I agree that first year syndrome is probably the dominant issue here. This is especially the case, as others have observed, when you are in a profession that exposes you to extremes of human behavior.

I would like to add an observation, albeit from a different field, that is perhaps somewhat relevant here. When I worked with adults who had been mandated into residential treatment for mental illness (usually for inability to care for themselves, rather than being deemed actively dangerous to themselves or others), I was initially very overwhelmed by the degree of power we had over these individuals. For example, we made clinical judgements about how much access they had to the outside community and how much of their own money they could hold at a given time. Much later I began to see this type of power as unjust in many circumstances (though necessary in some). At first, however, when I was very self-conscious at the gap between my competance and the responsibilities that power gave me, I was more apt to rationalize and justify it. Moreover, I noticed that I and my colleagues frequently had an attitude toward our clients (when they weren't around to hear us) that was not very respectful and that wavered on the line between professional jargon and demeaning language.

My theory is that we engaged in this type of behavior because we had somehow to ease the stress caused by the cognitive dissonance of being imbued with a great deal of power and feeling on some level that there was something problematic about that power (for whatever reason, be it matters of justice or inexperience). Also, while we had a lot of surface powers, we were also very vulnerable (to our clients, to the legal system if anything went wrong with them), so we also had to make ourselves feel more secure by making our clients feel more classifiable and explainable than they really were. Less human, even.

I'm guessing that this may be a factor in the sister's behavior as well. She's in a position of great power over and vulnerability to other people. She may be using the language that is bothering the LW so much as a way of making her charges seem less frightening, her position over them more managable. She may also have some sense of cognitive dissonance about the meaning of the role she has taken on, and at this point needs to rationalize and justify it in its entirety rather than taking a closer look at what she likes about it and what she might want to confront critically. Either way, unless she is an insecure person by nature or someone who does not like to examine things very honestly or in much detail, her behavior will probably mellow out with time. It probably won't disappear entirely -- becoming a cop is just too much of a meaning-laden transformation in our culture, I think, for that -- but it will probably seem less extreme as time goes on.

If it doesn't, I'd worry. The people I knew who didn't get over this type of thing in the first year or so were the ones who stayed in the field precisely because they enjoyed the power to dehumanize.

It is a sure sign to me that we live in an age of conditioned, visceral fear that so many people are so willing to proclaim that this man "deserved" five weeks in prison and multiple rapes because of either what he did or what degree of remorse we think he demonstrated.

We are afraid because we don't want to be like the ones who are imprisoned and tortured and raped in our names.

We are afraid because on some level we know it could happen to us.

The author makes himself vulnerable to us by telling us about his experiences and for some of us this triggers an absolute need to dominate: to designate him an inferior, worthy of the worst kind of brutality. That's what happens to "those" people, right? The ones so completely unlike ourselves that we can call them names and scoff at their suffering with impunity, without feeling compassion or sympathy? That's what we like to say to victims of all stripes, isn't it? That it was their fault? That they deserved what they got? Because if that is true we don't have to worry about being victims someday ourselves, and we certainly don't have to take a long hard look at how our own behavior helps support a system that allow this type of brutality to keep happening again and again and again.