For 23 years, I have researched, built training curricula and wellness programs, and provided training and clinical services to correctional staff. After decades of hearing correctional professionals across job roles and ranks describe the unvarnished realities of their work, one conclusion is unavoidable: meaningful prison reform cannot succeed unless we first invest in the health and resilience of correctional staff.
We say we want prison reform, and in principle there is broad agreement on what that entails: humane living conditions, reduced violence, effective rehabilitation, and services that enable people to serve their sentences constructively, and return to the community in better condition than when they entered custody.
Yet despite decades of commissions, reports, and policy initiatives, durable reform remains elusive. The problem is not a shortage of recommendations; it is our persistent failure to confront fundamental realities of how prisons actually operate.
Prisons are run by people. And the people who most directly determine whether reform succeeds or fails are correctional officers.
Correctional officers interact with incarcerated individuals more than any other professional group—every hour of every day. We charge them with serving as safety and security enforcers, first responders, emergency medical personnel, mediators, teachers, mentors, counselors, and prosocial role models. We expect impeccable self-control under stress or provocation, sound judgment in life-or-death situations, emotional intelligence, ethical fortitude, and the consistent application of trauma-informed principles. In short, we rely on correctional officers as the primary delivery system for reform.
Yet the conditions under which they work routinely undermine the feasibility of that expectation. Officers contend with relentless operational stressors—understaffing, mandatory overtime, shift work, policy changes, equipment failures.
These demands are layered onto organizational stressors, such as interpersonal conflict, investigations, and a perceived lack of procedural justice, as well as traumatic stressors, including repeated exposure to violence, injury, and death. The result is a high-demand, low-control, low-support environment marked by chronic trauma.
Training shortfalls compound the problem. Due to staffing and budget pressures, both initial academies and ongoing professional development are often minimal. In one multi-system analysis, nearly half of surveyed correctional academies reported training durations of only weeks to a few months, while other countries invest years in developing correctional professionals.
The consequences are predictable and well documented. Correctional officers experience alarmingly high rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, substance use disorders, and sleep disruption—exceeding those seen in other first-responder professions. Their physical health outcomes are poorer than those of the general population, suiciderisk and rates are frighteningly elevated, and life expectancy is reduced.
We continue to understaff, undertrain, and overwhelm correctional officers—only to express disappointment when reform initiatives struggle to take hold. Every reform outcome policymakers seek—reduced violence, fewer uses of force, expanded programming, improved reentry outcomes—depends on staff capacity. Reform cannot succeed when officers are poorly trained, exhausted, depressed, traumatized, or barely able to stay awake during their shifts.
This is not a competitionbetween staff wellbeing and incarcerated people’s rights. Their wellbeing is interdependent. Healthy, supported, well-trained officers create calmer, safer, and more humane environments. Exhausted and unsupported officers cannot, no matter how committed they may be.
The most important investment we can make in prison reform is the physical and psychological health of correctional staff. That means adequate staffing and humane scheduling that eliminate extreme overtime; comprehensive, evidence-based training academies; training in supportive leadership; ongoing development in communication, emotional intelligence, and resilience; data-driven staff wellness programming that is assessed, resourced, and adjusted based on outcomes; trauma-informed supervision; affordable, stigma-free mental health support; and organizational cultures that foster dignity, competence, and professional pride.
Prison reform does not fail because it is impossible. It fails because we continue to treat the workforce that carries it out as peripheral rather than a strategic priority. Until staff wellbeing is treated as core infrastructure—planned, funded, measured, and sustained—reform will remain precarious. As 2026 unfolds, all stakeholders can strengthen the prospects of meaningful prison reform by investing first in the workforce on which every reform effort depends.
Caterina Spinaris, PhD, LPC, is the founder and executive director of Desert Waters Correctional Outreach, a Colorado nonprofit dedicated to the wellbeing of correctional and other public safety professionals.
