Correctional Officer Wellness Project presents: Building a Comprehensive Mental Health Program. As the criminal justice reform movement is taking shape with bipartisan efforts to effect change, lasting systemic reform can only occur through approaches that address the mental health crisis facing correctional officers today. Comprehensive mental health programs need to address a number of unique challenges facing correctional officers, including privacy concerns, whole-family impacts, and need for sustained mental health care through retirement. Above all, programs must include the flexibility to adapt to new information as more surveys and studies are conducted to determine what’s working and what isn’t—and as more correctional officers come forward seeking help.

The crisis of correctional officer (CO) mental health is reaching a breaking point. Correctional Officer Wellness Project: Solutions offers approaches that can help address these challenges. Administrators need to do more than just make these solutions available—they need to work to create a culture where mental health care is encouraged and valued. Long-term, lasting reform cannot be achieved through tactical shifts alone, but requires psychological, cultural, and strategic change as well.

Correctional Officers’ Perceptions of Training and Organizational Values provides facts from a national scan conducted by Improving Institutional Corrections Academy Training, consisting of on-site observations, surveys, and curriculum evaluations. It examines training academies' focus, content, and quality and develop guidance for building and supporting correctional staff to increase public safety by improving outcomes across the corrections community.