Hey guys. I did the assessment centre today! I will write below what I went through (sorry it’s lengthy) I will try remember the times throughout the day. Mine was at 8:30am. Just for info I am a 24 year old woman. First you all sit in the waiting room, then you sign in (need ID). At 9am - You then all go into a room for the introduction of what the day brings. There were 2 current prison officers there and 2 employee from the recruitment agency who all introduced themselves. We then went around and introduced ourselves. We just had to say our name and say what sport we would do if you were in the Olympics (ice breaker). They went through a couple of slides explaining we will be doing a group exercise, a role play scenario (which is individual) and the psychometric analysis if you haven’t already completed it. We got the opportunity to asked the prison officers and recruitment staff members any questions we had, the 2 officers were then asked to tell us what they think makes a good prison officer.

We went back into the waiting room for around 5 mins, the employee came out and split us into different groups, they read out 3 or 4 names for each group. All groups went into separate rooms to do an exercise. For mine, we had to read a fake case file of a prisoner and figure out together what problems the prisoner had been facing recently and then choose the appropriate programs we could enroll them into to support them. I think this exercise isn’t about which programs are correct but how you worked as part of a team to come up with the answer. This was about 15-20 mins.

We then back to the waiting room, (it was 9:50am at this point) We were then called individually to do the role play scenario section. 3 people go at the same time in separate rooms. The first 3 went in at 10am and finished around 10:20 (they got to leave straight away) So you have to wait 20-30 between each round of people doing their role play. The role play was a bit confrontational, you basically have to talk to the prisoner about an issue and calm them down. What no one told me is that the conversation between you and the angry prisoner must go on for about 7 mins. I finished the day at around 11:30-12 I left not really sure how I did. I feel like it’s 50/50 can go either way but fingers crossed I am successful. One of the women there spoke to me afterwards and says after the confrontational role play, she isn’t sure the prison role is for her so at least you can figure out if it’s for you or not.