Written by the D Group
The criminal justice is facing a period of significant pressure and change. As more people are moved out of prison and into community supervision, probation services face increasing demand, while prisons continue to manage a changing population, ageing infrastructure and complex prisoner needs.
However, against this backdrop, there are also emerging examples of best practice which reflect changing expectations and innovation across the system. Our recent roundtable, featuring Dominic Herrington CB, Executive Director Transforming Delivery Directorate, HM Prison and Probation Service, shone a light on recruitment and retention challenges within an increasingly demanding operational environment, and explored what is further needed to strengthen resilience for the future.
Below, we highlight how we can collectively plan for the future workforce, including drawing on private sector expertise and lessons from other sectors to improve delivery across the system.
A workforce under pressure: emerging challenges
The core purpose of prison and probation services is to both protect the public and reduce reoffending through rehabilitation. This high-risk work requires a significant level of both mental and physical resilience, with workers consistently operating in volatile environments. The workforce itself is highly varied and multidisciplinary, extending far beyond traditional perceptions of prison officers and probation practitioners to include psychologists, chaplains, fitness instructors, health professionals, safeguarding specialists and social care practitioners. At the same time, these services are operating amid many of the same pressures facing wider public services, including funding constraints and heightened media scrutiny. In a climate of rising operational complexity and sustained workforce pressures, four major challenges are increasingly shaping the future of the sector:
• A changing workforce demographic – a significant retirement spike is coinciding with changing expectations from a new generation entering the workforce, with younger employees often seeking greater flexibility, faster progression and different workplace cultures. In some cases, they are potentially less likely to view prisons and probation as long-term career pathways in the way previous generations may have done.
• Demand and supply pressures – sentencing changes, rising prison populations and overcrowding continue to intensify pressure across both prisons and probation services.
• The prevalence of what has been termed ‘juniorisation’ – less experienced staff are increasingly being asked to manage highly complex environments, creating capability and resilience gaps at a critical moment for public services.
• Digitalisation requirements – emerging technologies have prompted the need to modernise systems and harness AI, while preserving the fundamentally relational and human nature of prison and probation work.
Underlying these challenges is a rightfully rigorous vetting process designed to maintain the safety, integrity and security of the prison and probation system.
Collectively, these challenges are forcing the sector to confront a much bigger question: as pressures across the justice system continue to grow rather than subside, how do we build a confident, sustainable and future-ready workforce capable of delivering both public protection and meaningful rehabilitation in the decades ahead?
Building resilience through better support and development
It can take months from recruitment to becoming a fully operational prison officer, with the first twelve months proving especially critical in determining whether staff remain within the service long term. As well as efforts to reduce this onboarding timeline, this means that building confidence and resilience, through both first-hand experience and the guidance of experienced managers, is essential.
Roundtable contributors argued that organisations must invest more heavily in preparing staff for the realities of operational environments. With a direct correlation between the extent of prison and probation officers’ experience and institutional violence levels, it is important that staff are exposed to their surroundings quickly. Examples from sectors such as aviation that routinely expose staff to realistic operational simulations before they formally enter high-pressure environments were cited as ways to significantly improve preparedness and confidence among new recruits. Similar approaches within prisons and probation, including immersive familiarisation days, scenario-based exercises and structured mentoring from experienced officers, can help improve early-career retention. There was also strong support for expanding leadership and coaching structures during the early stages of employment, ensuring staff feel supported rather than isolated when entering high-pressure environments.
Several participants reflected that some of the sector’s most successful employees are those who feel a deep sense of purpose and progression within the organisation. One example shared was of a young prison custody officer who progressed into leadership and later led training programmes herself. This pointed towards what can be done to systematically create environments where more individuals can thrive and develop long-term careers, as well as recruiting the right people with the necessary skills to flourish in high-pressure environments.
Reframing the employee proposition
A recurring theme throughout the roundtable was the difficulty in articulating the true value of prison and probation careers as part of the recruitment process.
Many recruits enter the criminal justice profession motivated by a desire to rehabilitate, support vulnerable people and contribute positively to society, with large numbers originating from backgrounds such as psychology, sociology and social care. However, the lived reality of the task at hand can often feel dominated by managing risk, protecting the public and responding to crisis, with this disconnect sometimes resulting in low morale and mismatched expectations.
Closing this gap between expectation and reality will be critical to improving both recruitment and retention – and part of this involves widening the scope of the role beyond narrow perceptions of prison officers or probation practitioners to attract the right people. Participants argued there is great value in reframing the complexity, purpose and societal value of these careers to reflect the varied nature of the role, presenting them as highly skilled professions which combine safeguarding, behavioural understanding, crisis management, rehabilitation and increasingly multidisciplinary support.
There was also strong consensus that the justice sector should continue to engage with future talent much earlier, starting with speaking to those at primary school age, as by the time students reach university, career perceptions are often already formed. Part of this engagement strategy will be reframing the narrative of what a career within the prison and probation service truly entails. Operating alongside sensationalist media coverage that often focuses on failure, violence or crisis, such as the highly publicised recent incident in Wandsworth Prison which resulted in female prison workers facing abuse simply for doing their jobs, the sector’s best stories are often not being told – it is important to continue to communicate the positive impact of transformative work happening across prisons and probation every day. Several contributors suggested social media and digital engagement could play a far greater role in reclaiming the narrative and showcasing progression opportunities and personal impact.
Moving from reactive thinking to long-term reform
Future resilience within HMPPS is dependent on the sector’s ability to think beyond immediate operational challenges and continue building a workforce model grounded in capability, adaptability and trust, which can be challenging within the current climate. At the same time, there was strong recognition across the roundtable that meaningful work is currently underway to build a more sustainable future model for the service.
HMPPS is already developing work to bring together demand, capacity and skills planning into a more unified workforce strategy, alongside initiatives designed to strengthen workforce resilience and progression pathways across both prisons and probation. Existing programmes such as the Enable Programme, designed to improve staff training, retention, and safety, are currently being rolled out in England and Wales to provide mentoring and training, particularly to help officers manage complex relationships with inmates and avoid manipulation.
From an infrastructure perspective, the need for long-term reform is widely recognised. Half of the prison estate is Victorian or older, creating additional operational pressures and limiting opportunities for modern workforce design. The geographical location of many prison facilities presents further workforce challenges, with some institutions located in remote areas where recruitment, retention and accessibility become more difficult. Participants highlighted the importance of future estate planning continuing to consider how physical infrastructure, transport links and local labour markets interact with workforce resilience and successful delivery.
The Ministry of Justice is also progressing major estate and infrastructure reforms, investing nearly £4bn to deliver 14,000 additional prison places across England and Wales by 2031. The New Prisons Programme (NPP), which forms part of this wider investment, aims to modernise prison environments in ways that better support rehabilitation, workforce effectiveness and resilience. These wider estate modernisation efforts are helping to create safer, more efficient and more sustainable working environments, reinforcing broader workforce reform ambitions across the prison and probation system.
Applying best practice at scale
While disparities between national consistency and local autonomy can create unevenness across the system, strong regional examples have the potential to provide scalable models of leadership and best practice that can inform wider reform across prisons and probation services.
Participants reflected that some of the most innovative approaches across the justice system are already being driven at local level, often by ambitious governors, leaders and front-line teams responding creatively to the pressures facing their institutions. The discussion therefore highlighted the importance of striking a better balance between local flexibility and national coordination through shared models of proven success. Rather than individual institutions repeatedly solving similar operational challenges in isolation, the future workforce requires the establishment of clearer shared norms, identifying what works and creating mechanisms to scale successful initiatives more systematically across the system.
There was also strong recognition that the private sector has an important role to play in supporting this process. Participants shared examples from other sectors where innovation is accelerated through controlled pilot environments, allowing organisations to test new approaches before wider implementation. There is an opportunity for similar models to be applied within prisons and probation services, such as trialling emerging technologies and workforce initiatives in a more agile and evidence-led way. Examples raised during the discussion included the potential use of enhanced screening technologies such as X-ray systems within prisons to reduce the grooming of younger, more inexperienced staff, as well as the use of virtual reality and psychological testing within recruitment and training processes to help better prepare staff for operational realities and improving candidate selection.
This of course links to the importance of embedding a more evidence-led philosophy across the wider justice system, ensuring that workforce decisions are informed by data, behavioural evidence and long-term outcomes rather than short-term pressures alone. Whether this includes designing female prison units closer to families and support networks or embedding health specialists and nurses within probation settings to better support individuals experiencing addiction and substance misuse challenges, these creative approaches will be critical to building a more resilient workforce, improving rehabilitation outcomes and ultimately reducing reoffending.
Conclusion
Building a confident, sustainable and resilient prison and probation workforce is a long-term national capability challenge which sits at the heart of public protection, rehabilitation and social stability. While the pressures facing the system are significant, among our roundtable participants there was a strong sense of optimism that meaningful reform is possible, as reflected in clear examples of innovation, leadership and evidence-led thinking.
In an area that continues to attract highly resilient and deeply committed individuals motivated by public service and rehabilitation, the opportunity now lies in creating the conditions for those people to thrive over the long term. This will require sustained investment in workforce support, infrastructure and leadership, alongside a willingness to trial new approaches, learn from other sectors and scale what works.
Image credit: Mara Louvain - AdobeStock
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