ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1656223
This article is part of the Research TopicPathways to Mental Health Resilience in Emergency Personnel: Protective Strategies and Occupational ChallengesView all articles
Reflecting the voices of prison officers with respect to their support, supervision, and wellbeing training needs: A reflexive thematic analysis
Provisionally accepted
- The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
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Prisons represent a signi-cant public health concern. The challenging living and working conditions within prisons are widely acknowledged to contribute to elevated rates of ill health among both prisoners and prison of-cers. Of-cers hold a vital role in supporting individuals in custody. However, the intense pressures associated with the role, compounded by toxic workplace cultures, are frequently reported to negatively impact their wellbeing. This deterioration not only affects of-cers personally but can also compromise the effective functioning of the prison service.While structured support systems exist to meet the rehabilitation and care needs of prisoners, equivalent care and professional support for prison of-cers remains inadequate and insuf-ciently prioritised. A total of 27 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with both former and current prison of-cers to explore their subjective experiences and to collaboratively identify the support, supervision, and wellbeing training needs arising from their roles. A process of reflexive thematic analysis was adopted. Six main themes were constructed from the data analysis: 1) responsible recruitment, training, and development 2) dual duty of care 3) acknowledgement of psychological hardship 4) superficial support systems 5) collaborative cultural change 6) components of a good model of practice. This study highlights the urgent need for reform in how prison of-cers are supported and serves as a framework for the development of more effective support structures. It also contributes to the growing body of literature by deepening our understanding of the emotional labour inherent in the role and the associated psychological impact.Furthermore, it acknowledges the wider societal implications of these -ndings, emphasising that supporting prison of-cers is a matter of institutional responsibility and a critical public health concern.
Keywords: Prison officer wellbeing, Prison officer support, Prison officer supervision, Prison cultures, prison officer culture
Received: 29 Jun 2025; Accepted: 28 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Forsyth, Shaw and Shepherd. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Joanne Forsyth, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
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