Internationally, responses to staff crises have been short termed, such as filling gaps through military services or civil servants. In their report on prisons and detention conditions in the EU, the European Parliament discusses guidelines regarding recruitment, selection, education, training and professional development of prison and probation staff (2019). Despite these guidelines, there are no compliance measures monitoring staffing at an EU level, due to prison services being exclusively regulated by Member States. However, the high staff shortages and turnover faced across the continent and their interdependence with poor prison conditions and outcomes undermine the fundamental EU values and principles on which judicial cooperation on criminal matters is based. Whilst we see that increased salaries and improved employment conditions are insufficient in supporting recruitment and retention of good prison staff, we also note that there are pockets of new initatives across Europe, and see evidence that a small culture change within prison systems can trigger big changes. Such an example is the Unlocked Graduates Programme, a leadership scheme recruiting outstanding university graduates into the prison service as frontline officers – having placed over 700 officers in prisons in England & Wales since 2017. Thereby, Unlocked raised the status of working in the prison service and raised awareness of the prison officer role in reducing reoffending – a one-of-its-kind approach and part of the solution to the prison staff crisis. We see an urgent need for prison systems in Europe to learn such effective good practice from one another.