About
Unlocked Graduates is working to break cycles of reoffending by identifying brilliant people and supporting them to spend two years working as frontline prison officers. We challenge them to come up with new ideas to improve the way prisons work across the country.
The Unlocked Graduates programme was one of the key recommendations of the Coates’ Review of prison education. The report argued that education needs to be put at the heart of the prison service if Government is serious about the rehabilitation of prisoners. It also called for the creation of a new scheme to encourage graduates from top universities to work as prison officers for an initial period of two years.
Unlocked Graduates was launched in 2016 to answer this challenge. Our programme has now been running for over three years across London, the South East, West Midlands and North West of the UK.