What do the most effective prison officers do? We’ve observed and spoken with officers, studied analyses of public service work (notably Teach Like a Champion), and drawn on Unlocked Graduates’ decade of experience training prison officers. In Leading Prison Landings, we share the results: 24 strategies officers can use to make their wing safer, happier, and more rehabilitative.
The strategies are organised around four endemic challenges – problems all officers face, no matter where they work, who they work with, and how experienced they are:
- Maintaining effective presence and language
- Preventing and addressing conflict
- Promoting change
- Sustaining yourself
In this post, we’ll look at the 24 strategies and show how they help officers address these four challenges.
I – Effective presence and language
Our first three strategies cover simple, physical ways to maximise officers’ presence on the wing and help prisoners recognise their confidence and authority. This isn’t just a way to project power though. Skilful use of these strategies helps officers preserve the safety of prisoners and the wing through dynamic security: an environment of calm and safety derived from officers’ awareness of what’s going on and their engagement and relationships with prisoners. These strategies – and this environment of safety – act as a foundation for more ambitious subsequent strategies
| 1. Radar and be seen looking | Maintaining constant awareness of what’s going on around you, by scanning frequently and showing you’re doing this, so prisoners know you’re aware of their behaviour. |
| 2. Assertive body language | Standing in a confident, balanced and relaxed posture. |
| 3. Strong voice | Using an authoritative tone and measured pace to speak. |
These first three strategies are focused on the physical: how officers look, stand and move. The next three are about language. They are ways to communicate ideas, instructions and changes to prisoners clearly and positively.
| 4. Clear directions | Providing specific, observable instructions that tell prisoners exactly what to do |
| 5. Purpose not power | Emphasising that your decisions, actions and requests are guided by aims and rules – by purposes – not by your will and authority. |
| 6. Code switching | Changing your tone and word choice between casual and formal registers in order to convey your intent and the role you’re playing more effectively. |
These strategies provide a basis for any interaction. For example, we can use radar to observe the area we’re in, and code switching to convey the appropriate tone, whether we are asking a prisoner to go back to their cell, discussing their goals during a key work session, or monitoring the landing during association. With these basics in place, we can go on to look at more complicated goals.
II – Preventing and addressing conflict
The next five strategies are ways to prevent conflict. They allow officers to ensure safety and enforce authority effectively but warmly, minimising conflict and resistance
| 7. Warm/firm | Blending the firmness needed to hold prisoners to account and bring out the best in them, with the warmth needed to build strong relationships. |
| 8. Pre-empting problems | Spotting potential issues before they emerge, then reminding or redirecting the prisoner to prevent it from occurring. |
| 9. Least invasive intervention | Addressing a prisoner’s behaviour using a less confrontational and controlling approach. |
| 10. Emotional constancy | Limiting how much you display your emotions, to project calm, maturity and authority. |
| 11. Giving effective consequences | Narrating the situation, assuming positive intent, and choosing words to de-escalate the situation. |
The following five strategies are specific de-escalation approaches. They are approaches designed to help when a prisoner is angry, upset or in conflict in some way.
| 12. Create space to de-escalate | Separating a prisoner from an incident, allowing them to calm down and discuss de-escalation with us. |
| 13. Identify wants | Finding out what’s driving prisoners’ actions, by asking them or observing non-verbal cues. |
| 14. Tactical agreement | Agreeing with a point, complaint or concern raised by a prisoner, as a step in the de-escalation process. |
| 15. Clarify expectations | Stating exactly what you want to see prisoners doing. |
| 16. Give choices | Inviting prisoners to commit to acting appropriately, and to give them some control over what happens next. |
These strategies should help officers to enforce rules and maintain order, while avoiding conflict and building better relationships. All the strategies introduced so far should help us to ensure safety and build better relationships on the wing. Next, we turn to strategies intended to support prisoners to make changes.
III – Promoting change
These strategies are intended to build better relationships and help prisoners choose, plan, act on, and learn from changes.
| 17. Active listening | Attending to the speaker’s words and focusing, not on responding to those words, but on understanding what they’re saying and thinking. |
| 18. Socratic questions | Helping prisoners think through their actions, choices and questions. |
| 19. Negative to positive | Redirecting prisoners’ negative thoughts towards realistic optimism and positive action. |
| 20. Commitment to change | Moving towards action by building motivation to change and developing concrete plans to act. |
| 21. Setting goals and recognising progress | Helping prisoners choose manageable, meaningful goals and celebrating their success in meeting them. |
| 22. Precise praise | Identifying a prisoner’s progress and giving them positive feedback about exactly what they’re doing right. |
| 23. Rolling with resistance | Responding to resistance calmly and curiously: removing your emotions and trying to understand and influence the prisoner better. |
IV – Sustaining yourself
Finally, we focus on the importance of looking after yourself, both for officers’ own sake, and for the sake of the prisoners in their care.
| 24. Sustain yourself and build to impact | Managing your emotions, sticking to your standards, looking after yourself, and working to increase your impact. |
Conclusion
Together, these strategies help officers successfully address the four challenges and build a wing which works better for prisoners and officers. Learning new strategies takes time and effort. Leading Prison Landings includes everything officers need: explanations of when and why the strategy works, examples and video models, detailed guidance, and practice activities for individuals and groups. We hope it will help new and experienced officers to refine their practice and increase their impact.
If you found this interesting…
You may appreciate the book: Leading prison landings: the Unlocked guide to jailcraft.
Previous posts explained how and why the book codifies effective prison work and the principles of effective prison work.
My final post in this series will look at the impact of effective prison work.