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

By Podcasters David Jones & Dr Naomi MurphySociety & Culture Health & Fitness Mental Health True Crime

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

March 24, 2021 'Seeing myself through the lens of a character'. Butler Trust Commendee Rowan Mackenzie on forming a theatre company in a prison.
Rowan Mackenzie is both academic and practitioner. Her doctoral research on Creating Space for Shakespeare with Marginalised Communities considered how Shakespeare can be appropriated by people with learning disabilities, people with mental health issues, people who are incarcerated and people who have experienced homelessness. She is also Artistic Director of Shakespeare UnBard, having worked in English prisons since 2017, founding theatre companies (The Gallowfield Players and Emergency Shakespeare). The theatre companies are run entirely collaboratively with each actor having equal ownership, encouraging them to develop positive autonomy, self-confidence and transferable skills. She works with a wide-ranging population including those serving life sentences and those convicted of sexual offences. She has won numerous awards for the quality and effectiveness of her work including Prisoner Learning Alliance Outstanding Individual, Worshipful Company of Educators Inspirational Educator for Shakespeare and is currently shortlisted for the prestigious a Butler Trust Commendation. She is also a Trustee for 1623Theatre and Shakespeare consultant for Blue Apple Theatre. She has published and spoken about her work nationally and internationally in fields including criminology, prison education, Shakespeare, social justice and applied theatre and co-organised the annual Applying Shakespeare Symposiums. She is in the process of establishing a theatre company for those released from prison and also works with children of incarcerated parents.
57 min
March 19, 2021 David and Naomi talk about their first ten podcasts.
This short conversation gives David and Naomi a chance to talk about their first ten podcasts and the great conversations they have had with their generous collaborators.
28 min
March 17, 2021 Lawrence Jones on the fine detail of Trauma. A psychologist's journey from Wormwood Scrubs to Rampton Hospital.
In this conversation Lawrence gives a fascinating description of the therapeutic community at Wormwood Scrubs prison which closed soon after the death of Dr Max Glatt. He goes on to give us insight into his developing thinking on the nature of trauma and states of mind as it relates to forensic practice.
Lawrence Jones is a clinical and forensic psychologist, currently Head of Psychology at Rampton High Secure Hospital and Honorary Associate Clinical Professor at Nottingham University. He teaches regularly on the Sheffield and Leicester Clinical Psychology doctorate courses as well as the Forensic Doctorate at Nottingham University, He has previously been the Chair of the Division of Forensic Psychology.
Lawrence has had a long and extensive career within forensic services across both criminal justice and mental health settings with a significant amount of time spent working within therapeutic communities. Significantly this included the Annexe at Wormwood Scrubs prison, also referred to as the Max Glatt Unit. Lawrence has trained in multiple models of psychological therapy including Schema focused Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and Cognitive Analytic therapy which he has integrated into his knowledge of TC culture and treatment and has worked hard throughout his career to try and find ways to ensure the services he is responsible for are as accessible as possible.
Lawrence has very many publications to his name but is particularly interested in furthering an understanding of those who attract a diagnosis of personality disorder and offsetting the adverse impacts of chronic trauma and loss of liberty.
1 hr 16 min
March 10, 2021 A scholar of tragedy and misery; half vocation, half accident. Prison ethnography in the pursuit of imponderable knowledge
In this conversation Andrew talks about his ongoing work in Myanmar and the concern he and his colleagues share for their colleagues and all the people of the country currently subject to a brutal military coup. He offers us engagingly honest accounts of his study in prisons across africa and asia and these give moving insights into the method of this ethnographer..
Andrew Jefferson is an ethnographer with a background in psychology. He is Senior Researcher with Dignity, Danish Institute Against Torture. Since 2000 Andrew has been working on issues related to prisons ‘beyond the west’ with a focus on penal practice and the dynamics and consequences of reform interventions targeting prisons in the global south.
We had a couple of technical hitches during the making of this conversation. You may notice them though they barely show after our editing, but our apologies for this, the content more than makes up for it.
1 hr 16 min
March 03, 2021 Jewel in the crown or guilty secret. HMP Grendon approaches 60.
Grendon was opened in 1962, with the support of RA Butler then Home Secretary of the conservative government. How times have changed, well have they? In this conversation Geraldine Akerman and Richard Shuker talk about their 40 years of combined experience in this unique therapeutic prison.
Hon. Professor DR. GERALDINE AKERMAN is a Forensic Psychologist and Therapy Manager at HMP Grendon. She has worked for the prison service since 1999 assessing risk and providing treatment to men convicted of violent and sexual offences and with complex needs. She is the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Division of Forensic Psychology. Geraldine has co-edited a book on Enabling Environments and one on the subject of assessing and managing problematic sexual interests. Geraldine was awarded a PhD by the University of Birmingham in 2015. Geraldine was presented with the Senior Practitioner Award by the Division of Forensic Psychology 2018 for distinguished contribution to Forensic Psychology.
Richard Shuker is a Chartered Forensic Psychologist and Head of Clinical Services at HMP Grendon, a therapeutic community for prisoners with a personality disorder. Formerly lead psychologist within Grendon he now leads the clinical and research provision within its therapeutic communities. He spent the early part of his career working with young offenders and his special interests now include the assessment and treatment of offenders with personality disorders and other complex needs. He is particularly interested in relationships and social climate within prisons and how these can provide the conditions for change. He is Series Editor for the book series Issues in Forensic Psychology. He has published widely in areas including risk assessment, treatment readiness, social climate and trauma, therapeutic outcome and clinical intervention. He has co-edited a number of books and journals in the field of forensic psychology and therapeutic communities.
1 hr 17 min
February 24, 2021 Rely on your own heart and reason,....and divine inspiration
Abdullah Mia joins us in a fascinating conversation about his work, his background as a muslim whose family came from India and how this has influenced his life. As a Consultant Clinical Psychologist Abdullah has a profound influence upon the places he works. He describes his frequent encounters with racism, how he actively copes with this, confronting it when necessary. He shares his experiences of developing as a person, a practitioner and a leader. The title, 'Rely on your own heart and reason,....and divine inspiration', is a quotation from Homer that Abdullah endorses saying, 'this is as far away from British Psychology as it is possible to be'.

Abdullah Mia Biography
My personal history influences me as much as my professional history, therefore I come from a Indian Gujarati Muslim background, and was encouraged to celebrate other people’s cultures even though they were not my own ie. Christmas, Diwali etc. Here began my ‘difference is OK’ experiences, in the context of ongoing anxiety about racism as I grew up. My family also have a strong traditional element, which means hierarchies of respect entwined with patriarchal and caste based systems. This also introduced me to difference can be ‘bad’. This personal conflict has taken some time to understand and process and the way I have navigated difficult conversations with family and community also influence how I navigate hierarchies within my professional life.

My professional life has varied, beginning as teaching assistant, through to a reparation officer with YOT teams in Lancashire, and then as a youth worker. As a youth worker, I also began volunteering as an Assistant Psychologist, before a paid post in a community psychology project in Liverpool working with refugees and asylum seekers, I think unconsciously and consciously I have been always motivated to work with difference and marginalised groups, and this has contributed to me also working with offenders. Moments of reflection seem to lead me to think that it's linked with my own experiences of inhabiting multiple worlds, and navigating these stressors and joys. Since training as a clinical psychologist, I have also completed training in group analysis (but not the full analyst training!) and really like to incorporate how the social and political worlds present in our bodies and our minds. This combined with my continued in how people navigate racial and ethnic differences in the work, and how this can also give us some understanding and learning about what it means to navigate multiple spheres of life, and ultimately different conflicts.
1 hr 24 min
February 17, 2021 Lorna Rhodes; What can make a difference? Comparing HMP Grendon with a High Secure unit in a Washington State Prison.
Lorna A. Rhodes is professor emeritus at the University of Washington, where she taught medical and institutional anthropology. She is the author of Emptying Beds: The Work of an Emergency Psychiatric Unit (University of California Press 1991) and Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison (University of California Press 2004). She has published several articles about HMP Grendon, where she spent a month conducting research in 2008. Every working day she went to B wing therapeutic community, attending community meetings and talking with staff and residents. This conversation looks at this experience and compares it with research done at a high secure unit in a prison in Washington State.
1 hr 9 min
February 10, 2021 Michaela Booth; Exploring the experiences of criminalised women in leadership roles within the criminal justice sector; Are the bars ever truly removed?
Michaela Booth is the National Patient Engagement Lead for Care UK’s Health in Justice service that runs healthcare in 50 prisons across England, including Hewell and Long Lartin. She also has an Honours Degree in Applied Criminology. Michaela was sentenced to 4 years in prison for a crime she was found guilty of when she was 19 years old. She was sentenced at the age of 21 when her daughter was 4 years old. In this powerful conversation Michaela describes her views on the criminal justice system for women and mothers and makes a convincing case for the importance of those with lived experience having leadership roles and contributing to policy.
1 hr 7 min
February 03, 2021 Gwen Adshead and Broadmoor Hospital. The movement from psychiatrist to psychotherapist.
Gwen is bringing out a new book at the beginning of June, The Devil you know; Stories of human cruelty and compassion. Order here https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-devil-you-know/gwen-adshead/eileen-horne/9780571357604
Dr Gwen Adshead describes her long relationship with Broadmoor Hospital. This notorious institution was built in the 19th century as Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum and accommodated many of the most disturbed pationts in the land. Gwen talks about her own development from being a psychiatrist to a psychotherapist and how her engagement with object relations and Mentalization Based Treatment helped her to deepen her understanding of deeply disturbed patients.
1 hr 6 min
January 27, 2021 A failed success: the Barlinnie Special Unit
Michael Brookes and David Wilson talk about their recent article, A failed success: the Barlinnie Special Unit, which came out in International Journal of Prisoner Health August 2020. They consider this unit, to most appearances highly successful working with men who the rest of the scottish prison service had struggled to contain, and why it ultimately closed. The conversation extends to thinking about why some highly creative organisations succeed and others fail.
Professor Michael Brookes was formerly Director of Therapeutic Communities at HMP Grendon where for eleven years he was the clinical lead within this accredited therapeutic community prison.
David Wilson is an expert on serial killers through his work with various British police forces, academic publications, books, and media appearances.
44 min

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

From the publisher's feed

Can institutional culture challenge your mental health? What if your job makes you feel shame, sadness, grief, disgust and fear? What if you are expected not to feel? Or you are expected to be…