The Peer Offender Prevention Service: Principles of Best Practice

Number: RIB-25-05

Date: 2025

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Background

The Peer Offender Prevention Service (POPS) program was established in 2009 at Stony Mountain Institution (SMI) as a peer-based mental health first response program. Members of POPS program are on call 24/7 to provide support, counselling, mentoring, and guidance to inmates at all security levels in the institution (maximum, medium and minimum), including within the institution’s Structured Intervention Unit (SIU). Consultations were held with inmates and staff at the institution to understand program impacts and ingredients to sustained success.

Impact

The number of interventions that POPS has provided has significantly increased since its inception (Walby & Cole, 2021). The number of interventions was 2,532 in 2022, and 3,239 in 2023 (provided by up to 7 POPS members), which represents an average of nearly 9 interventions per day. As the service is readily available around the clock, it is often utilized by staff as a first response strategy of de-escalation and/or mental health intervention.

Sustaining Success

A key factor in the program’s success is its credibility among both inmates and staff. Within the inmate population, POPS members are equipped with a shared lived experience that includes an understanding of the realities of serving a prison sentence as well as dynamics of the institutional environment. Consistent with the literature on peer-based programming in prisons (such as; Matthews, 2021), this shared social vantage point can facilitate an opening for engagement, including for inmates who may carry mistrust towards institutional staff. This trust is supported by the confidentiality of the program, which enables for a safe space for inmates to disclose concerns without fear of consequences that could be perceived as punitive. While interventions vary in length, POPS members may spend several hours speaking to inmates during crisis situations (often exceeding the time that institutional staff can typically provide). These qualities of the program uniquely position POPS members to establish a foundation of trust and a relational dynamic conducive to meaningful engagement and intervention.

Although lived experience is at the core of the responsiveness of the program, POPS members are also provided with ongoing opportunities for professional mental health training, contributing to the legitimacy of the program as a health intervention. This includes training in the areas of mental health, suicide prevention/assistance, and strategies of de-escalation and intervention. 

The integrity of the program within the institutional climate has been vital to maintaining success and securing staff buy in. To ensure the program runs outside of the influence or impacts of institutional politics and subculture, POPS members must demonstrate consistent and marked progress towards their correctional goals and sustained distance from criminal activity and inmate subculture. Members are typically individuals serving indeterminate sentences (“lifers”) who are committed to “the straight and narrow.”

Staff support for the program is also influenced by the program’s operational utility. Serving as a vital resource for staff to draw upon in crisis situations, the program responds to a continuous service delivery need (mental health intervention) and enhances the toolkit of strategies staff possess to manage the institutional environment.

Supportive structures have also been integral to the success of the program. This has included a program coordinator dedicated to supporting the spirit, intent and integrity of the program, and who can assist in navigating relationships between and among inmates and staff. Ongoing support from senior management for the program has also been key. Supportive structures have also included embedded strategies such as debriefings to prevent adverse outcomes for POPS members, in line with best practices established in the literature on peer support work in prison (Woodall et al., 2015).

While the POPS program is first and foremost intended to provide mental health support to inmates, it also promotes rehabilitative goals insofar as it is a venue for long-term inmates to forge positive and pro-social roles and contribute meaningfully within the institution. This is in line with the literature on long-term sentence management, which emphasizes the utility of meaningful and productive use of time, particularly those in later stages of their sentence (Crewe et al., 2017). In addition, as the program is oriented around empathetic and compassionate support work and the enactment of positive roles, it promotes dispositions conducive to successful experiences in the context of re-entry (see: Perrin & Blagden, 2016).

As a highly regarded program by staff and inmates alike, the POPS program actively works to bridge relations between staff and inmates, provides a valuable 24/7 on-call mental health resource within the institution, and promotes meaningful engagement among long-term inmates. The success of the program has been contingent upon a responsive approach, strategies to entrench credibility and legitimacy, committed members and personnel, and supportive structures.

References

Crewe, B., Hulley, S., & Wright, S. (2017). Swimming with the tide: Adapting to long-term imprisonment. Justice Quarterly, 34(3), 517-541. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2016.1190394

Matthews, E. (2021). Peer-focused prison reentry programs: Which peer characteristics matter most?. Incarceration, 2(2), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/2632666321101995

Walby, K. & Cole, D. (2021). “I Know It’s Not Saving a Life, but I Know I’m Doing Good…”: The Peer Offender Prevention Service (POPS) at Stony Mountain Institution, Canada. Corrections: Policy, Practice and Research, 6(5), 349–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/23774657.2019.1678441

Perrin, C., & Blagden, N. (2016). Movements towards desistance via peer-support roles in prison. The Voluntary Sector in Prisons: Encouraging Personal and Institutional Change, 115-142. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54215-1_5

Woodall, J., South, J., Dixey, R., de Viggiani, N., & Penson, W. (2015). Expert views of peer-based interventions for prisoner health. International Journal of Prisoner Health, 11(2), 87-97. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPH-10-2014-0039

For more information

Please email: research@csc-scc.gc.ca

You can also visit the Research Publications section for a full list of reports and one-page summaries.

Prepared by: Laura McKendy with the support of SMI staff and POPS members.