The Locked up Living Podcast: Surviving and thriving in prisons and other challenging environments

84. Ruth McFarlane & Dan Whyte: Improving educational opportunities for prisoners

Dan and Ruth are co-Directors of DWRM Consultants, a community interest company that works with universities to offer a wide range of degree courses to students in prison. Dan has dedicated himself to establishing DWRM Consultants, at the same time as navigating all the challenges of leaving prison. He has led on the creation of a peer mentor support programme which offers education and employment coaching and support for people leaving prison, based on his own understanding of the gaps in provision. From a starting point of no educational attainment, Dan achieved undergraduate and postgraduate degrees while in prison and is now studying for a PhD in criminology.Ruth is an education specialist, lecturer and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and has significant experience of working with people excluded from mainstream education, especially in secure settings.  She is all about supporting meaningful education in prison and on release. She has authored a wide range of academic publications, cited and featured internationally. Considering herself a student as well as a teacher, she is passionate about inclusion and equality.These links will take you to their website where you will see their prospectus and details of post release support.https://www.dwrm.org.uk/what-we-do/university-courses/ https://www.dwrm.org.uk/what-we-do/ttg-support/

83. Elizabeth Bates. Male victims of domestic violence and aggression.

Dr Elizabeth Bates is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Cumbria. Her PhD focused on exploring the personality and psychopathological predictors of men’s and women’s partner violence. Her post-doctoral work has focused on exploring the experience of male victims and she has published papers on their experience of physical and psychological abuse, barriers to help-seeking, post-separation abuse and the impact on children of living in an abusive home. Dr Bats is a trustee of the ManKind Initiative a UK charity supporting male victims of domestic violence, and is also Chair of the BPS Male Psychology Section. She is currently organising the first in person conference of the BPS Male Psychology Section which is on 20th and 20th June. Naomi Murphy is a keynote speaker. See the programme here.
https://www.bps.org.uk/events/male-psychology-section-conference-2022/programme
And this is the link to the ManKind initiative
https://www.mankind.org.uk/

82. Keith Rix.Psychiatry, prisons and being an expert witness

Keith Rix is an enormously experienced forensic psychiatrist. In this conversation he shares reflections on his early career choices and how he came to make them. We cover family courts, working inside prisons, being an expert witness and cases with the potential of a death penalty.
 
Professor Keith Rix, BMedBiol (Hons), MPhil, LLM, MD, FRCPsych, Hon FFFLM, is a consultant forensic psychiatrist. His involvement in the forensic field began in the 1960’s when he lived in hostels in London with ex-offenders and assessed prisoners for hostel admission. He moved to Leeds as senior lecturer in psychiatry in 1983 and became a visiting consultant psychiatrist at HM Prison, Leeds. He established the Leeds Magistrates’ Court Mental Health Assessment and Diversion Scheme and the city’s forensic psychiatry service. He has provided expert evidence to the courts for over thirty years, including evidence on a pro bono basis in capital cases in the Caribbean and Africa, and he is the author of Expert Psychiatric Evidence and lead author of the Royal College of Psychiatrists report Responsibilities of psychiatrists who provide expert opinion to courts and tribunals. He is also the editor of A Handbook for Trainee Psychiatrists and co-author, with his wife Elizabeth Lumsden Rix, of Alcohol Problems. Until recently he was a Chairman of the Fitness to Practise Panel of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service and part-time lecturer in the Department of Law, De Montfort University, Leicester. He is now Visiting Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, Institute of Medicine, University of Chester, and Honorary Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. In 2015 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Forensic & Legal Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians.

81. Dominique Moran and Jennifer Turner. Prisons, the military and war.

Tracing the meanings of military geographies, veterans and the prison industrial complex
Professor Dominique Moran is professor of carceral geography Birmingham University and her expertise is in providing a geographical perspective on incarceration.   
Dominique is also Chair of the  Carceral geography Working Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographies. 
She is author of “Carceral Geography: Spaces and Practices of Incarceration and editor of a number of texts on spatial geography and its relation to imprisonment.  She is also widely published in a number of leading geographical journals.
Jennifer Turner leads the Crime and Carcerality Research Group in the Institute for Social Sciences at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. Her research interests concern the relationships between prison and contemporary society, including, most recently, interrogations of the prison-military complex. Jennifer is the author of The Prison Boundary: Between Society and Carceral Space, which interrogates the notion of a hard and fast separation between the inside and outside of prison by presenting a variety of case studies that demonstrate a complex and changeable boundary relationship. She is also the Chair of the Carceral Geography Working Group of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), which brings together academic and non-academic members interested in spaces of confinement from all over the world.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03091325221080247
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13624806211031248

80. Shona Herron. Emptiness. What is that feeling?

Emptiness is a feeling we may have all experienced. Some are afflicted deeply and chronically, particularly those who are in prisons and hospitals. Yet it has been little studied so in this conversation Shona talks about her research of the phenomenon of emptiness.
Shona qualified as a Clinical Associate in Applied Psychology in Scotland before moving to London to undertake her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at University College London. She is currently in her final 6 months of her Doctorate, completing her thesis and working with men who are detained in the High Security Estate, and men in forensic hospital across North London. She adores her ability to combine clinical and research work, and is particularly passionate about tackling oppressive systems, non-diagnostic approaches to mental health challenges and attempting to use the principles of community psychology and narrative approaches in everything she does.
https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/YicucRAAAPf45c2S
https://theconversation.com/many-of-us-feel-empty-understanding-what-it-means-is-important-for-improving-our-mental-health-163035

79. Nick Fletcher MP: Who looks after the interests of men?

Nick Fletcher is the conservative MP for Don Valley which he has represented since 2019.  We were particularly interested in having Nick on the podcast to discuss his work as Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Working Group for Issues concerning Men and Boys since men and boys are over-represented in the criminal justice system.

78. Martin Seager. Creating compassionate psychological services

Martin has great depth of experience in Health and allied fields. In this conversation he explains how strongly he believes in making psychological ideas and treatments widely available and how this has sometimes encountered opposition from those with power.
 
Martin Seager is a consultant clinical psychologist and adult psychotherapist most recently with the addictions charity, CGL (2016-2020). He is a clinician, lecturer, campaigner and author on mental health issues. He studied at Oxford University, Edinburgh University and the Tavistock Clinic. He worked in the NHS for over 30 years and was head of psychological services in two large mental health Trusts. He had a regular mental health slot on BBC Essex radio from 2003-2007 and BBC Radio Five Live “Up All Night” from 2007-2009. In 2006 he formed a national mental health advisory group for the health secretary at the time, Patricia Hewitt. In 2010-2011 he worked in the homelessness field with the charity St Mungo’s and also the “Big Issue”. He spent over 10 years as a branch consultant to the Central London Samaritans and was a member of the mental health advisory board for the College of Medicine. He is now on the clinical advisory board of the Campaign for Living Miserably (CALM). His passion is to promote a psychologically-minded approach to science, public health and human well-being, moving away from treating mental conditions to meeting the psychological needs of the human condition. He is a specialist on male gender psychology and co-founder of both the Male Psychology Network and the Male Psychology Section of the BPS. He is co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health (2019) which includes a chapter on Gamma Bias theory which he developed with John Barry.
 
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-33/april-2020/gamma-bias-new-theory
 
 
 

77. Dr Rahmanara Chowdhury . Domestic violence in muslim communities

Dr Rahmanara Chowdhury is Course Lead for Islam and Pastoral Care at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. She completed her undergraduate studies in Ergonomics at Loughborough University. She has a Masters in Psychology from Nottingham Trent University and completed her PhD exploring Domestic Violence and Abuse in the UK Muslim population, at Brunel University London. Her PhD research was funded by the ESRC Grand Union Doctoral Training programme. She is the author of ‘Qawwamoon; Protectors and Maintainers’, and ‘Road to Recovery’, Ta Ha Publishers and is the Head of the newly formed MIHE Centre for the Study of Wellbeing.
https://www.mihe.ac.uk/index.php/centre-for-the-study-of-wellbeing/
https://www.tahapublishers.com/road-to-recovery%3A-healing-from-domestic-violence~307

76. Sunny Sandhu. Mixed Martial Arts, mindfulness and resilience.

Sunny started out as a mixed martial artist who reached international level but incurred a lot of injuries and had to retire from competing before he had realised his full potential. He decided to train as a physiotherapist and chose to train in Amsterdam. He has been working in Amsterdam for the past 4-5 years sharpening his tools as a physio as well as having two of his own podcasts!  (And learning Dutch!) Sunny is really entertaining to talk to with his range of experience outside and beyond that of the average psychologist or psychotherapist.
He also features in two podcasts.
The open forum is what it says, an open space for many interesting discussions about social and medical matters.
https://theopenforumpod.podbean.com/
More related to physiotherapy but also of wide interest is;
https://www.physiotutors.com/about/

75. Co-host David Jones on relational work in forensic settings (with guest co-host Des McVey)

Today our podcast is a little different.  You’re used to hearing David Jones bring his experience and knowledge to light in asking questions and sharing anecdotes about his professional life.  Today we thought we’d give you the chance to hear more about his many years of experience.
 
David Jones is a psychotherapist with extensive experience in clinical work specializing in working with offenders within a prison treatment and health setting, with a focus on groups. He has extensive experience in mental health and the voluntary sector. David has published a number of books and articles and we include their details below.
He has worked at the Phoenix Unit in Oxford, was Consultant Psychotherapist at Millfields in East London, was a clinical lead at HMP Grendon and with the new TC+ for men with learning difficulties, at HMP Gartree.
 
David likes to throw himself into everything he does and as well as being on the Board of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy for several years, he was also Secretary of this board for a period (2008 – 2010).  He has also been a member of the Research Advisory Group at HMP Grendon. Since 2008, he has been the Prisons expert for the Community of Communities Prison Therapeutic Community at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Lastly, David has been involved with the UK Personality Disorder Pathway project since 2002.
Selected books and papers.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Working-Dangerous-People-Psychotherapy-Violence/dp/1857758242
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humane-Prisons-David-Jones/dp/1857757203
https://www.academia.edu/7572919/SHAME_DISGUST_ANGER_AND_REVENGE_HOMOSEXUALITY_AND_COUNTERTRANSFERENCE
https://www.academia.edu/12523921/The_Malign_Transference_Dealing_with_the_unbearable_in_the_internal_world_of_the_murderer
https://www.academia.edu/12322685/Therapy_in_Peversity
 
There is another unusual aspect to our podcast today.  We thought it would be an idea to have a guest contribution to our discussion in a more novel way so we’ve invited along Des McVey to help out. 
 
Naomi knows Des very well since she has worked with him in various locations since 1996.  Des is a consultant nurse psychotherapist with 40 years experience of nursing in a variety of settings.  They first worked together in a Medium Secure unit before setting up the first mental health in-reach team in an English prison.  Eventually, they were approached to establish the first treatment service for people under the Labour Govts DSPD initiative.   DSPD stood for Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder and whilst it was awfully named it offered a chance to create treatment opportunities for people who were unable to access any mental health treatment in prisons. We’ve also edited a book together about creating services for people with a history of trauma.  Des will no doubt be back to discuss his experience.

74. Geoff Smith. What is the role of the Advocate in mental health settings?

There are many people working in our services whose role may be overlooked but which is nevertheless valuable. The role of advocate is one such and has grown in significance as we have become more aware of the power imbalance between staff and service user and the importance of amplifying the service user voice.
Geoff Smith has been a qualified as an IMHA in 2011/2012 fairly soon after local authorities provided funding for the new role as set out in s130A through to s130L of the amended MHA 2007.
He has worked extensively in in-patient and community settings since 2008 and describes his work as “humbling”.  Geoff has worked exclusively within a London Borough characterised by culturally diversity and socio-economic deprivation.  I came across Geoff on social media when he was discussing a period of difficulty in his personal life and how that impacted on his ability to perform his role and this made me realise we hadn’t covered advocacy at all.  Perhaps this is reflective of how much in the mind of service providers advocacy is?   Advocates have to walk a difficult balance of organisations being aware of them but without belonging within services to the degree that their independence is compromised.
Geoff is also a talented singer and you will be really glad if you listen to him singing Metamorphosis here, https://soundcloud.com/user-847494429/metamorphosis?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Geoff and colleagues are also raising money for the Disasters Emergency Committee and you can listen to the song War Child that they have released here, https://youtu.be/3QwCaTrIRWk
and find the link to donate to the DEC here, https://www.justgiving.com/dec
 

73. Anna Kotova and Geraldine Ackerman. Can sexual offenders be helped?

Those who have commited sexual offences may be vilified, abused or physically beaten. Often they are regarded as untreatable as well. Anna Kotova and Geraldine Akerman take a different approach. Following their research with residents and staff they argue that a therapeutic community can provide a safe and effective environment. In this podcast they explain their findings. See free access to their paper via the link below.
Navigating moral dimensions and lateral power – The experiences of men with sexual convictions and histories of sexual abuse serving sentences in a therapeutic community
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26326663221074263
Anna Kotova in a Lecturer in Criminology at Birmingham University. Her teaching and research interests are in prison sociology and the collateral impact of imprisonment on families of prisoners. She has researched the impact of long sentences on partners of prisoners in the UK, the experiences of prisoners serving sentences for sex offences in a therapeutic community and the use of video-call technology in prisons. She teaches Criminological Theory I and Punishment in a Global Context.
 
Geraldine Akerman is a Forensic Psychologist who has worked HMP Grendon for many years and now works for the NHS.

72. Phil Mitchell. Working with men who’ve been sexually abused men

Phil is a senior accredited counsellor and psychotherapist specialising in working with boys and men who have experienced recent and/or historic sexual abuse. Since 2004 Phil has worked therapeutically with males affected by rape, sexual abuse, sexual violence and sexual exploitation. Phil experienced sexual exploitation as a child, and rape as a young adult. He is an experienced public speaker and has trained thousands of professionals across the country on male sexual abuse/exploitation addressing how masculinity can play a part and help boys and men deal with abuse. Between 2009 and 2018 Phil was the Project Coordinator of a male only child sexual exploitation (CSE) service. Here, Phil was instrumental in the development of nationally recognised male CSE resources and in the support provided to a sexually exploited boy highlighted in Jack CSE serious case review. Phil also managed the national male CSE development project 'Excellence for Boys' which saw male referrals to 20 CSE services increase from 91 to 249. Phil has appeared on TV and in the media on numerous occasions highlighting the abuse of boys and men, and has contributed to various research and publications addressing male CSE. Phil is also a qualified supervisor and supervises trainee and qualified practitioners working with vulnerable children and adults. Phil is passionate about ensuring boys and men at risk of, or who have experienced abuse are appropriately identified and supported in a way that promotes gender equality and combats misandry and gender biased practice, ensuring services are appropriately accessible to and inclusive of males. Further details can be found at the website: www.counsellingwithphil.co.uk  
 
https://counsellorinleeds.co.uk/boys-cse-training/

71. Roma Hooper. The origins of English prison radio?

Roma got the idea to start Prison Service Radio while volunteering in Feltham Young Offenders prison. This is a remarkable story of determination, charm and persistence as working in this tough extablishment and in collaboration with others, Roma set up a radio service which spread throughout the whole system.

70. Tammi Walker . Why do women in prison self harm? IWD 2022

Tammi Walker is Principal of St Cuthbert’s Society and Professor of Forensic Psychology at Durham University. She is a Chartered Psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society, Registered Senior Fellow with Advance HE and a mental health nurse by clinical background. Tammi has a visiting position at the Manchester University.
She has spent extensive experience of researching and working in prison and secure care settings, including maximum security prisons for recidivistic sexual and violent offenders. She has completed work in this profession for over 17 years and has an advanced level of knowledge in forensic mental health, forensic psychiatry and forensic psychology.
She is currently working as a series editor with Graham Towl (Durham University) on a new series entitied: New Frontiers in Forensic Psychology for Routledge. These short, co-authored books over the next two years will provide insight into new areas of investigation in forensic psychology, or new perspectives on existing topics of enquiry. Tammi currently collaborates with a number of prison and secure care services. She co-authored 'Tackling Sexual Violence at Universities: An International Perspective' (2019: Routledge Press) and was the lead author of 'Preventing Self-injury and Suicide in Women's Prisons' (2016: Waterside Press) with Professor Graham Towl, which won the national British Psychological Society Book Award 2017 for Best Practitioner Text.

69. Ari Schonbrun: Surviving 9/11

Ari Schonbrun is an author, speaker and 9/11 survivor.  He was the Chief Administrative Officer of Cantor Fitzgerald and Co., one of the world’s leading financial services firms.  
Mr. Schonbrun was on the 78th floor of Tower One when the first plane hit on September 11, 2001. He helped a colleague suffering third degree burns to safety and was thrown into the national spotlight thereafter. His miraculous first-hand account about survival has been retold in newspapers, magazines, broadcast outlets, and books.  
Mr. Schonbrun is a renowned inspirational speaker and the author of Miracles & Fate on 78. He draws from the personal heartbreak he endured during the devastation of 9/11 and has inspired audiences worldwide. 
He is also the host of Whispers & Bricks Podcast and the creator of Whispers & Bricks Academy, a 7 week program focusing on “your personal breakthrough”.  
Mr. Schonbrun is a native New Yorker. He is passionate about philanthropy and serves as a board member of Strength to Strength, a global non-profit organization that works with victims of terror across the world. Mr. Schonbrun and his wife, Joyce, live in New York. They have five children and several grandchildren.
 

68. Kevin Leggett. A vocational career as prison governor in England

This is one of our favorite conversations. Kevin Leggett spent many years working with young offenders at Aylesbury and Huntercombe, and he was deputy governor at HMP Grendon during a period of great change when there was a serious escape. Kevin talks about these times with great warmth and humour and his descriptions of connection with his charges provide a real insight into the meaning of relational working.
 
Kevin Leggett is a now retired prison governor with over thirty years service. Although originally from Durham he began his career as a prison officer at the young offenders establishment Aylesbury and subsequently worked at the prisons Bullingdon, The Mount, Grendon (where I first met Kevin) and Huntercombe as well as having execurive roles for the implementation of policies in the south of England.’

67. Ariel Garten, Founder of Muse on meditation

Ariel is is a Canadian artist, scientist and intellectual known for her work in integrating art and science. She is a neuroscientist and psychotherapist and here she talks about many things but including the importance of sleep and meditation to effective brain functioning. She is the Co-Founder of InteraXon makers of Muse (an award-winning brain sensing headband that we will hear more about during the conversation).  Ariel studied neuroscience in Toronto and researched Parkinson’s Disease and hippocampal neurogenesis.  However, alongside this she is also a fashion designer and has had her work displayed at the Art Gallery of Ontario.  Whilst InteraXon is a very successful company we haven’t just invited Ariel on to promote her products but because she is a really inspirational woman with divergent interests.  

66. Jacqueline McCloy. The history of Chaplains and the British Penitentiary system.

Our second episode considering the place of faith and religion in a prison system, this time in the UK. As well as reminding us how big a part transportation played in our criminal justice system, Jacqueline looks at the meaning and role of pastoral care and how faith provides a direction and an opportunity for many.
Having graduated from the University of Aberdeen with a first class honours Masters of Art in Theology & Religious Studies (2021), Jacqueline is now further researching the effect of religion/spirituality on the posttraumatic growth of criminal offenders in the U.K and their desistance from crime.

65 Dr Michael Hallett & Professor Byron Religion and faith based activities in USA prisons.

We were fortunate to have two such interesting 'hands on' academics in this conversation. Within an academic climate that is not always sympathetic or collaborative they engaged in a three year research project in one of the most notorious penal establishments in the Uniteds States, Angola.
 
Dr. Michael Hallett is a full Professor in the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of North Florida. Dr. Hallett just finished his fourth book and has published research appearing in numerous additional books and journals including Punishment & Society, Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, Critical Criminology and others. Dr. Hallett's focus is Corrections & Social Inequality, Punishment & Society, and Religion & Crime. Dr. Hallett designed Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Pretrial Services Unit (drug treatment/diversion) and has completed extensive work with local organizations including Prisoners of Christ, Operation New Hope, Hubbard House, the City of Jacksonville, JCCI and others. Most recently, Dr. Hallett led a three-year study at America's largest maximum-security prison, "Angola" (aka Louisiana State Penitentiary) exploring the religious lives of long-term inmates. He has served as Principal Investigator on grants from the US Department of Justice, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Jesse Ball DuPont Foundation, and several other organizations. Dr. Hallett has chaired two academic departments at UNF (Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal Justice and Criminology & Criminal Justice) after first directing the Graduate program in Criminal Justice. Dr. Hallett frequently works on local justice issues in Jacksonville and has completed over a dozen funded projects at UNF, often employing students in the research. Dr Hallett also serves as a Senior Research Fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion.
 
Hallett, M. (Guest Editor) Special Issue * Social Justice * "Emancipatory Justice." Forthcoming 2017.
Hallett, M., J. Hays, B. Johnson, SJ Jang, G Duwe (2017). https://www.routledge.com/The-Angola-Prison-Seminary-Effects-of-Faith-Based-Ministry-on-Identity/Hallett-Hays-Johnson-Jang-Duwe/p/book/9780815351733?gclid=Cj0KCQiAxoiQBhCRARIsAPsvo-xH9-GOhfmTalVcw6RsQWJhZu3I2Q1NcNrq97aGFmqIBpGNEJiiS7caAqvAEALw_wcB
Hallett, Michael A. 2006. Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.**
Hallett, Michael A. (Editor). 1997. Activism and Marginalization in the AIDS Crisis. New York: Routledge.**
Hallett, Michael A. and Dennis J. Palumbo. 1993. U.S. Criminal Justice Interest Groups: Institutional Profiles. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.**
Byron Johnson is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University. He is the founding director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) as well as director of the Program on Prosocial Behavior.  He is a leading authority on the scientific study of religion, the efficacy of faith-based organizations, and criminal justice. He has been the principal investigator on grants from private foundations as well as the Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, and the United States Institute for Peace. He is the author of more than 250 articles and a number of books including More God, Less Crime (2011), The Angola Prison Seminary (2016), The Quest for Purpose (2017), The Restorative Prison (2021), and Objective Religion (2021). He is project director for the Global Flourishing Study, a longitudinal data collection and research collaboration between scholars at Harvard University and Baylor University, in partnership with Gallup and the Center for Open Science and with the support of a consortium of funders. The $43.4 million initiative will include data collection for approximately 240,000 participants from 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries.