Virginia Barber: "The prisoners who do not rehabilitate are a much smaller percentage than people believe"

The Lanzarote native has finished her vacation on the island giving a talk last Thursday at the Nautical Club of Arrecife

Eider Pascual

Journalist

September 4 2023 (20:08 WEST)
Virginia Barber on the terrace of the Gran Hotel in Arrecife (Photo: José Luis Carrasco)
Virginia Barber on the terrace of the Gran Hotel in Arrecife (Photo: José Luis Carrasco)

Virginia Barber, from Lanzarote, has an extensive professional career in New York, the city where she lives and works as a forensic psychologist. She has worked as Clinical Director in the Mental Health Unit of the Rikers Island jail, one of the most dangerous in the United States.

In her meeting with La Voz during her vacation on the island, she confesses that "I have left my job at the Rikers Island jail." After "eight years as director of mental health in NY jails," she is now dedicated to "advising the mental health departments of jails in other states throughout the country," she says.

In her latest book, 'Beyond Good and Evil: Experiences of a Forensic Psychologist' published in 2019, which she presented last Thursday at the Real Club Náutico de Arrecife with an interesting talk, she recounts many of the stories she has lived during her years as a worker in penitentiary centers.

"First, I led a team of 250 people, and then I went to 400, including psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, social workers, etc.," she reveals. Our mission was to "create rehabilitation programs and work on suicide prevention in the jail," considering that "Rikers Island had a high suicide rate," she adds.

Her day-to-day in jail was full of surprises. "Even if I had a plan for the day, if there was a crisis, we had to act," but all with "a lot of clinical supervision," she acknowledges.

"The prisoners who do not rehabilitate are a much smaller percentage than people believe."

Reintegration is one of the objectives in which the forensic psychologist "firmly believes." "I have seen it and lived it," she affirms. One must realize that "many reoffend because they do not have sufficient resources," she assures. "The prisoners who do not rehabilitate are a much smaller percentage than people believe," Barber urges reflection.

A job in which she has learned to "not judge" the prisoners and "respect their dignity," realizing that "people are not what they are in the worst period of their lives," she clarifies. "My job is not to judge, it is to try to go beyond the good or bad behavior they may have committed and try to understand who is behind each crime," she reveals.

Of the cases she has treated throughout her professional career, the ones that have impacted her the most have been "sexual assaults against children," with which she has "struggled to work with the cases and particularly, the patients," she assures. Among the "most surprising that I have treated and included in my book" are: "a man with a psychotic episode who committed homicide against a member of his family and a schizophrenic patient with whom I worked when I was very young and then I met him again fifteen years later and he had tried to kill his brother," she confesses. "They have reached me because of the severity of the crime and because of the connection I have had with the patient," she points out.

"My work has always required a lot of responsibility" since, from it, "the life of many people depends," she asserts. "I feel proud to have achieved it," she affirms. Although I admit that "it has been very hard." "The first months in jail I had a lot of anxiety, I couldn't sleep at night and I thought I wasn't prepared for something like that," she adds.

"The first months in jail I had a lot of anxiety, I couldn't sleep at night and I thought I wasn't prepared for something like that."

To overcome and cope with the pressure that my work entails, "I have gone to therapy and clinical supervision, in addition to the talks with colleagues," she says. She recognizes that "the greatest danger you face when working in these environments is that they can desensitize and dehumanize you," she confesses. What is known in psychology as 'vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue', an emotional exhaustion produced by being in continuous contact with the emotions of others and with their life situations, which are usually complicated. Something that many times, "prevents you from having that compassion and empathy," she clarifies.

Facing an assault in her first intervention in a forensic psychiatric hospital was what the Lanzarote native had to experience. A woman assaulted her with a metal chair while she was treating a patient. "She entered the room where I was consulting," she points out. "It was very unpleasant, but that didn't make me leave the profession," she comments. A positive process since it is "the only assault I have had during my years of profession," she acknowledges.

Her work is based on treating patients with mental illnesses and in a country like the United States, which is the most medicated with drugs like antidepressants, it is something she is aware of. "In recent years there has been an overuse of anxiolytics and antidepressants," specifically, "stimulants in attention deficit and hyperactivity." "You have to respect them, they have addictive power and side effects," she warns. "If you could have quick access to psychological treatment, you would use much less drugs," she claims.

"In recent years there has been an overuse of anxiolytics and antidepressants."

Another of the human dramas that the United States suffers is that of immigration, something that is also closely linked to the Canary Islands. In another of her publications called 'Mental Health Evaluations in Immigration Courts: A Guide for Mental Health and Legal Professionals', she compiles the way "on how to perform psychological evaluations in immigration courts to migrants who arrive in the United States," she summarizes. It is "a legal criterion for them to achieve political asylum" and it must be "determined if there has been trauma or psychological damage in the country of origin," she details.

"I work with people from El Salvador who escape the country because of the persecutions of the mafias," she says. "They do it escaping from extreme violence," she assures. The "trauma of their migratory history, the journey to reach the U.S. with days crossing the desert on foot and the discrimination and difficulties they suffer upon arrival having to acclimate to a different culture" comes together, she adds.

A perfect book "to guide other mental health professionals on how to perform those psychological evaluations," Barber details.

Her roots in Lanzarote and her trip to New York

Originally from Lanzarote, she studied clinical psychology in Madrid and there she began to feel curious about forensic studies. "I didn't know that forensic psychology existed, I did an internship in a drug addiction center in Vallecas and I realized that my patients were drug addicts and had been in jail," she details. "That's when I started to investigate the relationship between the two causes."

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Virginia Barber on the terrace of the Gran Hotel in Arrecife (Photo: José Luis Carrasco)

Shortly after, in a "moment of crisis and not knowing what to do," she took the step of "moving to New York for three months to learn English," she recounts. With the help of her uncle who had lived in California "I looked for a residence and academy and went there," she remembers. City in which she discovered her vocation by "mere chance." "I went as a listener to a forensic psychology class, and I saw that it was what I wanted to dedicate myself to," she affirms. After the talk, she was encouraged to "do a master's degree in forensic psychology and until now."

Although remembering, her love for the profession came much earlier. "My mother reminds me that when I was very young, just in the time when there was a heroin epidemic, we went to the Las Dominicas school in Arrecife and when I saw two or three people gathered consuming, I asked many questions," she reveals. In addition, "I was always very interested in studying psychology and law, a fusion that I managed to find during the master's degree," she adds.

"I miss Lanzarote, my family and friends a lot," she affirms. "I have been on vacation on the island for a month," in which "I have rested a lot and I am already returning to New York," she confesses to La Voz. Without a doubt, what she appreciates most is "the sacrifice of her family, their economic support and especially the emotional one." With everything she has achieved, "now they are very proud," she concludes.

"I miss Lanzarote, my family and friends a lot."

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