Evolving Prisons

Justin Jones has worked in corrections in America for 47 years and was Director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for 8 years. During this time he witnessed 28 executions of people on death row. Who is there when the execution takes place? How did watching these impact him, particularly since he doesn’t believe in the death penalty? How did he get access to the drug required when pharmaceu...

I took the podcast to HMP Shrewsbury to interview former prison officer Graham, who has 38 years' experience in the job. He spent many years working at Shrewsbury, a prison that is said to be one of the most haunted in the world. What was it like to work here? How has prison work changed over the decades? CEO of the site, Joel, joins us to share paranormal experiences that have occurred within the...

Dr Kathryn Whiteley has interviewed hundreds of women who've killed and are serving life or life without parole sentences in America, Australia and Ireland. She shares some stories that have stuck with her, how some of the women feel about their crimes and helps to humanise them by giving them a voice to share their life stories. Evolving Prisons links Website: evolvingprisons.com Instagram: @evol...

Dr Amanda Brown was a GP in a leafy suburb for 20 years before going to work in prison, despite not knowing doctors even worked in prisons. She spent 19 years working with both male and female prisoners, and foreign nationals. Dr Brown is also the author of The Prison Doctor book series. She shares some highs and lows with us, including traumatic experiences that will stay with her forever, and te...

Tarmi A'Vard is the wife of a prison officer. She talks about how it feels to see her husband, Chris, changed by the job. He was hospitalised on numerous occasions after attacks by prisoners and Tarmi shares the toll the job has taken on their marriage and social life. She also tells us about their difficult road ahead as Chris tries to recover from his experiences. Evolving Prisons links Website:...

How were women treated in prison in America in the early years at a time before they were considered citizens? Why has Alcatraz prison left such a legacy? And why is America's prison system the way it is, when their early plans were to move away from a penal system that brutalises to a more reformative system? Professor Ashley Rubin studies the history of prisons in America and answers these quest...

Portia Louder served five years in prison for mortgage fraud. She was imprisoned 14 hours from her husband and children in a federal prison. She was allowed 8 weeks at home before starting her sentence and she tells us about this experience. Portia shares how she navigated seeing her family only once a year and the challenges she's faced reintegrating back into the family unit upon release from pr...

Andy Laidlaw spent 26 years in the prison service in England, starting as a prison officer and finishing as a deputy prison governor. He tells us about his experiences as a hostage negotiator, how to minimise staff corruption and what working in a prison has taught him about life. Evolving Prisons links Website: evolvingprisons.com Instagram: @evolvingprisons LinkedIn: kaigancarrie Email me: evolv...

What do you do when a prisoner draws an unnerving picture during class? And how does it impact you when the first thing you see while interviewing for a job in prison is a traumatising event? Steve Tafka was an art teacher in prisons in England for three years and shares some eye-opening experiences with us. You can buy a copy of Steve's book, The Art of Crime, here . Evolving Prisons links Websit...

Dr Ben Cave is one of the UK’s leading forensic psychiatrists. He has 35 years of experience, including as a prison psychiatrist and a consultant in secure and general mental health units. He is also the author of What We Fear Most. We discuss misconceptions around mental illness, the fact the Mental Health Act does not apply in prison, and the risk of being a forensic psychiatrist where Dr Cave h...

Jason worked as a prison officer in both mainstream and sex offender prisons. He tells us about the mental health toll the job takes, whereby three of his colleagues took their own lives. He also talks about how management seeing prison officers as a number can contribute to them feeling undervalued and lacking self-worth, and he shares personal experiences he had of this during his time as an off...

Oscar Castro was on his third trip to Latin America to smuggle heroin back to America when he was caught at a hotel in Ecuador. He subsequently served 7 years in prison there. What's it like to spend time in a prison where you have to buy your cell and can get access to almost anything, as long as you pay the guards enough money? Is this still punishment? And how does Oscar feel for his part in co...

Jamie Morgan Kane spent 34 years in prison in America after walking into his home and finding a deceased man there who his wife had poisoned. Jamie was taken from the UK to America illegally as a baby and he shares how it felt re-adjusting to life in the UK at age 64, when he was deported after release from prison, despite spending almost all of his life overseas. He also tells us how it felt to d...

Recently, the BBC aired a documentary about Andrew Malkinson, an individual from England who was wrongfully convicted of rape and spent 17 years in prison, until he was released in December 2020. Danny Barrs is the Chair of Promoting Prisoners Maintaining Innocence. Danny chats about majority verdicts in jury cases, how it can be difficult for innocent people to progress through prison and the dif...

Cage is currently serving a 50 year prison sentence in Texas for aggravated robbery while his wife, Andreea, lives in London. They met in 2020 when Andreea wrote to Cage through writeaprisoner.com. They talk about how their relationship developed and how they maintain it despite the obvious barriers, the stigma attached to meeting and marrying someone in prison and their plans for the future, desp...

Chelsea Cameron wrote an open letter to her drug-addicted parents in 2017, thanking them for teaching her that life isn't all sunshine and rainbows. She shares the letter with us and tells us about the stigma of growing up with drug-addicted parents, whether prison helped her dad, and the issue with drugs in Scottish prisons, where 1 in 10 prisoners say they had never touched drugs before their im...

William Noguera spent 40 years on death row at San Quentin Prison for a murder he committed at age 18. Last year he was taken off death row but he is still in prison. He chats to us from his prison cell, telling us how a day on death row looked, how it felt to be given an execution date, how he feels about potentially being released one day into a society he hasn't been in for 41 years and how he...

Rob Parkes was married to Victoria Breeden. Victoria is now serving a 9 year prison sentence for conspiracy to murder him. Rob speaks about being the victim of coercive control, how Victoria's second husband, Wayne, set fire to Rob's car while he was sleeping and how he discovered that Victoria was trying to hire somebody to kill him. Victoria is up for parole soon and Rob talks about his feelings...

Carl Scott joined a gang at 13 years old and subsequently spent 8 and a half years in prison. He was a victim of a knife attack which almost killed him. Carl chats about how a life of crime leaves you always looking over your shoulder, how prison might seem like a holiday camp but that loss of control is the real punishment, and how he lost his best friend to knife crime, who sadly died in his arm...

Gen was a prison officer in England and had been eager to become one since age 15. She talks about the difficulty of comprehending how some people can be so gentle and kind but also be a human trafficker, how she'd try to educate prisoners convicted of rape that wearing protection doesn't mean it isn't rape and the worry of losing the ability to feel compassion at all after witnessing so much trau...

Why do prisons in California and Texas have so many gangs? Why didn't they exist prior to the 1950s? What happens to somebody who leaves the prison gang? How much influence do prison gangs have over people on the streets? I sat down with Professor David Skarbek who has published extensively on this topic. His book, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal Syst...

Marc Conway has served 10 prison sentences, stuck in the revolving door of crime until his final prison sentence in HMP Grendon, a therapeutic prison in England, made him think about why he'd been behaving the way he had. Marc discusses growing up with a distrust of police and how he feels that the government needs to do more to improve equality in our society. Evolving Prisons links Website: evol...

Iain was a prison officer in Australia for 15 years until 2020. He tells us about a number of experiences he had, from working with a prisoner who was involved in 55 self-harm or behavioural incidents over a 4-month period to a prisoner who was convicted of driving his truck into a bar after being denied alcohol, killing multiple people. Evolving Prisons links Website Instagram LinkedIn Iain's vid...

Lee Davies was a prison officer in England and was imprisoned in May 2010 for taking contraband, namely mobile phones and cannabis, into prison for prisoners. Lee tells us how he started taking contraband in, how he got caught, ways to limit corrupt staff taking contraband into prisons and the impact that corrupt staff have on the prison service. Evolving Prisons links Website: evolvingprisons.com...

The Strangeways Prison riot is the longest recorded riot in British penal history, lasting 25 days in April 1990. Brendan O'Friel was the governor of the prison at that time. He tells us about the condition of the prison leading up to the riot, how 147 officers and 47 prisoners were injured and 1 officer and 1 prisoner lost their life, how Brendan navigated the riot without a contingency plan for...