Joining the police or prison service with no experience

There is no such thing as relevant experience for these jobs, because nobody polices or runs a prison wing before they are trained to. What the services want instead is evidence — specific, describable moments where you did the thing the job needs. And the good news is that a Saturday job produces more of that evidence than a criminology degree.

Applies to policing, prison and probation entry roles across England and Wales. All run competency-based selection, which is why the advice below is about examples rather than qualifications.

Why a till beats a degree here

Competency-based selection asks you to describe a real situation, what you did and what happened. Every service on this page uses some version of it.

So the question is not what you have studied. It is whether you can finish this sentence: tell me about a time you dealt with someone who was angry with you. A criminology graduate who has never worked often cannot. Someone who has spent a year on a supermarket checkout can, three times over, with detail.

That is not a consolation prize for people without degrees. It is how the process actually works, and understanding it early is worth more than any qualification you could add.

The five things they need evidence of

Handling conflict without escalating. A customer shouting at you about a refund is a genuine example. What did you do, what did you say, how did it end.

Treating people fairly when you do not like them. Retail, hospitality and care work all supply this. So does any team where you had to work with someone difficult.

Working in a team. Sport, a kitchen, a shop floor, a volunteering shift. Specifically: a time the team was under pressure and you helped rather than hindered.

Being accurate under time pressure. Cashing up, stock counts, food orders, anything with a record that has to be right.

Integrity. A time you reported something you could have ignored, refused a shortcut or owned a mistake. This is the one people leave out, and it is the one these services care about most.

Where to get the evidence if you have none

You need months, not years, and almost anything public-facing works.

Retail, hospitality, a call centre, a leisure centre, a care home, a delivery round — all of them put you in front of people who are sometimes unreasonable. Six months is enough to have stories. Our retail, hospitality and customer service guides cover how to get one quickly.

Volunteering counts equally and sometimes better: youth work, a food bank, St John Ambulance, a charity shop. It also answers the unspoken question about whether you turn up when nobody is paying you.

And the two that sit closest to the target: special constable and PCSO. Both put you in the environment itself, and both are covered in every route in.

What actually disqualifies people

Not a thin CV. These four, in rough order of how often they end applications.

Vetting. Convictions, cautions, serious debt, and associations — including family members — are all in scope. Much of it is judged case by case rather than automatically fatal, and the detail is in your application.

Fitness. Published, specific, achievable, and failed by people who did not train for it.

Being unable to give examples. The single most common interview failure, and entirely fixable in advance.

Wanting it for the wrong reason. Anyone who describes the job as excitement, authority or catching bad guys is telling the panel they have not understood it. The work is mostly people in crisis and paperwork about people in crisis.

So: no relevant experience exists, and none is expected. What is expected is five kinds of evidence, all of which a public-facing job produces within six months. Get one, collect the stories as they happen, and read how to structure the answers. If you need the job first, start with 737 job roles explained.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0