Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Director of the Prison Reform Trust and former prison governor; first Asian woman to run a prison in England; turned around HMP Liverpool
On the island
Eight records
Kathy's SongFavourite
it literally takes me back to my childhood in India… reminds me of watching my uncle play the guitar to this
whenever this song comes on, no matter what kind of what's going on at home, everyone sort of gets up and dances
Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)
when I listen to it, it's I'm back in Barram Park… where my misfit friends and I spent our misspent youth
Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi featuring Norah Jones
reminds me of that time of you know working both in Risley and in Liverpool… it's a dark song, but it's also something quite powerful about it
talks a little bit to the elation that we felt when Liverpool actually came through its inspection
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:50How much hope do you have in that role?
It's a really good question. And I think that for people who've been in reform charities for a number of years, for decades, I think it's quite dispiriting. I've heard colleagues talk about how they've given it their life's work and yet the statistics are going in the opposite direction. But for me, having worked in the prison service for over twenty years and then coming to the reform charity, ironically, I come with optimism rather than pessimism.
Presenter asks
2:58Are we simply sending too many people to prison?
I think someone had quoted this, so it's not my words, but Britain seems to have a love affair with sending people to prison. … And we can't sentence our way out of this. … So the combination of the sentencing council giving longer and longer tariffs for certain offences and the fact that we're quick to send people for short-term sentences, particularly non-violent, low-risk offences, means that there's a bottleneck in the system.
Presenter asks
3:59What would you say to anyone who thinks improving prison conditions is not a laudable aim?
Yes. So you get so many people whose standard response is, A, if you didn't do the crime, don't do the time, or you you should be able to kind of cope with that because you've bought this on yourself. … Ultimately, the argument stems to is that we want to create less victims as we go on. And if prison is not a place of rehabilitation, those individuals are going to come back out into society and if they come out angrier and more frustrated and more traumatized and unrehabilitated, the chances are it will create more victims. … you can't rehabilitate people by locking them up for 23 hours a day. You can't rehabilitate people without compassion.
The keepsakes
The book
Rohinton Mistry
I've read him about, God knows, six, seven times, and I could read him again and again. So I won't get ever get bored of reading him. And it's about my favourite city, Bombay.
The luxury
I will need chili sauce. So, everything of my food has to have a bit of spice in it. So, if I'm eating raw fish, then it makes it so much more palatable with chili sauce. So, I'm going to take some chili sauce, a never-ending bottle of chili sauce.
Presenter asks
16:29What were your first impressions when you walked into Holloway Women's Prison?
I think nothing prepares you for how you kind of react when you first walk into a prison and … First thing that happens is that you go through an airlock. … And there's almost a sense of slight panic until the second door opens … it's literally you're surrounded by metal and wire and clanging keys and … they are places of pain. … Holloway at the time used to have it's circular … and that's where the psychiatric wing used to be. I mean, it was just a place of despair.
Presenter asks
23:21What did you find when you arrived at HMP Liverpool?
It shocked me just how much it had deteriorated even in that short space of time. … the infrastructure was crumbling, it was filthy, it was literally no no window was left intact. Um rats and vermin everywhere. I mean it was like deeply shocking. … You walked around and people were just, you know, vacant expressions on their faces and looking. Dirty, dishevelled, unshowered. It felt feral.
Presenter asks
28:24What's the one thing you would like people to understand about the tough-on-crime approach?
I guess it's important to say that there are people who legitimately do need to be in prison, that they are dangerous and they have done terrible things, and for that they need to spend their time in prison. And I'm not an abolitionist, but I do feel that we need to look seriously at what are the alternatives to custody for those who have committed nonviolent crimes, who are low risk individuals, who the reason why they've committed crime has been around poor mental health and substance misuse issues. In this country, we are almost criminalizing poverty, we're criminalizing trauma, we're criminalizing mental health, because it's those individuals that drift into our prison system.
“Britain seems to have a love affair with sending people to prison.”
“You can't rehabilitate people by locking them up for 23 hours a day. You can't rehabilitate people without compassion.”
“they are places of pain”
“People who work in prison somehow have this instinct that they either acquire or have it innately that they run towards trouble rather than away from it”
“we are almost criminalizing poverty, we're criminalizing trauma, we're criminalizing mental health”