The Datum Report

Occupation 3314 · Associate professional occupations

Prison service officers (below principal officer)

Half of full-time prison service officers (below principal officer) in the UK earn more than £41,287 a year, and half earn less.

Prison service officers (below principal officer) direct, co-ordinate and participate in guarding inmates and maintaining discipline in prisons and other detention centres.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic requirements for entry, but candidates must pass a pre-entry test and full medical examination. Basic training is followed by a 12 month probationary period during which further on-the-job training is provided. Background checks are required for entrants, and there are generally nationality restrictions and a lower age limit of 18 years.

What the work involves

• escorts prisoners to and from cells and supervises them during meals, recreation and visiting periods
• watches for any infringements of regulations and searches prisoners and cells for weapons, drugs and other contraband items
• guards entrances and perimeter walls
• investigates disturbances or any other unusual occurrences
• escorts prisoners transferred from one institution to another
• runs prisoner rehabilitation and support programmes
• provides care and support to prisoners in custody including prevention of self-harm
• trains and supervises prison staff
• reports on prisoners’ conduct as necessary

Also called

Custodial manager · Prison custodial officer · Prison escort officer · Prison officer · Prison warden

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for prison service officers (below principal officer), full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 2 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Fire service officers (watch manager and below) · Non-commissioned officers and other ranks · Police officers (sergeant and below) · Protective service associate professionals n.e.c.