This study aims to examine how practitioner advisory boards (PABs) can translate frontline correctional expertise into practical, pilotable wellness initiatives for correctional officers (COs).
PABs consisting of ten corrections professionals from Tennessee jails and South Carolina prisons were convened to identify barriers to officer wellness and develop feasible intervention strategies. PAB sessions were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.
PAB members identified barriers involving stigma, trust, confidentiality, leadership support and access. These insights produced three pilotable initiatives: a statewide wellness survey for Tennessee jail officers, a postcritical-incident seminar for South Carolina prison officers and a servant leadership program for Tennessee county jails.
Findings derive from a small, purposively selected advisory board and reflect practitioner perspectives rather than causal estimates of intervention effectiveness. Results are context-bound to participating jurisdictions. Future research should replicate PAB processes across additional correctional systems and quantitatively evaluate whether PAB-derived enablement conditions predict sustained wellness engagement and improved workforce health outcomes.
Findings show that PABs can convert frontline insight into actionable and measurable wellness strategies that better align with correctional work conditions.
Improving CO wellness has implications for institutional safety, workforce stability and the broader health of custodial environments. Embedding practitioner voices into wellness design may reduce stigma, increase trust and promote sustainable engagement with supports, benefiting both staff wellbeing and correctional system functioning.
The study demonstrates the value of PABs as a participatory mechanism for developing CO wellness initiatives grounded in operational realities.
