Creating clearer pathways from custody to sustainable employment
How do we, as a justice sector, create sustainable pathways for young people that lead to long-term outcomes, rather than short-term interventions?
It is a vital question, and one that sat heavily among practitioners, policymakers and partners at the Modernising Criminal Justice Conference 2026.
Through the Step Ahead pathway, we are testing what this looks like in practice by combining practical experience, essential skills development and the Duke of Edinburgh Award (DofE) Bronze Award to support young people during custody and beyond. While employment remains a critical outcome, one of the strongest themes emerging from our work is that rehabilitation is about far more than securing a job. It needs to build the foundations that make employment possible in the first place.
Earlier intervention creates stronger pathways to employment
The importance of starting earlier
At the Modernising Criminal Justice Conference, one of the clearest themes to emerge was the importance of starting earlier.
Alongside focussing on the vital weeks leading up to an individual’s release, interventions such as Step Ahead can start much sooner in an individual’s custodial sentence, and where possible before custody is even considered. With increasing focus on community-based interventions and alternatives to custody, there is an opportunity to engage earlier through skills development and structured activity.
This directly limits the impact of interventions. Programmes such as our Step Ahead pathway, which combines structured activity, skills development and work-based experience, are designed to support progression into employment. But without earlier engagement, they are often working to establish foundations that should already be in place.
The programme provides consistent exposure to structured activities over a six-month period, including volunteering, physical challenges and work-based experience with the Amey team, all linked to employment pathways.
That is why the term “pathway” is a deliberate choice of language, it reflects a sustained approach that helps young people move from disengagement to participation, and from participation to progression.
If introduced earlier in an individual’s custodial sentence, and where possible before custody is even considered, these interventions can create the conditions for sustained progress, making it easier to build the confidence, capability and direction that underpin long-term outcomes.
Building confidence, structure and aspiration is just as important as gaining qualifications
Looking beyond qualifications
These challenges are often rooted in gaps that begin long before custody. Many young people entering the justice system have experienced disrupted education, exclusion from school and long periods outside education, employment or training. In fact, 52.2% of young adults who later received custodial sentences were persistently absent from school, and 65% of young people in the justice system have been excluded, with 47% permanently excluded.
The result is that many arrive in custody without the confidence, structure and essential skills typically developed through education. These foundations are not built through qualifications alone, but through experience, enrichment and trusted relationships, opportunities that have often been limited.
This is why simply focusing on qualifications is not enough. For many young people, engagement increases when they can clearly see where a pathway leads and how their efforts translate into a tangible outcome.
Making that outcome visible from the outset is therefore critical. By linking experiences such as the DofE’s directly to employment pathways, Step Ahead provides that clarity, helping young people understand not just what they are doing, but why it matters and what comes next.
In practice, this means taking a broader approach to skills development. It means building confidence and self-belief, so individuals feel capable of progressing. It means developing communication and teamwork so they can function effectively in a workplace. It means introducing structure and routine to create stability, while fostering aspiration to support future planning.
When success is measured through these essential as well as practical skills, employment pathways become far more realistic and sustainable.
Employers play a vital role in creating pathways to employment
Why employers matter
One of the most consistent and striking insights from working with young people is that the challenge is not a lack of opportunity, but a lack of visibility. Many are simply unaware of the routes available to them or how to access them.
This places a responsibility on employers to go beyond offering roles and to play a more active role in creating clear, accessible pathways into work.
A defining strength of the Step Ahead Pathway is the direct involvement of employers. As part of the programme, young people work alongside employees, gaining first-hand insight into workplace expectations while developing practical skills in a supportive environment. For many, this represents a pivotal shift, often the first time they have interacted with an employer in a positive and constructive setting, seen a realistic route into employment and, ultimately, a sustainable career, and understood what is expected of them in the workplace.
That visibility is powerful. Simply seeing a credible pathway into work can transform how young people engage with education, training and rehabilitation, turning uncertainty into motivation and participation into progression.
Collaboration is key to delivering long-term rehabilitation outcomes
Collaboration over silos
No single organisation can address these challenges in isolation. Delivering meaningful, long-term outcomes for young people requires deliberate, sustained collaboration across employers, custodial settings, charities and education providers.
Significant activity already exists across the system, but it often operates in silos. The challenge is less about creating new interventions and more about connecting what already exists to create a more coherent pathway.
At Amey, Step Ahead is built as part of a wider, integrated approach to rehabilitation. Through our Clean, Rehabilitative, Enabling and Decent (CRED) programme we support in-custody skills development, while our Journey to Work and talent reintegration programmes focus on progression into employment.
Step Ahead brings these elements together with external partners to create a more coherent pathway for young people. In practice, this means aligning structured skills development with vocational qualifications where possible, building a portfolio of evidence over the course of the programme, and providing employer references grounded in hands-on experience alongside qualified Amey trades.
This joined-up approach is critical. By working across custodial environments, employers and charities, there is a genuine opportunity to move beyond fragmented interventions and create something far more cohesive, credible and effective.
Supporting young people requires more than isolated interventions
A shared responsibility
If we are serious about reducing reoffending, increasing employment and creating better futures for young people, we need to move beyond isolated interventions and take a more joined-up approach.
For many young people entering custody, the challenge is not only a lack of qualifications but uncertainty, anxiety and low self-belief. Exposure to structured, supportive environments, particularly where they can work alongside positive role models, can help build confidence, routine and a clearer sense of direction.
The question is not whether these young people have potential; it is whether we are building the pathways that allow that potential to be realised.