Being a Prison Director is no ordinary job

As the Prison Director, you step into a world where leadership, compassion, and strategy converge. Your job isn’t just about maintaining order—it’s about shaping a system where safety, dignity, and opportunity coexist.

At the heart of your role is the challenge of balance. The prison’s gates, which you pass through every morning, are not just barriers to prevent escapes but symbols of the safety you work tirelessly to maintain for everyone inside—staff, prisoners, and visitors alike. You oversee a complex network of security protocols, ensuring the prison remains impenetrable to threats while fostering a sense of trust and stability among those within.

 Walking around the prison interacting with staff and prisoners, making sure they are safe, they are within an environment where they feel valued, respected, happy, engaged and they have hope - it's what makes me passionate about my job.

Your day often starts with a team meeting. Here, you connect with officers, healthcare professionals, educators, and administrative staff. Together, you align on priorities, addressing immediate challenges while keeping the long-term vision in sight. As a leader, you inspire your team to see beyond the day-to-day operations, helping them recognize their role in the greater mission: rehabilitating individuals and reducing reoffending.

Walking through the prison wings, you observe first hand how policies turn into action. A prisoner might be attending a vocational training class, learning skills to rebuild their life post-release. Another may be engaged in a counselling session, working through personal challenges that brought them here. These programs are your pride and responsibility—each initiative carefully curated to give prisoners a chance to change their path.

 Being a Prison director comes with significant challenges that require a blend of leadership, strategic thinking, and resilience. Ensuring a secure environment while fostering a rehabilitative culture can be a delicate balancing act.

In your office, you analyse budgets and reports, ensuring resources are allocated wisely. Every decision is critical; a single misstep could disrupt the delicate ecosystem of the prison. But managing resources isn’t just about numbers—it’s about enabling rehabilitation programs, ensuring staff have the tools they need, and maintaining engagement.

Your role also extends beyond the prison walls. Regularly, you engage with probation services, law enforcement, and community organizations. These partnerships are essential for creating a seamless transition for prisoners re-entering society. Representing the prison in public forums, you advocate for the importance of humane treatment and effective rehabilitation, dispelling misconceptions about what life behind bars truly entails.

Evenings often bring moments of reflection. You think about the stories behind the statistics—the prisoners who found hope in an education program, the staff member who thrived because of leadership development, and the family reunited because someone believed in second chances. These are the quiet victories that remind you why you chose this path.

This year HMP Ashfield received ISO 45003 accreditation - the first prison in the world to receive this. The ISO 45003 accreditation is a management system standard that provides guidelines for managing psychosocial risks in the workplace. I’m proud because this confirms our commitment to our staff and how we recognise the psychosocial risk associated within the prison environment, but more importantly, we put strategies in place to minimise the risk and therefore, look after our staff.

Being a Prison Director is no ordinary job. It’s about leading with strength and empathy, ensuring the prison is not just a place of containment but a place of transformation. Every decision you make, every policy you implement, carries the weight of lives and futures. Yet, despite the immense responsibility, you wake up each day ready to meet the challenge, knowing that your efforts shape not just the prison but the community beyond its walls.

Jon Bratt has worked in Serco for justice for 23 years, having joined as a prison officer at HMP Dovegate in 2001. He's now Contract Director at HMP Ashfield, a category-C adult male prison. To switch off he enjoys spending time with his family, holidays, walking, cooking and socialising with friends.