ABSTRACT
The role of the prison officer is a curious mixture of activities that are only found in ‘total institutions’. All the officers who work on the Close Supervision Unit go on a five-day course of which one day is on pro-social modelling. One thing that the training puts great emphasis on is the importance of staff to staff pro-social behaviour and this has increased the positive ethos of the prison and has filtered down through colleagues to offenders. Staff in hostels have the opportunity to engage with residents twenty four hours a day and seven days a week, and therefore have the opportunity to be a constant and powerful pro-social influence. When Probation Service Officers enter the probation service they have a short induction with some basic training and then start working with offenders.
