Entry-level hysteresis: Prison officer recruitment, training and the reproduction of penal practice

Recruiting reform-minded individuals into unchanged institutions has become an increasingly common strategy to bridge the gap between penal policy ambitions and everyday practice. Drawing on 440 hours of participant observation in the Belgian Prison Service training program, this article demonstrates that reform-aligned recruits are more often reshaped by the institutional environment than they are able to transform it. We introduce the concept of entry-level hysteresis, which extends Bourdieu's theory of practice: whereas classical hysteresis describes practitioners whose dispositions lag behind a changing field, entry-level hysteresis operates in the opposite direction. The field has not changed, but the newcomers have. Institutional reproduction is maintained not through overt resistance but through the absence of mentorship, the predominance of informal knowledge, and organizational incoherence. Our findings suggest that reform requires more than recruitment and training; it depends on aligning these efforts with broader structural transformation.