The Locked up Living Podcast

15 minute submission. Christoph Heubner Poet, Vive Chair International Auschwitz Committee.

We submitted to the Podcast of the Year Awards and have been shortlisted for one category. (Hooray!!) Please can you vote for us. Go to this link, type in The Locked Up Living podcast and follow the link to post for us. https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote   This is what we wrote about the podcast; Locked Up Living is on a mission to challenge the silo thinking that pervades machoorganisations such as the criminal justice system by covering subjects that are directlyrelevant but haven’t yet had enough visibility to become influential. We have featuredguests tackling subjects with innovative implications for custodial settings (and other toxicorganisations); several of our guests would be considered radical thinkers and we’vecovered subjects that forensic practitioners are often frightened to talk or even think about.We are particularly interested in guests whose work shines a spotlight on the challenges tothose who live and work in locked environments and ways to overcome the barriers to well-being that these obstacles raise. We are especially interested in emotional literacy andhealth. Our podcast is popular with those researching or working in prisons and otherlocked or challenging environments including criminologists, psychologists,psychotherapists and other mental health professionals.This was David and Naomi’s first foray into podcasting. Started as a lockdown spare-timeventure, neither has any experience of audio planning and production so we’ve had todevelop skills as we go along. Several of our listeners are academics who’ve recommendedour podcast to their students and the positive feedback we’ve received has encouraged usto continue beyond lockdown. We are regularly approached by people wanting to appearon the podcast to promote their work.Our weekly podcast was downloaded 14k times during the course of the year.

15 minute submission to Podcast of the Year Awards, Current affairs. Prison Governor,9/11 victim, public school, the police, disgust.

We submitted to the Podcast of the Year Awards and have been shortlisted for one category. (Hooray!!) Please can you vote for us. Go to this link, type in The Locked Up Living podcast and follow the link to post for us. https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote   This is what we wrote about the podcast; Locked Up Living is on a mission to challenge the silo thinking that pervades machoorganisations such as the criminal justice system by covering subjects that are directlyrelevant but haven’t yet had enough visibility to become influential. We have featuredguests tackling subjects with innovative implications for custodial settings (and other toxicorganisations); several of our guests would be considered radical thinkers and we’vecovered subjects that forensic practitioners are often frightened to talk or even think about.We are particularly interested in guests whose work shines a spotlight on the challenges tothose who live and work in locked environments and ways to overcome the barriers to well-being that these obstacles raise. We are especially interested in emotional literacy andhealth. Our podcast is popular with those researching or working in prisons and otherlocked or challenging environments including criminologists, psychologists,psychotherapists and other mental health professionals.This was David and Naomi’s first foray into podcasting. Started as a lockdown spare-timeventure, neither has any experience of audio planning and production so we’ve had todevelop skills as we go along. Several of our listeners are academics who’ve recommendedour podcast to their students and the positive feedback we’ve received has encouraged usto continue beyond lockdown. We are regularly approached by people wanting to appearon the podcast to promote their work.Our weekly podcast was downloaded 14k times during the course of the year.

Increasing the number of people in prison studying Further and Higher Education.

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/

Domestic violence and aggression. Focus on male victims, psychological abuse and controlling behaviour, Dr Liz Bates

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/

Ethics, psychiatry and prisons; Professor Rix tells us about his career at the sharp edge of forensic practice.

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.

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

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

Emptiness. What is that feeling? Elusive and unstudied, Shona Herron talkas about her new research.

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

Who looks after the interests of men? Nick Fletcher, MP, is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Working Group for Issues concerning Men and Boys

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.

Putting compassionate psychology at the forefront. Martin Seager explains that it has not always been easy to do that in the NHS

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      

Domestic violence is abuse, whatever the religion. Dr Rahmanara Chowdhury talks about her work in this area.

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