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Want to show you can drive change? Start by changing prisons

Luke, 2021 cohort

Want to show you can drive change? Start by changing prisons

Influence policy Back to top

At Unlocked Graduates, we are not just looking for people who can be brilliant prison officers – we are looking for people who can lead system change as well.

As well as supporting individual prisoners, we want our prison officers to be involved in shaping prison culture and changing their institutions – identifying the changes that can have an impact across the prison they work in and beyond.

Become a policy advisor

The Unlocked programme opens up an array of career opportunities. Hear how Unlocked Ambassador Dre landed a Policy Advisor role in the public sector, thanks to his frontline experience working on prison landings.

Every participant has a dedicated Mentoring Prison Officer who provides support and challenges them to identify opportunities to drive change. The programme also includes several different routes to influencing policy and practice – both in and out of prison:

  • Participants on the Unlocked programme have the opportunity to take a policy lens approach to their second-year research project. A selection of participant research papers will be published in a special edition of the Prison Service Journal. This offers the chance to have a system-wide impact across the country – contributing to a unique body of knowledge developed by prison officers on the frontline in prison.
  • We also offer a number of work placements in the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS during the second year for those participants who are particularly interested in how policy is developed. This is part of a wide range of different work placements we provide.
  • Our Innovation Acceleration Programme enables us to provide funding for new initiatives that prison officers would like to pilot in their establishments. Each project is assessed for its capacity to help reduce prisoner reoffending, and whether it can be effectively replicated in other prisons.

In the new machine age, the skills that will be important for successful careers will be problem solving, flexible thinking, creativity and emotional intelligence. Unlocked Graduates will develop each of these capabilities very quickly, making them very attractive to organisations such as EY.

Riaz Shah, Partner, Global Talent, EY
Play the video “Elden’s route into policy”

Elden’s route into policy

Unlocked Ambassador Elden speaks about his experiences on the Unlocked Graduates Leadership Development Programme, which equipped him with the policy knowledge and skills to land a Policy Lead role at the Ministry of Justice.

Read about one of our officer’s work placement in the Ministry of Justice.

Find out more about the range of work placements we offer.