Correctional agencies across the country are constantly being asked to change. Change how officers communicate with incarcerated people. Change approaches to use of force. Emphasize de-escalation. Incorporate procedural justice. Improve interactions with individuals experiencing mental illness. Introduce new policies, new terminology and new expectations.
The typical response is predictable: Develop a training, put staff in a classroom and teach them the new way of doing things. However, there is one problem. You cannot force-feed change in corrections.
Training is undoubtedly important. But we sometimes treat training as though the people receiving it are blank slates. They are not. Every corrections officer walks into a classroom carrying attitudes about incarcerated people, punishment, rehabilitation, management, leadership and the job itself. Veteran officers also bring years of occupational experience and lessons learned from supervisors and co-workers. Those attitudes, beliefs and experiences do not just disappear when the training begins.
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What staff bring into training matters
This issue became particularly clear to me through research my colleagues and I conducted with more than 500 newly hired prison officers in three states.
We were interested in a simple question: What impact do the attitudes officers hold when they enter training have on their receptivity to the training materials?
Before academy training, we measured officers’ attitudes toward rehabilitation and punishment. We then examined how confident they felt after training across a range of correctional responsibilities, including human services, safety, security, custody and the appropriate use of force. [1]
The results were clear.
Officers who entered the academy with stronger rehabilitative attitudes tended to get more out of the training overall. Specifically, they left with greater confidence across both the human-services side of the job and traditional safety, security and custodial responsibilities.
Officers with stronger punitive attitudes showed the opposite pattern. The more strongly they entered training believing that prisons should be harsh and punishment-focused, the less they appeared to gain from the academy across those same areas.
Importantly, this was not limited to rehabilitation or other so-called “soft” responsibilities. The pattern also appeared in areas tied directly to safety, security and custody.
Two officers can sit through the same training and walk away with very different outcomes depending, in part, on the attitudes they brought into the room.
Skepticism is not always resistance to change
That does not mean leaders should assume officers who question new training are simply stubborn, apathetic or unwilling to change. Their concerns may be legitimate. An officer may question whether a new communication strategy is realistic when supervising a crowded housing unit alone. Another may wonder whether new mental health procedures adequately account for manipulation or security concerns. Officers may support de-escalation generally but question whether a particular tactic is appropriate during a rapidly escalating confrontation.
Experienced staff may recognize operational problems that curriculum developers did not anticipate. There is an important difference between an officer saying, “I don’t want to change,” and an officer saying, “I don’t understand how this works under the conditions we actually face.”
Leaders need to know which one they are dealing with.
Diagnose before you prescribe
Before implementing a major training initiative, agencies should understand the workforce that will receive it. Surveys, focus groups and conversations with frontline staff can help identify where skepticism exists and, more importantly, why.
Ask officers: What concerns you about this change? What would make it difficult to implement on your unit? What situations does the new approach fail to address? What would you need to see during training for it to make sense operationally?
Leaders should also watch for warning signs: widespread cynicism, supervisors openly criticizing an initiative, officers describing training as a “check-the-box” exercise or repeated claims that classroom instruction does not reflect institutional realities. These are not necessarily reasons to abandon reform. They are information about what the training needs to address.
Build those concerns into the training
Once leaders understand the source of skepticism, training can be adapted accordingly.
If officers question new mental health practices because they struggle to distinguish behavioral health crises from manipulation, build scenarios around that ambiguity.
If staff believe communication or de-escalation strategies only work under ideal staffing conditions, train them under realistic staffing constraints.
If officers view rehabilitation as something that has little to do with their role, demonstrate how everyday officer interactions can affect institutional behavior, safety and successful reentry.
If staff question changes to force practices because of safety concerns, scenarios should demonstrate when alternatives are appropriate and when immediate intervention remains necessary.
And when officers simply do not understand why a policy or practice is changing, explain the rationale before teaching the mechanics.
The goal is not to let resistance dictate policy. It is to remove unnecessary barriers to employees accepting and applying it.
What happens after training matters
Even excellent training can quickly unravel when officers return to their assignments. An officer can spend several hours learning one philosophy in a classroom and then spend thousands of hours working inside an organizational culture that reinforces another.
Which one do we think will win?
Frontline supervisors are therefore critical.
If officers are trained in de-escalation, supervisors can recognize instances where staff successfully resolve volatile situations without force. If training emphasizes professionalism and communication, those behaviors should become part of everyday coaching and performance discussions. If officers receive new mental health training, supervisors can reinforce it when reviewing difficult encounters.
After incidents, supervisors can ask not only, “Was policy followed?” but also, “How did we get here? What worked? What alternatives were available? What can we learn from this?”
Most importantly, supervisors cannot ridicule or undermine employees for applying the very practices the agency just trained them to use.
Putting it into practice
Consider an agency preparing to introduce several changes: new de-escalation instruction, expanded mental health training and a greater emphasis on professional communication. Rather than immediately pushing everyone through the curriculum, leadership first gathers feedback from frontline officers and supervisors.
They discover different concerns. Staff believe some scenarios assume unrealistic staffing. Others question how the mental health guidance applies to incarcerated people who may also be assaultive. Some supervisors are unclear about what the agency expects employees to do differently.
That information should shape implementation.
Scenarios can reflect actual staffing conditions. Mental health training can include situations involving simultaneous behavioral health and security concerns. Frontline officers can help identify realistic scenarios. Supervisors can receive advance instruction on what is changing, why it is changing and how they should reinforce it afterward.
The goals of the training have not changed. But the agency is no longer simply delivering information and hoping it sticks.
Before you roll out new training
Before prescribing a solution, find out what your officers think could stand in the way.
Training is part of change, not the entirety of it
Corrections has invested enormous attention in what officers are taught: how many hours they receive, which topics are covered and what techniques instructors use. Those questions matter. But leaders should also ask:
Are the people receiving the training receptive to what we are trying to teach them, and if not, why?
The answer may reveal resistance. It may also reveal legitimate concerns about staffing, safety, leadership or operational realities. Either way, leaders need to know.
Meaningful reform requires more than changing policies and lesson plans. It requires understanding how employees interpret change, addressing the concerns standing in its way and ensuring the culture officers return to reinforces what they were taught.
Training can help create change. But it cannot force-feed it.
Reference
1. Burton AL, Jonson CL, Miller WT, Wang J. (2024). Attitudinal schemas and academy training receptivity: A quasi-experimental study of prison officers. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 21(2), 599–623.
