These are volatile times for prisons in England and Wales, with overcrowding and record levels of violence. Can a new scheme that aims to do what Teach First did in schools change things from the inside?

Less than a month after Jack started his job, he walked in on a man slashing his arm with a razor. Jack is 23, with a degree in arts and sciences from University College London. He is also a prison officer at Brixton prison.

“I had a good childhood and upbringing. I’ve never come into contact with people like this before,” he says, gazing around the prison wing at the prisoners shouting across the landings and hovering nearby, in vigilant groups. “When I told my family and friends I wanted to be a prison officer, they were shocked and horrified. Mostly, they were worried about my safety.”

Jack has been at Brixton for just two months. During that time, he has been the subject of prisoners’ aggression and violence although, he hastens to add, the violence has always been at a low level – “so far, anyway”. He has begun to win the trust and respect of the men in the prison and, he hopes, he will go on to make a real difference to their lives.

“I love my job,” he grins, as he strides through the corridors, locking and unlocking doors every few paces with the enormous bunch of keys hanging from his belt. “I thought I’d find it fascinating, but I actually love it.

“People think of prison officers as bouncers who just turn keys and shout orders. But you couldn’t have a more caring, diverse and challenging job: I come into work every morning not knowing if I’ll be on healthcare, education, behind a desk or on the landing, where I might be a negotiator, leader, counsellor, educator or role model.”

Jack is one of the first cohort of Unlocked Graduates, a new, two-year prison-officer training programme modelled on the phenomenally successful Teach First scheme, which takes ambitious graduates and, after minimal training, parachutes them into inner-city schools where they are tasked with raising the aspirations of some of the most deprived children in the country.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jack: ‘I love my job.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

Teach First has been the biggest graduate recruiter for the past three years, training more than 1,400 graduates each year. Almost 60% remain in teaching with the rest going out into the world, tasked with building a movement of people leading efforts to tackle educational inequality in schools and beyond. About a fifth of teachers in low-income schools are now Teach First graduates, around 70% of them from elite Russell Group universities. Unlocked Graduates works in the same way and hopes to mirror Teach First’s success inside prisons – and outside, too.

The prison system is, without question, in urgent need of help. Two-thirds of prisons in England and Wales are overcrowded, with the population rising by more than 1,200 places in the 13 weeks since May. It is now higher than at any other point in the past four years. Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures show 68% of prisons are housing more inmates than their “certified normal accommodation” – the limit for ensuring a “good, decent standard”, with some more than 50% over capacity.

According to a report last month by the HM Inspectorate of Prisons, prisoners are living in cells that are too small, with inadequate ventilation, damaged furniture and unscreened, unhygienic toilets, for up to 23 hours a day. And with almost half of all prisoners returning to prison within a year of release, it is clear that more needs to be done to break the cycle of reoffending.

After repeated cuts in the size of the prison estate, the government last year committed to recruiting 2,500 extra prison officers, not counting the Unlocked graduates.

In many ways, Unlocked has a harder battle to fight than Teach First. As its CEO Natasha Porter acknowledges, prison officers are “the unsung heroes of public service work”, who must “manage, protect and rehabilitate some extremely challenging individuals, people who teachers and social workers have often been unable to help”. Jack’s experience of telling his family is representative: many initial graduates in the scheme talk of the horror their family expressed, the fears about the risks and assumptions about the calibre of the job. A number of mothers broke down in tears. An aunt asked if her niece was a lesbian.

But, as Jack says, these perceptions do not match the reality. Just two months into the job, one Unlocked graduate is learning sign language in his own time to help a deaf prisoner who has been unable to communicate and, as a result, had begun expressing his frustration in violence. The aggression disappeared once he knew someone cared enough to try to get through to him. Another graduate is teaching a prisoner Key Stage 3 maths, so he has something to talk to his daughter about on the phone. Another has helped a prisoner reconnect with the mother he hasn’t spoken to for 10 years.

What is interesting is that this first wave of graduates visibly challenges what a “typical” prison officer looks like. Bucking the trend of prison-officer recruitment, 80% of Unlocked participants are women – compared with 37% nationally – and 20% come from an ethnic minority background – compared with just 7% of staff in prisons across the country.

Just as the Teach First graduates are given minimal training before being thrown into the fray, the first 50 Unlocked trainees completed a short, university-based course in August. But such is the volatility of the prison estate that real life intruded. Two prisons – HMP Hewell and the Mount in Hertfordshire – descended into riots within a week of each other. At the Mount, riot squad officers were sent in twice in 24 hours as prisoners armed with weapons reportedly took over and vandalised its 250-inmate Nash wing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Clo: ‘Having this experience gives us a mandate. I don’t know if I will stay in the prison system, but I will carry the mission with me.’ Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

Although deaths in custody have fallen over the last 12 months, from 324 to 300, other prison violence has increased as the prison population has expanded. In the past 12 months, there were a record 41,103 incidents of self-harm and 27,193 assaults, 7,437 of which were on staff, up 25% from the previous year. “Despite a small but welcome fall in deaths, every other indicator points to the ongoing and longstanding deterioration in standards of safety in our overstretched prisons,” says Mark Day, head of policy and communications at the Prison Reform Trust. “Too many prisoners are held in overcrowded and impoverished conditions with too few staff to provide a safe and constructive regime.”

The trainees seem unfazed by the August riots. George, a 24-year-old politics graduate, tells me: “The prison officers who are mentoring us haven’t sugar-coated anything. We know prisons are a volatile environment. But the only reason people think prisons are tougher than, say, A&E, is that the criminal justice system is put behind locked doors and forgotten about. These people will come out again and live alongside us, so we can’t forget about them.”

Clo, 22, has a degree in sociology from Cambridge. “I was president of the junior common room at my college. I was taken out for dinner by a lot of consulting firms towards the end of my degree and have no doubt that, had I wanted to go down that career route, I could have done.

“This scheme is exciting,” she adds. “I like the idea of being part of a first cohort. It’s risky and it could flop. But having this experience gives us a mandate. I don’t know if I will stay in the prison system, but I will carry the mission with me.”

As well as being tasked with working full-time on the prison frontline, graduates complete a newly created master’s degree focused on helping identify ways to reform the prison system, reduce reoffending and improve rehabilitation. As with Teach First, after two years, participants are expected to either continue working in the prison service or to use their experience to encourage employers to take on more ex-offenders to help reduce reoffending.

“We want our graduates both in the prisons and across society in positions of power,” says Porter. “We want them promoting prisons, investing in prison industries, employing ex-criminals and prison officers.”

Porter founded the scheme after working on the influential 2016 review of prison education by Dame Sally Coates. She had assumed it would take a while to grip graduates’ imaginations. But after a cautious social media campaign and limited number of appearances at careers fairs, Porter’s team fielded interest from more than 2,000 graduates. More than 600 eventually applied.

Unlocked is now open for a next wave of applications. This year, it hopes to place twice as many graduates in prisons, including in the youth estate.

Sabrina, 23, has a psychology degree from Aston University. Her motivation for joining Unlocked comes from her own history; brought up in foster care, she saw her contemporaries fall into gangs and, one by one, disappear into the prison system.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest This year, Unlocked hopes to place twice as many graduates in prisons. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

“I’ve seen it all first-hand,” she says. “I’ve seen a lot of people go into prison who didn’t have anyone to look up to, and who therefore came out and reoffended. I’ve always wanted to have a career where I could be that role model.”

But the scheme is also pulling in older graduates. Robin (not his real name), 51, has had a successful career as a banker. Instead of retiring early to enjoy his wealth, however, he opted for a career change.

“It’s a radical change,” he admits. “When I told a very old friend and business partner, he asked if I was taking the piss. It took me ages to convince him but, when I did, he went a bit quiet, then said: ‘That’s amazing.’ And that has been the response from everyone: ‘You’re kidding?’ then ‘Amazing!’”

While the younger graduates are open to different career paths after their two years in prisons, Robin knows exactly what he wants: “In the next 18 months, I want to see the path to being a prison governor open up to me,” he says.

In Brixton, assistant governor Abby Sloan couldn’t be more positive about the scheme. “Unlocked graduates came on to the landings with such confidence that they immediately started making a difference,” she says.

Arnaldo, a prison officer for 15 years, agrees: “They’re great,” he says. “They bring fresh eyes and minds to a prison system that has traditionally been primarily about discipline and rigidity. They’re so confident and positive. They see solutions where traditionally, the prison system has just seen problems.”