Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the suggestion by the Howard League for Penal Reform that prison officer training should be developed into a vocational degree.

Currently, initial training of newly recruited prison officers begins with an eight week Prison Officer Entry Level Training (POELT) course. This includes two weeks officers spend in their prison, an induction week and a week of prison based learning. The training provides new officers with a foundation level of training in all core skill areas including interpersonal skills, mental health awareness, equality, violence reduction and safer custody, alongside the more traditional security awareness and practical skills needed to be a prison officer.

In recognition of the complexity of the role of a prison officer, NOMS plans to increase initial training to twelve weeks. Newly recruited officers will spend 10 weeks at a NOMS learning centre and 2 weeks at their designated prison. This revised course will have an expanded content in relation to safer custody and mental health issues, and there will be a bespoke supporting qualification aimed to prepare new entrant officers to deliver in a rehabilitative culture. There will be more emphasis on building stronger staff-prisoner relationships, with prison officers acting as motivating role models and positively reinforcing values, attitudes and behaviours in order to change their lives.

NOMS attaches great importance to the continuing professional development of prison officers, and the range of learning and development opportunities available to staff supports this. NOMS provides specialist training in areas such as Offender Management, Safer Custody, Use of Force, Hostage Negotiator and Intelligence while generic training is available via Civil Service Learning. Each prison is responsible for assessing the training needs of its officers in order to achieve its business objectives.

The content of all NOMS’ learning programmes is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect policy and legislative changes and the changing needs of the organisation. We are adopting a more flexible approach to learning, for example, e-learning has been introduced to support face to face learning programmes; prison officers complete knowledge based workbooks during their initial training.

There are currently no plans to consider a vocational degree programme for prison officer training.