You want to know what it’s like?
Try walking into a room, alone, with a man who butchered his family with an axe—and reminding yourself that your job is to understand him, not to judge. That the entire point of your presence is not justice. It’s treatment. Therapy. That’s the line we walk. It’s razor thin.
I’ve spent the last twelve years working with the worst society has to offer—men and women whose crimes are so horrific, people flinch when I describe them. Serial killers. Child murderers. Sadists. People who’ve tortured others and smiled. People who think they’re Jesus. People who think you are.
And yet, every day, I put on my badge and I walk through gates that clank shut behind me. Because someone has to talk to these people.
The prison is orderly in structure. Rigid schedules. Concrete. Surveillance. Keys that never leave your hand. But underneath that order, there is a roiling, unpredictable storm of human dysfunction: delusions, rage, shame, terror, trauma. It’s not just dangerous. It’s exhausting.
We separate the “strong” from the “weak.” Not physically, but psychologically. The manipulative, the antisocial, the personality disorders—they go on one ward. The vulnerable—the schizophrenic, the deeply depressed, the intellectually impaired—go on another. This isn’t cruelty. It’s survival. Because the predators will always find prey.
You can see the social dynamics play out like a brutal version of high school—only here, the stakes are teeth knocked out and third-degree chemical burns from fake toothpaste made by a delusional man who thought he was a dentist. That actually happened, by the way.
A schizophrenic who killed someone in a delusional frenzy might get better. With medication, routine, and therapy, the fog can lift. The remorse often floods in. And sometimes, you see a human being again. But personality disorders? That’s a different beast. You can’t medicate antisocial personality disorder. There is no pill for narcissism. Borderline personality disorder doesn’t vanish with a dosage adjustment. It’s like trying to reshape concrete with your bare hands. Slow. Painful. Often fruitless.
And yet, there are exceptions that stay with me. There was a woman—just 19—who had killed her boyfriend. Severely traumatized, molested by her brothers, abandoned by every adult who should’ve protected her. When I met her, she’d scream, fight, self-harm. She literally played hide-and-seek to avoid our sessions. But I stayed consistent. Quiet. Steady. And over time, she changed. I watched someone who was a danger to herself and others become someone I’d hypothetically trust with my child. That’s the power of time, consistency, and therapy—when it works. When the patient wants it to work.
Yes, I know what every patient has done before I meet them. It’s in their file. I read it before we talk. I need to. It colors the dynamic. You can’t pretend otherwise. But my job is to sit with the person who did the act—not just the act itself. That’s hard to explain to outsiders. Like the time a colleague was casually chatting with a patient during a national news broadcast about two missing boys. My colleague, unaware, said, “Can you believe someone would do that to a child?” The man responded: “No. I have no idea.” He had killed three young girls.
That moment—darkly comical, deeply disturbing—shows you how well they can perform sanity. Sometimes it’s an act. Sometimes, it’s not.
I’ve had patients confess to unsolved murders. I’ve looked at the “cold case” calendars they hand out every year and seen a name and a face and remembered a patient saying, “Yeah, I did that.” And I can’t say anything unless there’s imminent harm. Do you know what it’s like to sit with that? To know a family out there is still looking, still hoping—and you might be sitting across from the answer? It wears on you. You either learn to live with it or you don’t.
My husband is a psychologist too. We joke that between the two of us, we probably suspect 70% of the people in any given grocery store. You see patterns. You sense danger where others see politeness. But it also makes you softer in surprising ways. You stop thinking in black and white. You learn to ask: Why? What happened before the crime? What broke? What warped them?
Almost all of them have childhood trauma. Almost all had no chance. Drugs, violence, sexual abuse. There’s no excuse—but there is always a reason. You stop believing in evil. That’s a cartoon word.
I love my job. Genuinely. It’s not adrenaline. It’s not heroism. It’s the puzzle. The humanity buried beneath madness. It’s sitting across from someone who should be unlovable and trying to reach what’s left.
But I also go home. I hug my daughter. I water my plants. I read Stephen King novels and cook dinner. Because if you don’t separate the work from your life, this place will eat you.
Being a prison psychologist doesn’t make you fearless. It just makes you more honest—about the light, the dark, and the gray space we all live in between.