's a CEO John Doe at Swansea. There's no jail in Swansea, Massachusetts. That's what I'm using that name. He's going into a program, he needs an outpatient. Can I really connect them with you right away. So when he leaves, he has you. And I remember that was like one of the most brilliant things. Bob did a lot of brilliant things. But that was one of the most brilliant things because then that person would talk to me, Oh, I can talk to you and I get out of we have McLean Hospital here in Belmont, Massachusetts. And they would come and connect with me. I think that we, when we talk about mental health, there's like this perception that I'm going to sit here like a Freudian, or I'm going to be like, your fucked up. That's not how metal works. But I think the metal that's the perception sometimes of correctional staff in general, can you speak a little bit about how they perceive the mental health stuff now? Yeah, so

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 37:17

I'll tell you it kind of leads to what I said earlier, alludes to what I what he said earlier about, it's a sign of weakness, we think with Teflon, and I dealt with heart aches in my life where I you know, I lost my best friend, I lost my father, and everyone for help, will show talk about when I when I lost my daughter. I just had enough. And I was actually retired when Emma died. And that's when I called the niece and he said, Denise, anxiety is just going through my body. I can't deal with this. Like I just, I can't believe I can't deal with this. I was always that guy, I can deal with everything. There's nothing I can be done. But I just reached a point where I couldn't deal with it. And Denise had had said, Hey, Bob, I met this guy. And although they have heard of Steve, Steve Hassan, so badmouth this guy, he's, he's perfect for you, Brad, he's like a straight shooter, he's going to tell you how it is, he's not going to let you deal with any, like, bullshit them, you know, and that's why me and you develop such a great relationship, and you helped me so much through the therapy. But there's a lot of people that really, they need it. I don't know, many clinicians or many therapists that don't seek therapy. I think all you guys have your own therapist,

Steve Bisson: 38:18

that I'm looking for the top therapist, I keep on going, my therapist says therapist says therapist I want to hit. But that doesn't work. But yes, absolutely. And I think that's a good point. And

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 38:28

it's so much it's a module thing, Steve, it really is it's about to sign a weakness. And it really isn't. It isn't a sign of weakness. You know,

Steve Bisson: 38:36

I think that what I've also kind of, I'm going to allude to this now. But I'd like to talk more about what happens with correctional staff who may see, you know, you're the devil, and they wrote it in your feces and erode in blood. And this is not all if it's triggering the people. I'm sorry, but that's just things that happen. And just really, I've seen it. I think that for me, you know, when I think about mental health, there's a stigma. But it's also because not everyone has the cultural competency to work with someone with a correctional staff. And I don't know if that plays a factor for some people, but I know for me a lot of people like, Oh, you've been there. And then I talked about the institutions or whatever. And they'd be like, Oh, so you know how it is? And then they'd suddenly trust would come in? Do you feel that maybe that's what we need to do a little more cultural competency in order to get more therapists involved and have the correctional staff trusted more?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 39:27

I think for me, it was meeting the right therapist, and how do you match? How do you match therapists? Are you better off going to a male or female therapist, a female, go to female or even act? Do you know that even matters? If you're African American, you got it? Like, it's who you can relate to I think and your personality, and some people don't like to be told the real deal and some people may think that your style is offensive, where I think is the best freaking style in the world, right? So it's a matter of matching people and figuring out what's best for you. Like you may want that person says, oh, it's going to be okay. If you just go to this versus, hey, put your big boy pants on, get your ass out of bed and start feeling bad for yourself. Right? Two different forms. Correct? Right? So, but yet they both might work for different people, like the other form might work for somebody else. That's how they can deal with things. And you know yourself, your plates busy too. So you can always take the time to get another good client or somebody that you can really help, in your experiences working in prison. Or working in a prison setting is beneficial to deal with a guy like me, who's worked in a prison setting that has trauma that I don't even know I have. Right? Right when he talked to when they talk about PTSD, right, we'll never be recognized around PTSD. But I have PTSD, like, I have to have my back to A to A to the wall. When I go out to eat. I'm always looking at people's hands. I'm always looking into fractions. When I was helping my buddy at his bar in Fall River, I saw fights were going to happen before they've happened, just because of my experience working in sight. And you just start seeing this and seeing that you become part of that. But going back to your question with the therapy, it's just matching, matching the right, the right therapist, and I really don't know the answer to that. But

Steve Bisson: 41:04

I've got I've got an answer for you. This is something I wish me and Bob had had access conversation and keep on coming back to Bob, you know, my bottom reason why

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 41:13

Bob would always say like,

Steve Bisson: 41:16

if Steve doesn't work for you, I have three other people that can refer you to. And I always thought that was a brilliant way of saying don't give up after one one bad therapist. And I'm not saying I'm a bad therapist, but maybe they didn't like me, I'm not your cup of tea. I'm not everyone's cup of tea, and I'm fine with that. And I think that that's what Bob did. That was very unique that I don't hear a whole lot. And I wonder if that would also help when your correctional staff may need a therapist and like, Well, Steve might not be your cup of tea, but Jane might be your Courtney or Stephanie or what have you. Or John, or Bill, I don't care. But ultimately what I would say to you is that one of the ways to solve that is that stop thinking that you saw one mental health counselor. It didn't work out. Our mental health counselor said no, and might be the 5%. That sucks.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 42:00

Yeah. But Bob also had a unique way about him too. That was believable. And he had the integrity and he walked the walk and he talked the talk and I was one of those guys. He wasn't management. He was a CEO. He was like it's a Marine Corps. We've got a Marine Corps and biggest thing with Bob Bob for his own demons. Right. So Bob could relate. And when he talked to people, people just like He was his he was his bigger than life guy. Just a bigger than life guy. Like, we get the best hugs me and him. You don't because just he's big, big, big, big, big teddy bear.

Steve Bisson: 42:33

You know, I think that this is a great place to transition because I think Bob is a big teddy bear. You are a big teddy bear, frankly. And risk of breaking a wall here. I've hugged both of you, and I'm fine with it. But I would like to hear more a little bit of because you had a daughter, Amber, who was in the works in the correctional setting. And I don't want to say the story to snap my story to tell. I'd like you to tell a little bit of story of your daughter because I think that's an important one to talk about.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 42:59

Amber was a correctional program officer, she started working for Spectrum do reentry. And she really believed in a process and believe that helping other people and able was it was an interesting soul because she grew up with with people that were friends of mine that were now superintendents and Deputy Commissioners and but yet she never really, she didn't want people to know who I was. She didn't want to know that her father was a superintendent. She was like really guarded with that. And her husband, who was a correction officer, who was also marine was over in Iraq. There was incidents of domestic violence, but they weren't physical. It was always emotional and never ever was ever put on a pedestal. She was never told how beautiful she she was never told how good she cooks. She just was put on a pedestal, she he was very much of an introvert and very socially awkward. And he was also very much narcissistic. But those were all things that as a parent, I could see, but how do you tell your daughter, hey, this guy is for you. And because what ends up happening is I lose my daughter and she just gonna follow the love anyway, you know, when she truly did love them, right? So she left him for six months, and then they get back together. And they get back together for about a year and a half, two years, I would say and then just things wouldn't change. She and she loved them again. And we weren't surprised. We wouldn't have been shocking to us if we knew that he thought we found out that he committed suicide. It wouldn't have shocked us to know that he committed suicide for an AMA to that narcissistic behavior of wanting to be in control Okay, now you're gonna live with this you're at rest of your life. But he made a decision to take Amber's life and then take his life which changed my life forever. And it impacted as palmerola because of who she was and, and that's why I think I get the most emotional was how much Amber at such a young age truly impacted people in such a positive way. Like we talked about being positive. Every morning. She went to Panvel Correctional Center, she say good morning. Good morning. How are you? How should we can you know How's your mom doing if the mother was waiting for surgery or something? She was like really got it. And nobody ever because people tend to find that out. Whoever that was, you know, and nobody ever held that against me because of who she was. So when passed away, and I know what do you want me to go into the memorial It was created not yet.

Steve Bisson: 45:11

Like, Brad, this is your interview you go are you brother?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 45:15

So one of the happening because of the love that they have for her upon villain and staff will really feel crushed upon the question. It will commonly lockdown for what a while at both institutions. Pavel decided that they wanted to create a memorial for him. And when he wanted to create the memorial, they wanted myself and Lisa and his mom on the committee. And we also had him his best friend, and I think Amazon was was on a committee. And as we started talking about this memorial, and we started really leaning towards Why don't we Why don't we create a perpetual Memorial and the thought process is, if we do a memorial in five years, people don't remember him as much as they do today, in 10 years and remember even less, because people transfer people retire. Eventually, the institution is filled with people that never even worked with them. And then at 20 is the shift man is gonna be like, Well, you go mow the grass is that memorial looks like shit. And by the way, who the hell is him is in McAllen. Right. So with the thought process of us losing the market correction, we lose approximately six to eight, offices, maintenance, manages chaplains, scipios, web clinical staff, we use them every year, when you have 4000 employees, that's what happens, you're going to lose people during the cost of their duty. So when we decide we say when we when we create a memorial for all department corrections staff that it gives us a nice place for peace and healing that people can go. And the idea just blew up. It just really blew up. But we talked about Pat Sweeney, and our boss really took the bull by the horns and donate his own money, donate his time, and he made this his mission, that he wanted to do something for correctional staff. It wasn't just about him and Nicole Cowen, you know, it was about corrections about people, like everybody that worked behind the wall. And to be honest with you, but I've had some pushback, and he had some pushback, because one, I was a superintendent, so staff think automatically that don't know me, this is a management thing and some illustrative thing. And then it mates also had a lot to do with clearing the ground. Like because it's a path and a bat called ambas way. And they were like what is this Bobo's on the ground? We don't want to be part of this, which is really, really ignorant. And right. It's it's very, very juvenile, as far as I'm concerned, because the inmates are humans too. You know, like, I remember going into institutions. And people say, don't use that bathroom. It's in a bathroom. Well, Steve, I would use any bathroom any day because it's cleaner than the staff bathroom. Right? And that's true. Great. So when it comes to that, who cares if they did I don't see these people from other institutions volunteering the kernel, and I don't see them voluntarily dig a trench. You know, what what's happened with the memorial is I believe we've had 10 services already, for folks from functions of ASCII to surely to Special Ops. And what's happened is more and more people have gone through Memorial, it's become a bigger and bigger deal where others, other states actually want to model the memorial. And they the committee still affords us the opportunity, we should just decorated the memorial for Christmas or the holiday season the other day, she'll decorate it again, come spring. And whenever there is a memorial service we go, oftentimes I'll speak but it's not. It's not about ammo. It's about whoever's the passed away. It's their day, it's a day to be remembered for the services that they provided.

Steve Bisson: 48:34

Well, I appreciate you sharing the story. First of all, I also know that I was there that the pre ceremony. And it's also what I've loved about it too is that it's also group per the Department of Correction where they worked. Yes. And so like if you again, I'm not saying people feel that way. But let's say you don't care about Walpole or cedar junction. I'm sorry. Then you don't have to look at that when you want to go see where you know we only go see gardener you want to go see Sousa you want to go see whatever you have that capacity to do so and just look at those people. And hopefully they'll remember because we do this for police. We do that for fire. Bob's idea was phenomenal. And I knew all the push backs that he had and you know that will live forever. And you're absolutely right. One of the things that's always lost is like oh, well, you know, the inmates are going to take care of it. You think What do you think the inmates are going to do to it? I mean, what is wrong with you?

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 49:30

Exactly. We don't have a camera. There's no cameras on that site. There's something we want freedom with people just the company like I said it's a it's a place of peace and healing and we added in a retiree wall where retirees of the past they can actually go on the wall we're still looking to make that grow a little bit more. And the commissioner kind of Ichi has been behind that. 110% she's building a pavilion and event of inclement weather when we do these services. She has Jana God go to all the services, which I think is very important because the audit guide were nationally recognized on a guy with one correction is but it's I call it unselfishly self esteem. You know, it's there where we don't make it about AMA. So that's the selfish part. But the selfish part is she's always remembered. Until we die, she's always gonna remember because the bench, the bench right before the main part of the memorial is to amateur called Colin, with a beautiful saying. So that's quite a lot of healing from from you and Lisa, but it's really quite a lot of healing for the vomit correction. And those family members, like when you're gonna need a nine year old kid that did that. It's like, a superhero that day, I did that just the other guys hear from my dad? Well, my dad, my dad was somebody, you know? And isn't it great to be somebody, even for that day that there's somebody and again, the kid whose kids remember that the rest of his life, how their father was a mother was memorialized. On that day, you know,

Steve Bisson: 50:47

again, at the risk of breaking a wall, I obviously mean, you have talked about Amber and Bob and I talked about Amber, but other people who didn't know us, and they would tell me about Amber and how, you know how sad they were and how they were touched by her and how human she was. And it always struck me because yeah, obviously, you know, everyone saved me, you know, but your daughter? No, no, she was universe with us. And there's no like, I'm not, you know, me. I don't be yes. She was universally loved. And if she was the push that got that garden done, that Soviet,

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 51:20

yeah, yeah, she didn't die in vain, you know, something good came out of it. And that's kind of what we have look like. So we, we think oftentimes, we lose the loved one, we always want them to be remembered, like, I never want him or her forgotten, you know. And when you can put something in place like this, it's beneficial for the whole agency and need to see the shoot have been flourishing in for years to come. She really loved her job. She will love helping people. I'm sure she would have disappointments at some point in her career, because I think everybody does. But she was somebody that the staff just love that she go cook this coffee cake that that Lisa will cook every year, on the 27th of June, that he passed. We always deliver pizzas and stuff to department will put on staff so that so they remember and we'll do that too. Until we pass on and we go to events, Lisa will bring coffee cake that the recipe that Amber had reached out to the superintendent superintendent like the with the buffalo dip. And a lot of times somebody going in and giving the superintendent put will dip people look like you'd say when a kid says

Steve Bisson: 52:18

no, no, but

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 52:19

to her superintendent was okay as a superintendent, but she loved the correction officer. More like she she got it. She you know, I mean, she just really understood he shared that quality of love. True true love that people just embraced. And they miss it. They miss it. You know?

Steve Bisson: 52:34

Again, I It's hard to move from Amber. But I will. As we wrap up the hour, I already went really fast. I want to finish because you know, you're not here to plug anything. You're just here to be yourself wanting to educate people. First of all, I might have you back on are you willing to do that? Because I have

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 52:52

ideas. Anytime I find any conflict. The

Steve Bisson: 52:55

The other thing too is that for a correctional officer, anyone but particularly a correctional officer, or someone who works, I call I call them correctional staff, because can be the superintendent, you can be the CEO, you can be the janitor, I don't care. What would you tell him to say, look, go get the help, and stop kind of like putting your pride before everything else.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 53:17

I think that's a culture. I think that's where collectively you have to accept it and say, Hey, you got to take care of yourself first, you can take care of your family first. This isn't about the materialism of so late, like when it came to suicide. I'd ask you also if they're okay. And I could tell by the look in their eyes, it's not okay. And I would tell them, Hey, do me a favor, we're gonna have your leaves, not for any other reason. And I want you to write the report where you have a clear head, which is a good practice anyway. But it was really to get him or her away from the area that we're in. So I was making the decision for them. But yet, given them a little way out, right, and somebody's having trouble at home, they're going through a divorce and having a tough time with a divorce. So they're having a tough time with their, with their mother who's getting ready to move on to be with God, that supervisors need to sometimes go to the people that they know and say, Hey, someone, so John Doe's having trouble, can we make sure that John Doe isn't working in a tower? You know, because how towers we have weapons, but they have to say, Oh, my God, well, we're gonna have a president kill themselves. You have to the only so we always get into being paranoid with with things that we do. But some things have to be kept in house sometimes. And see, we have to put our staff first man, they're just so fragile. We they're so fragile, and you know, I can talk it all I want. But I see people that talk but I see people have never walked in. I think you need to when you walk around and staff, they have a thing called encouraging the heart. That's one of the five practices of leadership. And people think that oh yeah, if when you give an adequate letter or you're given an award, that's how we help people deal with their processes. But I truly believe when you go when you ask them and you make them look like human beings and you know that they have a mother and when you know they have a sick father when they hit when, especially when you're the superintendent, they look at it like oh my god, like this person actually came out and Want to see how I was doing? And I think I think those are things that you really have to look at it starts at the top. And then it starts with supervision, like you always have that person that will make a collection for somebody because they're going through a problem. And they want to make sure that they that they have gifts under the tree or wherever it may be, you know, we're going to grab for everybody, you can't just do it for the person that's a favorable officer. So you know, I think culture is a big part of it. It's just, it's just making it positive, having a good Wellness Program, a program that, that people believe in getting together and doing things as groups. I just think that that's that's a positive thing. And I always think that meetings and open transparency was always good to like, like we would meet every service week, and we talked to the staff, and just sometimes wasn't easy, because staff would be mad at me for something that I did. While they think I did, right. But I would tell them straight up. They didn't always like my answer. Like I was never a Yes, man. And I know Steve Bisson is nice man, you know, and that's what worked for me. And I never changed who I was, I would try to do it appropriately. But I wouldn't just say, Yeah, you know, you're kind of right. No, you're wrong. Like, this is why we do things and and if I'm gonna offer or if I'm gonna allow folks to have their own opinion. But guess what, I should really have my opinion as well. And I'm not telling you that my opinion is trumping you. All I'm saying is I have an opinion also. It's unbelievable how if you get out and talk to people and make them feel like they're part of the process, when you look at create new policy and procedure, why not take the person who works in the area, like, if I want to do a new procedure on segregation, when I have the person who's running the unit at these meetings, but telling me how it really goes, you know, like, we have posters, and I'd always want the posters to go out to the post, and I want the officer to read it. And then I want the officer to sign in the top. Well, the union will come to me like you're setting them up and make them sign a tarp. I'm like, No, I'm having to sign a tarp. So I want to make sure they have the opportunity to read it. That's why I'm having such a top. I'm not walking into anything in it. But if we do movement at 730 and the poster artist Odyssey to move eight o'clock. Well, I need to know that that's what I want the posters to be right. You know, I rather was running up on the operation based on practice the running operation based on policy procedure, your practice should meet your policy procedure, really not your procedure policy procedure should meet your practice.

Steve Bisson: 57:12

Right. So I think that's great advice. I'll tell you that what Jay ba who's been on my podcast before work works as an officer. So I listened to him a couple of times, he's excellent. One of the things he said is it starts with leadership, and the leadership being like, and again, there's no attack on anyone in particular here. So please, if anyone's listening in the Europe happened to be like, you know, the Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioner, I'm not attacking anyone, go block the jail, go talk to the guys go see what they need. And ask those questions. And if the leadership shows how to reach out to mental health, now, they don't need to care so much, but you need to at least listen to people. I think that if you start with leadership, it will trickle down. And it's rare that I believe in trickle down. But in this particular case, I definitely believe in trickle down. So if you normalize mental health on a leadership level, you will normalize it on a whatever level and I don't I'm not much of a I know that you guys are pseudo military and all that fun stuff. I'm not I'm not much of that stuff. And it's just feeling that the oh, wait, wait a minute, the superintendent talked about mental health and saying how to reach out and what's good, and wow, okay, well, maybe I can do it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but long term that will have that impact. And when Jay says that I think it makes perfect sense. I mean, I think the correctional world would really benefit from the same type of leadership. Yes,

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 58:37

very true. Leadership is paramount really is and me put my hand on somebody's shoulder and feeling the love going through my hand that that I that I'm here and I care for them. It goes a long way. It really does. But again, you can talk all you want, you got to be able to walk it. And there's a lot of people that talk it, but they don't walk it. Well, Brad,

Steve Bisson: 58:55

I want to thank you. I know that people don't know a couple of things here. I want to share this because it's funny. I'm in my office, and you're in the next room. And that's the way we're recording it, number one. Number two, there's a great woman in your room with you right now. And it is Lisa. And even though she can't hear me right now, and I know she listens. I want to thank her for being there and being strong. And just ultimately just being a great example for a whole lot of people. And I really appreciate her. Brad, I appreciate you more than you'll ever know. I hope I will have you back on I'm pretty sure I have a few ideas. We'll talk about it.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 59:31

Oh no, it'd be great. And a couple of things released it just because would be remiss if I didn't say one. She also worked 24 years in corrections as a correctional officer and, and a lot of the reason why I haven't had all that love was because of her mother.

Steve Bisson: 59:42

And I knew that but I didn't want to say it. I want to say it's not my news to give, so to speak.

Alden "Brad" Cowen: 59:47

And my friend, Rob Brad, thank you. Thank you, Steve. Thank you for doing your do appreciate.

Steve Bisson: 59:54

Well, that concludes episode 94 of finding your way through therapy. Brad Cohen, thank you again for the interview. Can't wait to have you back on. And that concludes also season seven, I can't believe I conclude season seven already. So on season eight, we're going to have a couple of themes. I'm working on doing interviews with people I've never interviewed before, number one, number two, it will be my 100th episode, it will be in May. And I have a few ideas floating around. I haven't quite put my finger on it yet. But I definitely want you guys to be able to enjoy it, a couple of concept ideas that I have. And that's going to be coming out. In May. Also of note, I will be changing a little bit of the intro and the outro. So I hope you're able to see the difference. I think you're you're gonna like it. But obviously I want you to let me know if you do or not. And finally, again, I never say thank you enough to a great woman that works with me, Laura, who is my editor, and she really gives me good feedback, and gives me ideas and I can't thank her enough she does not like when I do this. I hope that she can doesn't cut it out. But from the bottom of my heart, Laura, I couldn't do this without you. You make me sound professional, you make me sound great. And ultimately your feedback has been a great guide for my work. So thank you, Laura. So I will see you guys for episode 95 and season eight in the next episode. Please like, subscribe or follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful. And as a reminder, this podcast is for information, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor or therapist for consultation.