Reducing reoffending
Overview
The key to reducing reoffending is ensuring that our prison leavers are well-equipped for life on release. This means:
- engaging prisoners in education and training opportunities whilst in prison
- supporting them into suitable jobs and housing on release
- addressing their addictions and other health needs, which may be driving their offending behaviour
Our roles improve the support available to prisoners in these areas, ultimately enabling our service to prevent victims by changing lives and reducing reoffending.
Things you need to know
Reducing Reoffending is a government priority. We are introducing the Resettlement Passport to ensure that prison leavers have everything they need on release, which will help improve their access to things like employment, housing and essential services. The resettlement worker role will play a crucial part in delivering this existing new initiative.
As a Resettlement Passport resettlement worker, you will:
- make a genuine difference to the lives of people leaving prison
- provide administrative support to create, populate, coordinate and issue each prisoner’s resettlement passport
- ensure recorded data is accurate and adhere to data security regulations
- work with a range of colleagues and partner agencies across prisons and probation to gather information and documentation for each passport
- embed and implement this exciting new project
You may occasionally work directly with prisoners but mostly this is administrative in nature.
Essential skills and experience:
You will need to have great people and organisational skills. This post would be ideal for a high-calibre administrator.
You will also need to:
- possess excellent organisational skills and attention to detail
- be a clear and confident communicator
- be comfortable working collaboratively, with partners and colleagues across the criminal justice system
- be able to work independently and at speed, effectively managing your workload
- have strong IT skills
- be genuinely interested in the resettlement needs of prisoners and have a desire to improve their chances of success
As a health and justice partnership coordinator, your work will support people to access and engage with treatment and health care services while they are in prison and after they have transitioned back into the community on their release.
You will work closely with operational managers, policy leads, commissioners, providers, and people in prison to identify needs, review existing pathways and build partnerships. In this lead role, you will develop knowledge and build expertise within the business to promote solutions that reduce reoffending and improve prisoners’ continuity of care.
Watch our Applicant information session: Health and justice lead on Microsoft Teams.
Essential skills and experience
You will need to have:
- worked with prisoners or those engaged in the criminal justice system
- experience of working across stakeholder groups and other government departments
- excellent influencing skills
- demonstrable achievements in managing or supporting change and effecting improvements in quality and efficiency
- experience of proactively championing diversity and inclusiveness
As a drug strategy lead, you will:
- provide strategic and operational direction on the prison drug strategy to reduce substance misuse in prisons
- be responsible for the delivery of the HMPPS Drug Strategy and the associated Guidance and Good Practice in prisons
- ensure there is a comprehensive range of activities to tackle addiction.
To deliver the strategy effectively, you will have to develop good relationships with HMPPS, drug and alcohol agencies and other commissioners.
Essential skills and experience
We would love to hear from you if you have a strong understanding of the criminal justice system and have developed drug strategies within a prison setting.
- experience in delivering projects within set time frames
- experience in developing cross-agency projects
- strong communication skills
- experience in developing collaborative and partnership working with senior stakeholders
- organisation and problem-solving skills
As a strategic housing specialist, you will:
- improve accommodation outcomes for prisoners
- identify prisoners’ barriers and develop and implement solutions to overcome these by working with others
- act as the subject matter expert on housing and homelessness for our various stakeholders – the prison senior management team, Commissioned Rehabilitative Services, other prison resettlement agencies, local authorities, outreach services, supported accommodation providers, and private landlords
The role does not involve working directly with prisoners, but instead, you will coordinate the strategic response to prison housing issues. For example, you will coordinate local authority panel meetings on forthcoming releases, identify new or under-used housing providers, and review and improve processes within a prison. You will also deliver training or communications to enhance staff and prisoners’ housing knowledge and develop new initiatives that improve prison leavers’ chances of securing accommodation.
As each prison and region have differing housing issues, your work will need to reflect local needs.
Learn more about the strategic housing specialist role on our digital information session.
Essential skills and experience
We would love to hear from you if you are a subject matter expert on housing and homelessness (including prison resettlement issues).
You will need to be a confident communicator. You must also have:
- experience of working towards and exceeding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or targets
- a track record of being able to identify and analyse problems, provide solutions, and implement changes to systems or processes
- the ability to use data to analyse issues, to identify needs and trends
- a collaborative approach
- a proven track record of engaging stakeholders and achieving their buy-in
Joining HMPPS to work in an education, skills and work role is hugely rewarding and offers you the chance to really make a difference by reducing reoffending. Learn more about the variety of roles and apply.
The salaries for these roles are:
- employment lead – £31,924 – £36,715 (National) / £34,296 – £40,863 (London)
Employee benefits
Working for HMPPS comes with a range of great benefits, including:
- 25 days’ annual leave, increasing to 30 days after five years’ service – plus eight public holidays and service days
- an attractive occupational pension (Local Government Pension Scheme)
- a wide range of other Civil Service benefits, including childcare vouchers, a cycle to work scheme and travel loans
You will need to provide:
- a CV including details of any relevant qualifications and experience. To ensure our recruitment process is fair, you will need to anonymise your CV
- several short-written statements in your application
You will need to answer questions that outline your previous experience.
The ‘Great Place to Work for Veterans‘ initiative includes a guaranteed interview scheme for those who meet the minimum criteria to provide eligible former members of the Armed Forces with opportunities to secure rewarding jobs in the Civil Service.
In this way, veterans continue to serve their country, and we bring highly skilled individuals with a broad range of experiences into the Civil Service – an environment, which recognises and values previous service in the Armed Forces.
If you have query about the application process, please contact our recruitment centre on 0345 241 5358 or by emailing MoJ Recruitment.
View jobs and apply
Find the Reducing Reoffending jobs near you and apply now.
Jobs are posted on a regular basis, if the role you are looking for is not currently here, please check again soon.
Head of education skills and work