Media Storm - S4E11 Prisons: Overcrowding, Operation Early Dawn, and child strip-searches

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

‘UK PRISONS OVERCROWDED AFTER RACIST RIOTS!’ ‘A CHILD IS STRIP-SEARCHED EVERY 14 HOURS’ ‘SCORES OF CRIMINALS COULD BE FREED IN DAYS’ Headlines this week spotlight the UK’s criminal justice system, as prison overcrowding triggers emergency measures. Amazingly, serious talks about prison reform have entered the mainstream media - but a key voice is missing from the coverage: prisoners themselves. This week, people with inside knowledge of the system join Helena and Mathilda for the week’s top stories. Lady Unchained and David Navarro talk prison overcrowding, child strip-searching, and the new prisons minister, James Timpson. We also ask: was this really all caused by Keir Starmer’s ‘clampdown’ on far-right rioters? Plus, other Media Storms of the week: Superyacht shipwreck, migrant ‘superheroes’, and Steven van de Velde's post-Olympics interviews. Hosts: Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Music: Samfire (@soundofsamfire) Assistant Producer: Katie Grant Episode research: Camilla Tiana Support Media Storm on Patreon! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash ViPorter to learn more. more. Hello there. I haven't seen you in like a whole week. Oh my God, it's shocking. What have you doing? I have been up at the Edinburgh Fringe and I am having withdrawals already. I've done my share of Edinburgh fringes and, you know, I think sometimes you need like a fallow year, a bit of a break. You never take a break. It's pretty draining though. I got honestly feel absolutely exhausted. I was, okay, so one of my friends is pregnant and anytime I have one of her favourite alcoholic drinks, I've been sending her a picture because I'm just such a good friend

like that. I sent her a picture of me having one of her favorite drinks at Pornsal Martini and she just sent me a message back going, why are you drinking at 11pm on a Sunday? It's the Edinburgh Fringe. Like days and times just do not apply at all. It is true. I feel like the best show start at 3am at the fringe. Well the most random ones so I went to something called Late Night Comedy Rave which was DJs

and then stand-ups doing their stand-up over the DJ and doing the punchline when the beat drops Are you supposed to laugh or dance? Both, you have to do both. How do you laugh laugh and how do you laugh and... By the way guys that was Tilda attempting to laugh and dance

I know you can't see you... I failed at both it kind of looked like she was having a stroke I'm not going to lie. Obviously, because I always have my media storm brain on, I saw so many shows that had some very interesting media storm themes, I would say. Okay, tell me more. I don't want to give a huge shout out to Yuck Circus. This is an all-female circus troupe, and their show is a real, like, comment on what is masculine, what is feminine.

One of my favorite parts of it was just how they start the show, all dressed up, as men in inverted commas with moustaches and socks in their pants and just come out and go lads lads lads lads lads lads lads and then they down a pint I actually as a kid wanted to run away and join the circus that was my dream job you would suit that now I'm just a journalist so yuck circus if you're listening trade places no honestly yuck circus if you're listening I'm obsessed with you that's what's been happening in Scotland it is but let's into what's been happening in the rest of the world.

The full supermoon, also known as the blue moon, turned red on Monday because of North American wildfire smoke sitting in the atmosphere above the UK. Fashion chain Ted Baker closed its remaining UK stores this week, bringing an end to its position on high streets. Joe Biden said he gave his heart and soul to this nation as he issued an emotional farewell address in Chicago. And there is real concern about a new variant of M-Pox, but the World Health Organization says vaccines could stop another cycle of panic and neglect. But this is not just your average news podcast, so what stories are we looking at through a media storm lens? Well, instantly what caught my eye is an incident that has been

the top story and getting live updates on most mainstream news platforms for days. And this is a luxury yacht has sunk in a weather event off the coast of Sicily. The 50-meter boat named Bayesian had 22 people on board when it sank in the early hours of Monday. At the time of recording 15 people have been rescued from the boat six remain missing and one is confirmed dead.

Authorities have said it's no longer survivors that rescuers are trying to find but bodies which is a really really sad situation. There's been a lot of media attention on this and I think partly what's so interesting about this story is the so-called weather event that led

to this boat sinking. Now we don't know exactly what happened yet, but what we do know is that the maximum sea surface temperature record for the Mediterranean Sea was broken last week and that higher sea temperatures can lead to more severe storm clouds. We know that many storms have swept through Italy in recent days, with floods and landslides causing severe damage in the north of the country, and this comes after weeks of scorching heat.

Some papers are reporting the weather event that led to the super yacht sinking as a tornado. Some are reporting it as a freak or a phantom weather event. The BBC said the yacht sank in bad weather. As if this was kind of like drizzle and grey skies, what's missing from most reports is an examination of the connection between these storms and climate change. Wow, yeah, that wouldn't have occurred to me

because it hasn't really come up on my radar. But it's true because when something like this happens, you know, tragic incident, the first thing journalists do is start sniffing around for the wider implications of the story. You know, as soon as the building goes up in flames, it's like, is this the next Grenfell? What insulation did that building have?

But when it comes to climate, it's just like tweeting birds. We talk about that if listeners are interested in more in our second episode of this series, politics or pollution. But I actually read this story through another media storm lens, which is refugee reporting. Okay, tell me. more. Well, this is a boat that sank in the Mediterranean. Yes, it's a super yacht. Yes, some of the people missing are extremely rich and also British, such as billionaire tech

tycoon Mike Lynch and the chairman of Morgan Stanley and his cox, Jonathan Blumer. As soon as I first saw it, one story came to my mind. I feel like it must have come into your mind. Definitely the Titan submarine implosion. Titan submarine implosion, exactly. Last year. And like the Titan, the coverage of this story has also overshadowed other shipwrecks in the same waters whose casualties far overshadow it. But it doesn't get this individualistic coverage because the lives lost are refugee lives, migrant lives. And this story to me is a story about the power of identity.

The news coverage affords so much identity to some individuals. Yes, these individuals in this story are British, but the fact that refugees have no land to call home is part of the tragedy and naming the people lost at sea, naming the dead. This is an act of dignity that's so important. This is why there are charities slaving away

to try to identify refugee lives that are lost at sea. There's this huge project called The List collaborating with, you know, activists and humanitarian organizations, campaigning for governments to put effort into identifying these people. I have been on the coast of Italy and found ID cards washed up, corroded by salt, of people whose families may have no idea where they are. And I think reading these news reports about this shipwreck, I realized that if we did this with migrant shipwrax, even just naming a few individuals and painting a picture of who they are as people, I think it would change how we read the story.

I know that a lot of people listening probably think like it's not the same thing the people on this boat oh they're famous and they're wealthy there's a natural interest in fame and fortune but like these billionaires aren't household names I had never heard of them I'd never heard of them right and what I'm hearing when the news acts like

I should know who they are I'm being told these are the lives I should be interested in I'm hearing my level of care being shaped by what I'm hearing and reading so I don't think it's fair to say the media just reflects public interest It shapes it. I agree and I had the same thoughts and I also found it interesting that while, you know, people were missing, such as these two billionaires and really sadly their family members, it was confirmed that one person had died.

Yet I had to scroll down like multiple, multiple paragraphs of news reports before I found this person's name or any details about him. And this was the yacht chef, Racaldo Thomas. And I found it telling, you know, the billionaires are named the staff or not. The billionaires are being given a lot of space in media reporting. The chef who has died is not, really. And it made me think about how much we value people based on their work and their money, which actually kind of brings me into another story I wanted to look at through a media storm lens. We spoke last week about the Leicester Square stabbing,

in which a 32-year-old man, Iowen Pintaru, stabbed an 11-year-old girl and her mother in a random knife attack. While the 11-year-old girl is needing several surgeries, thankfully both victims are alive. In no small part, thanks to a man called Abdullah, who tackled the knifeman to the ground, preventing further harm to the girl, and held the attacker down until the emergency services arrived.

Yes, but who, as we spoke about last week, was used as the face of this story by the Daily and, alongside headlines about the stabber, not the savior. Right. And now there's another kind of article coming out about Abdullah, which also irks me, but in a different way, the Guardian interviewed Abdullah after the stabbing. The headline is, I love this country, the migrant hero who tackled Leicester Square attacker. Oh, God, it's so on the nose. You're cringing, I'm kidding. It's so on the nose.

The interview talks about how Abdullah moved to the UK from Pakistan to study for a master's degree. He talks about how he ended up working as the security guard, how he loves his life in London, and how he was proud to protect the community. And then there's a quote from a conservative peer, Amma Safras, who says, Abdelah's actions have single-handedly shut down the narrative of the far-right protesters. God, that is a lot of pressure on him. It's, it is all a bit good immigrant, isn't it? Yeah. And here's the thing. I'm so proud. and grateful that Abdullah was there to save this poor child's life

and many people would not have been so brave but does Abdullah have to save a child's life to like prove that he's useful to this country? Also you know when the far right riots happened a lot of people with I think the best will in the world were saying you know immigrants in this country like

they're your doctors, they're your nurses they save your lives, they prop up our economy yeah that's true that's valuable as hell but also they're human beings and they deserve respect based on that alone. And non-immigrants, or let me be more specific, white-skinned non-immigrants, never seem to have to prove themselves in order for people to value them in society. Do you remember when we had Hussein Kasvani on our episode about anti-Asian hate? And he said, brown men are not afforded individual moral agency in our press.

Like they're used as tokens to tell a story turned into either a representative of this clash of civilization or this migrant hero who's shutting down everything racists believe. The fact the headline goes with like I love my country like he saved these people out of British patriotism. Oh, the depressing thing is that this is where we're at. The Guardian has clearly made a calculated editorial decision to tell this story. because they think society needs it. Our commentary on migration has just become so reductive. Yeah. Time for one more.

Something from the media that hasn't been sitting quite right with me for the past week. Okay, let me brace myself. You might have to. This is an interview with a child rapist on Sky News and that child rapist crying and saying he doesn't. identify with that part of his life anymore. Yep, I've seen it. Okay, for those who haven't, tell them about it. Stephen Vanderveld is a Dutch volleyball player.

He was allowed to compete in this year's Olympics in Paris, despite a conviction of child rape. He's now 30 years old, but when he was 19, in 2014, he travelled to the UK from Amsterdam to meet a 12-year-old girl, who he had been speaking to on Facebook for three to four months prior. He knew her age, he gave her alcohol, he raped her, and committed other sexual offences. In 2016, he was sentenced in England to four years in prison for three counts of child rape. He served one year before he was transferred to the Netherlands and released one month later. Van der Velde resumed his volleyball career after his release. There was obviously a backlash pre-Olympics and at the Olympics itself, right? Yeah, before the Olympics,

petition to disqualify him gained nearly 150,000 signatures. Groups in support of rape victims have been very vocal about how they believe he should not have been allowed to compete. And at the Olympics itself, while he didn't participate in post-game interviews, and he was booed by the crowd at his matches, something he said may have had an impact on his performance and be part of the reason he didn't win a medal. Okay, well, wait a second, because if he was granted approval, by the Netherlands team to avoid journalists

and not do these post-game interviews like you just said. How do we know that he thinks the crowd jeering put him off his performance? Oh, because he did media interviews after the Olympics finished where he cried about getting booed and people talking about the fact that he raped

a child. Totally normal behaviour from the media there. Yeah. His first interview about the Paris Games was with the Dutch national broadcaster NOS in which he said he considered quitting the games. But then he thought he was not going to give others the power to decide that they can bully me away. He has also blamed the British media for his tough experience. Another interview, broadcast on

Sky News, showed Vandeveld saying he doesn't identify with the teenager of 10 years ago and he's a different person and an adult now. Oh, he's an adult now. Okay, yeah, I think the issue was actually that he was an adult then. Yeah, look, for me, the most stark thing. thing about these interviews with Vandervold is that he gets the opportunity to almost like tell his side of the story and the media are giving him an opportunity to rehabilitate his image and it has also turned into an opportunity for sexual violence to be passed off as like a young lad who made a mistake yeah this is the thing because I actually am like not against the principle of rehabilitation even extreme rehabilitation I'm probably

almost an outlier in how much I do believe that media should support narratives of rehabilitation and reform. However, they don't. They consistently fail to do this until it comes to criminals like these, until it comes to giving grace to sports stars. Powerful men, famous men, celebrity men, who have a history of abusing women. So crucially, the question here is, who are we not hearing from? his victim, and what are we not hearing about the impact on her life and her family's life? And why is this the person that the media decides to give that grace to?

This whole story raises a lot of questions about reporting on violent crime, but also rehabilitation, tricky questions, and I think we're going to get more into those today. On that note, welcome to our main media storm topic this episode. Now, it's likely you've seen a lot of talk about prisons this week, be it prison overcrowding, early prisoner releases or prison sentences for rioters. We've also seen disturbing headlines about strip searching of children. It's a newsweek to take a good hard look at our criminal justice system. And that is happening. What's interesting is that the current so-called overcrowding crisis has actually sparked some really sophisticated discussions in UK media that we've,

not seen in so much depth before. Discussions about what prison is actually for and whether it works. And that's great progress. These discussions have featured valuable voices from politicians, prison officers and police officers. But one key voice is missing, that of prisoners, current and former. So those other missing voices, Media Storm is here to provide. The government has confirmed that it's activated in. an emergency plan to avoid overcrowding in jails.

Police carried out over 3,000 strip searches of children. Those that have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law. I will be tough on crime. We've got two-tier politics, two-tier policing and two-tier justice. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson and I'm Helena Woodia. This week's Media Storm. Prison, overcrowding early release and riots.

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Join the movement and donate now at Movember.com. Welcome to the MediaStorm Studio, where we're joined by two very special guests. Both of them come at the headlines with a bit of inside knowledge of the system as former prisoners themselves. Our first guest is a spoken word artist and the founder of Unique, Unchained poetry, a platform for artists with experience of the criminal justice system. She has worked on broadcast productions from the BBC to Prison Radio, exposing gender-based failures of the criminal justice system to the people outside it and guiding the people inside it about how to stay on the straight and narrow.

Welcome to the studio, Lady Unchained. Thank you so much for having me. Our second guest is a content creator and a fellow journalist who likes to do things a little differently. He is the founder of Delinquent Nation, a YouTube channel platforming stories of and by ex-prisoners, and has presented and produced documentaries appearing across ITN, Channel 4 and Apple TV. Thank you for shifting your schedule around to be here this morning. Welcome, David Navarro. Nice to meet you.

Thanks also, like you guys both post to be on holiday. I didn't realize that. Yes. No rest of the wicked. Exactly. The first story we want to talk about today is a popular story. in papers right now at home and abroad, probably because it paints a pretty picture of the UK in chaos. UK prisons overcrowded after racist riots. Now this is actually slightly misleading.

Prisons were already overcrowded, which is why last month Labor announced the early release of prisoners after 40% of their sentence has been served down from the customary 50%. But the overcrowding situation has been exacerbated by the rapid sentencing of hundreds of rioters, pushing the government to activate an additional emergency measure called Operation Early Dawn. This measure allows detainees to be held in police cells for longer than usual until prison space becomes available. Again, it's not new, as many headlines have implied, it was actually used by the Conservatives in May, which leaves us with a lot to unpack. Before we get into that

I'm curious for your guys's first-hand insights when you were in prison and perhaps you can tell us when that was was overcrowding a problem I've been to prison a couple times it's always been overcrowded I was in Belmarsh in 2015

in a three-man cell so you're not really supposed to have free people cells you kind of get on top of each other times to use the toilet so yeah I'm quite I'm quite used to the overcrowding. Eventually I got a single cell,

but there's ways to go about that. What does that mean? How do you get a single cell? So to get a single cell in prison, you kind of have to be a high-risk prisoner, which means like you might be a risk to your cell mate. So a lot of prisoners that kind of want to have a single cell, they might do things,

manufacture things to become high risk. and then have a single cell to themselves. Wow, so that actually sounds like it is very inflammatory to the overall prison situation if people are incentivised to do that. I mean, and I think, I guess for me, I'd never been to prison. So being in Holloway, you know,

the prison that I'd only seen on TV as like, all the murderers are here, and I'm 21 years old, and they put me in a cell, like, a dorm with, like, all these women that most of them were older than me. I was thinking they were trying to kill me. So, you know, sleep with one eye or, you know, when they'll talk to me, the officer's like, so how are you feeling?

I'm like, I feel they're trying to kill me. Yeah, so as you guys point out, overcrowding is definitely not a new thing. To be clear, the prison estate has been operating at 99% occupancy for over a year. For reference, Germany considers 90% full capacity. It's also not evenly distributed. So there's places like Durham Prison, which has a capacity of 573 people holding 973 prisoners inside it in May. But many of the week's headlines, especially in the right-wing media, give the impression that this is a new problem or a labour problem

or a problem to do with the, quote, crackdown on rioters. A few examples. G.B. News wrote, Labor triggers emergency prison plan as riot clampdown leaves justice system on the brink. The sun, prison overcrowding as hundreds of riot thugs locked up. Just a month ago, the Daily Mail published a whole article basically saying overcrowding was a made-up problem.

They accused Labor of shameless scaremongering about overcrowding. They quote a senior Tory source saying, Labor have come into government with hundreds of prison places available and a stoking public panic for political gain. What do you guys think of this framing of prison overcrowding as a sudden crisis? I guess they're just shifting the blame onto the new government. It's all it seems.

Honestly, it's always been, like this is not new. It's news to people that don't know about the criminal justice system. If you know if you know nothing about the criminal justice, you know, you're like, oh my God, we're in crisis. We that work in it and once lived in it, understand that it's been like this for a very long time. And Labor's just jumped into this. Like, so they're trying to fix what's been broken. I think this framing as well that this is like a sudden issue and it's been triggered by the clampdown on riots.

It's this desire to have an easy problem with an easy fix. Oh, if prisons are only overcrowding because we're locking up too many rioters, the unasked question is, oh, should we not be locking up those rioters? You know, the prison sentences are being given to rioters, often explicitly for racist violence. And there's been so many reports of systemic racism within our criminal justice system. So is this like a rare positive case of the justice system serving racial justice? No, it's not that at all.

Like if you remember the 2011 riots, Mark Duggan thing. Yeah. So this was after Mark Duggan, a black man was killed by police. Yeah. And then their rights went off. And people was getting big sentences. People was coming in for like minor things, but getting in a long time. I remember there was this kid that took rice and I think he got years for that.

This has been happening for writers. Anytime a big riot happens, you know, the person in charge says, you know, they're going to feel the full force of the law. So I don't think it's like, oh, well, these writers are getting, that's just what happens anyways. I saw that in the 2011 rights. I agree with that. But I do also find it quite interesting. The other riots with Mark Duncan were like mixed.

It was like black, white, Asian people. It was like everybody was involved. Again, there was the highlight of there was more black people doing this. Now, with this riot, it was mostly white men and women going around being racist and attacking. anyone that wasn't the same colour as them. Now they're getting heavy sentences and everyone's like, oh my God, heavy sentences for the writers.

But we've been getting thrown in jail for rice. Like people went and stole food. You know, if you've got no food and the shop is like being kicked in already and you have no money, you're going to steal rice, you know, because you can feed your family. I understand that. Now, what I don't understand is just going around

and attacking people because of their race and their colour and their background. So I do believe that there is a kind of like, backwards conversation here because actually I'm going to be honest when it comes to our white counterpart, we always get longer sentences. I can go and commit a crime with the same crime as a white woman today and I've had white ladies who I've met and they've gone, I've done that so many times, you know, I've never been to jail for that. I'm so sorry about it. And I'm just looking at them like, what do I do with this information? You know, I mean, I'm so grateful

that you have acknowledged, you know, your white privilege. But again, for me, it's like I've had to go through the prison system in order to find this justice for myself, it wasn't given to me. Okay, so if these sentences for the rioters, you know, they're consistent with what's happened in the past, this is the right response. How do we balance that with the problem

of prison overcrowding? You know, sometimes I wonder if there's something concerning or maybe a little hypocritical with the change in positions on the left towards tough on crime and police crackdowns. And I wonder if in the rush to condemn these riots, people are turning

a bit of a blind eye to all the evidence we've got about whether prisons and policing actually solve the problem. Is this just another example of politicians pretending complex social problems can be squashed with the firm hand of the law? Or is it different? Is it the solution? I don't believe long sentences work full stop. I just feel like we have to admit that the prison system hasn't been working for many years. So there's no rehabilitation in the criminal justice system and they know that there's alternatives. Does that mean even though you know, it's nice to see consistency for white criminals.

You don't necessarily think that prison sentences for these rioters, some of whom are children, is the solution. No, and it's not, I don't think it would work only because they need to get actual support. They need to get education. I'm not saying they haven't been schooled. I'm saying that they need to get real education about the

other people that are around them, the history of the UK, and why a lot of us are here. And maybe that might help them understand. Yeah, I think this whole rights thing and it's like I think it's been a distraction from and even like the whole prisons being full in that I just think it's a distraction from the bigger issue which is like poverty comes with crime kind of thing and like they they go hand to hand instead of addressing

that like you know the classes and the poverty certain news outlets that are like pushing this narrative that oh it's the immigrants why you're not getting money they're taking our jobs they're doing this they're doing that but really they want to be angry at the government for being let down but they're angry at people that are just like them that are broke as well do you know what I mean but they're just different colours or whatever the government authorities turn people who are suffering from hardship against each other so so you're not looking at the actual problem but then still dish out the firm hand of the law to squash the problem but all that's doing is like the taxpayer pays for that it's painful all of them I think there is this big celebration look we've dealt

with the problem now because we caught all those people being racist and we've put them in prison so job done and it's like actually that's not even like touching the sides of what we need to do to say job done I like feel a bit this way about the media as well coming out and being like oh you know writing thugs you have been feeding them the information that's made them do this you've been being like yeah get angry blame migrants and then when it goes a bit far, it's like, oh, not cool, you're all thugs. A hundred percent they do that.

And I follow pages like Daily Mail, New York Post and like these kind of right-wing papers along with left-wing ones as well. They race bait all the time. They start these wars, these race wars, and then just kind of like reporting it after. It's like, oh my gosh, these people are writing. But they've been pulsing all this stuff all the time. That's why it's important to like really change the narrative of the papers because the writers actually, we are the same.

We're all struggling, cost of living. All of that is that literally crazy at the moment. But they've been told there's cost of living and the foreigners are taking all your jobs. That's not the case. Everyone is struggling to get work. Everyone's struggling to put food on the table. It's crazy.

The other big story of the week we want to talk about that has caused a lot of disturbance is about how many children, i.e. people aged 17 and under, are being stripser? Now, there has been a bit of muddling around what this actually means in reporting. So, for clarity, for our listeners, strip searching involves exposing intimate parts of the body. It's not the same as intimate searches, which involves intrusive physical examination of a person's bodily orifices.

Now, this new data has revealed that one child is being strip searched every 14 hours in England and Wales over the past five years. This amounts to 3,368 strip searches, nearly a third 15 or under. The youngest child was eight. Almost half of those documented failed to confirm the presence of an appropriate adult, such as a parent or social worker. When I first came across the story, I was like, why does this happen? The children's commissioner who sources data has said this should only happen to prevent immediate dangers to the child being searched.

or others. But the data showed nearly nine out of ten searches are aimed at finding drugs rather than weapons, which raises the question, are they really so life-threatening that they're necessary given all of the trauma to the person being searched, the child? I've read some like sort of convincing police testimonies about how this is the only way to stop gangs using children as drug mules. I've also read some really unconvincing police explanations about how like it's done to protect children because if you don't take all the drugs off them then when they're in detention

they might feel scared of being caught with more drugs so they swallow them but I'm like if you don't fear a strip search why would you swallow it in the first place surely that's doing the opposite should this be happening at all I've got experience being strip search as a child

but my experience is very different because I was actually I was actually like I was doing stuff you know but even if you were doing stuff should this be

do you think this should be no I don't no of course not I think I think the way to go about it might be having an adult there or maybe some x-ray machines

or something like that because really at the end of the day their children yeah you have to get naked as a child a lot of the times when I've had strip searches when I was younger

would just be in a police van but you have a trusted adult present What's supposed to happen? We had like local officers. They would just kind of grab the same people all the time. They're not your parents. Yeah, they're not your guardian. Yeah, they'll come, like, see you, just say you're just walking down the road.

They'll come see you, stop you. If they don't find nothing, they'll take in a van for a strip search because they believe you've got something else. And a lot of the time, in fact, every time they've never found anything on me. Yeah. How old were you when this first happened? Like 15. I mean, like, I don't have kids, but I mean, can you imagine if, like, a police officer was doing that to your child?

I'm not going to lie, I have only been strip search in jail, and it was the most, it was the most traumatizing thing ever. Like, I can't even tell you, even now, as I'm talking about it, like, I can feel the woman's hands touching me. It's a lot. I couldn't imagine an eight-year-old having to go through that. If you're putting children, putting them through that continuously, if you're always being stopped and searched, and you actually, ain't doing anything, unfortunately, you're just going to think this is it. So you're going to think, what's the point? I might as well be doing something then, because at this point, these men stop me every day.

You know, we're making these children believe that this is where they belong. Prison, care, home, death, mental health hospitals. And this is because of how we're treating them and not being children. Children should be children. And I get that there are people out there using children. But I think then you should go out and find those people that are targeting the children and actually keep these children safe. The ironic thing is that the justification given is

we are doing it to care for the children. Gangs are using them, hiding drugs inside children, that we're protecting them with this. I mean, David, is that how it fell? No, of course not. I was getting certain. Before I even got on to doing any badness, I was getting stopped and searched.

Because you're not stopping people that are groomed with them or whatever. You're stopping that individual. How is giving them a criminal record helping them? You're just basically setting them up to fell now. even though they've kind of set themselves but they're underage, isn't it? They're still growing. If I was a parent, I would be outraged, like honestly,

because why are we not thinking about how we avoid that prison sentence, how we prevent that from happening, making sure that these children and, you know, their mothers and their parents or whatever are actually being seen, heard and understand that actually if your child has done something wrong, we're going to speak to you first and then we're going to push for other things,

that's not being done. It almost sounds like the opposite. Like, David, does it feel like, oh, you keep stopping and searching me because you're trying to prevent me from falling into crime or because you're trying to catch me out and get me into prison. That's what it is.

That's what it is, yeah. A lot of people don't, they don't respond to punishment. They don't learn like that. Like back in the days I used to get smacked or whatever on, but I never learnt from that. You know, I'd go and do something again and again and again. I think if I was probably taught why I shouldn't do this,

what the consequences would be a lot different. If they're just arresting you, they're not helping you. They're not in touch with you after you're arrested. Like, you're just, you're gone after that. They arrested you and you're gone. You're in the system now. And then now you've lost somebody's drugs maybe. Do you know what I mean?

And now you owe people money. Now you're in so much more trouble than you was before, you know. I think there's a key element that the media, the public, ignore when it comes to child strip searches, which is humiliation and shame because it is. essentially non-consensual and it is essentially you're getting naked non-consensually and that is and can be extremely traumatising there is also a key additional element of this story and that's the racial disparity of it black children were four times more likely to be strip searched this is down from six times more likely in 2022 but still four times four times more likely

because they're black, I mean, what's your immediate reaction to this? Straight away, I just think, again, we're just going back into the older days where they just assume that all the black people are the ones committing all these crimes. Little black children, and I'm not saying even just them, like I'm saying all children should not be strip searched. If you're the kid that's always in trouble and like, you know, now the police is getting called in, now there's that two ways it can go. Either you're just like, oh my God, this is terrible, like, and all your friends are like,

this is terrible. or you've got the friends that's like, you know what, that's all right. You know, you're a bad man. You know, you're a bad man, you know. Like, the police is coming for you. And then you start to, like, feel like that's the person you're meant to become. Again, it's teaching children that's the way they're meant to live.

And these are kids, like, under the law. I know some people disagree with, oh, calling 17-year-olds children the same as eight-year-olds children. But we use this term for a reason, because under the law, we acknowledge that you are still developing, you are still learning. And so you are not culpable in the way. the same way that adults have to be.

While this data is shocking, the fact that it's come out is a good thing. The data wasn't found by a journalist. It was found by the children's commissioner, but it has forced the media to start having conversations about why this is happening

to black children especially. Something that I've heard in these discussions is the term adultification. I hadn't heard this before, but it's like a really well-documented problem in the academic. world about white adults looking at black kids as older than they are, particularly in like criminal justice. For example, in one survey, seasoned police officers consistently overestimated

the age of black child suspects by about four and a half years and they underestimated the age of white teenage's ages. So then they police them and penalise them as adults. Suddenly I've heard this mentioned in the media, the adultification of black children. But what I haven't heard is the media asking about the role they have played in doing that in adultifying black children. The analysis we've done of news coverage of black boys is associations of aggression, criminality with black girls. There's comparatively little coverage of incidents where like black girls are kidnapped or assaulted or murdered and the impression is like the violation of these children is less deserving of public outrage. This is. This is so.

stuff we have learned doing media storm, would you guys agree that the media has played a role in creating these stereotypes of young black people in the UK? Yeah, I think so. I noticed something, and this isn't like really black or white kids, this was like this whole Palestine issue. I saw that, you know, they were saying these Israeli kids were killed and then the Palestinian kids died. They used different words, they use different terms. And they're very smart with the way they do that. my opinion is the police force is mainly white and when they're seeing black kids

it's almost like it's a different species if that makes sense it's a bit weird so for you it's an issue of representation representation and obviously the media as well because when they show a lot of people in hoodies automatically like oh that's a fog that's a gangster and he's probably just going shot for his mum and coming back I think also what is crazy is that

the shows that we make it, you only promote negativity. And don't please, no media people don't come for me, please, because I know there's some good journalists out there, and I love you, you guys. But there's also the ones that promote a lot of negativity. So if you think about, like, back in the day, there was that show Gangland TV. Gangland TV, all it done was show a lot of mostly black boys

on the ends talking about how they get down on the roadside. I was watching this angry, like, who allowed you to go on the telly? Like, the African in me was coming out. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not allowed, you know, like, where's your parents? But they made it happen. And that's what promoted now. All the other little kids are going, I want to be like that boy on the tell you.

You've promoted that. You haven't promoted positive people like us, you know, because, yes, we've been through the system. And unfortunately for us, we are black. So it's never fair for us. But we've come out at the other end, and we're doing positive work. So let's talk about that. So I think if we tell the stories the right way, then as a community, as a society, we can understand each other

and actually get to know each other so that the boy that is wearing the hoodie you're like, mate, that's just gym, mate. He's not going to do nothing. He's just like literally just got his headphones under there. He's just like listening to music. Do you get it? Because now you know that child.

At the moment we're so divided and the media allows us to stay that way because they don't promote all stories. Well, finally, a possibly optimistic future. We'll find out. We want to talk about. about whether this is a new era for conversations about prison in the media.

So these headlines about overcrowding have seen new levels of depth in the mainstream media discussion. There have been some key questions being asked like, what is prison actually for? And it follows a turn in the political climate last month when Kirstama made a surprising appointment to his new Labour cabinet, a prominent prison reformist, James Timstson, He's not an MP, but he's CEO of the Timpson Group, which you've probably been to if you need a key cut or your shoes fixed. And he is also chair of the Prison Reform Trust. So Timson made a name for himself hiring hundreds of former prisoners and once said that only a third of people in prison should actually be there. And this was surprising to hear this man speaking on BBC News, Idafi News, Sky News when he was appointed.

because, you know, I remember a lot of bang them up and build more presidents during Labor's general election campaign when they were trying to get into power. I guess my question for both of you is, do you feel more optimistic with something like disappointment of James Timpson or do you see kind of Kirstama just waving two flags at once? He's not really sure what he's on about. I think it's about time that they had someone like Timpson.

you need to have someone in that position that can kind of sing a different song than what we've been doing for hundreds of years and he seems a bit different than the other ministers that have been doing prisons and they're just playing politics. I like, I like the statement of like a lot of those people in prison are not meant to be there.

Like there's so many people, you know, women who have just like fell in love with the wrong man and, you know, they've ended up just that in a situation that they cannot avoid. The saddest thing I heard is women saying that they felt safer in prison. So it's nice that we want to talk about it. But for someone like me, that's been trying to chase up all these reports talking about strategy, you know, female offender strategy and why women shouldn't go to prison. And that's like years before I even went to prison. And we're still talking about it today. And women are still going to prison, pregnant

and giving birth in prison. Unfortunately, that's not what we do as a government. So it's nice. It is a good sign. It's always a good sign when you hear people in that kind of like area say, no these people do not belong there but what's going to happen and I want that information I want to see the action of it because we've been we've been on this journey for a long time before we lose you can you tell listeners if and where they can follow you and if you have anything in particular you'd like to follow so yes you can follow me on Instagram Lady Unchained on Instagram on X it's X now isn't it it's Unchained poetry. So I'm going to be at Greenbelt Festival this weekend. I have a set for 60 minutes

performing some of my poetry. I have become unchained through my prison sentence and I want to help other people become unchained too. So I will be mentoring five to six people in prison and in the community and then putting a showcase on for them to showcase their talent, which will be unchained nights. And I will give you all that information on social media. So just follow me and then you can just keep up with it. Yeah, you can follow Delinquent Nation on all platforms, apart from Spotify, ironically. But I have not done a podcast in about nine months, but I'm currently developing documentaries and yeah, watch out for me on the screen, I guess.

Watch out for him. Hello and welcome back. to digest. Prisons overflowing, people being sent to prison, people being released from prison, but underpinning all these issues is a very simple question. Does prison actually work? Matilda and I dug into this question in our very first series, speaking to people inside prison, ex-prisoners trying to stay out of it,

and prison officers charged with guarding them all. What they revealed is a vital part of the conversation today. And whatever your views on the recent, headlines, it's worth a listen. Here's a taste of what they had to say. We know people commit crimes. It's the why people commit crimes that's important. It's criminogenic. You may go in as a shoplifter and in your fifth sentence, you're like credit card fraud because of what you've learned in prison. And look, you've got people with really good intentions. Because they know the lack of options and opportunities that are out there,

give you a phone number of phone. Hey, I'll give my mate a call. and then assault you're out. And the next thing you know, you're in for shoplifting. You've been grafting class A drugs. And that's not dramatic. It happens, and it happens every day in prison. I was a victim of sexual assault when I was 13 years old. I hid it from my mum.

It led to a huge relationship breakdown between me and her, and I probably found comfort with the wrong people on the street. I'm curious, did prison help you? in any way. For me personally, it wasn't the actual prison. It was the fact of having the family elements or women that have been through what I've been through. I felt at home and I felt understood for the first time.

That's all it is. Sometimes people just need a little bit of love. These people are then coming out of jail with more psychological issues than they already had from the things they've seen in jail, from being confined, you know, in a little four by four space, 23 hours a day. Do they think that's going to rehabilitate it?

somebody. I just think the whole tough on crime thing is just a way of covering up the real problem. You know, building more prisons. Are you crazy? Like, what do you want for half of the country to be in jail? The truth is they don't know what to do with all the offenders in prison. It's just shove them all in one space and contain them. I was a prison officer in HMP Pentonville from the summer of 2018 until the start of this year, so for about two and a half years. Ultimately, I became a prison officer because I wanted to work with people and try and help people get to a better place. But environmentally, I was working in a space that was just not fit for purpose. Overcrowded, decrepit Victorian prison that was built in the 1840s to house 300 men.

And how many did it house? And it now houses 1,300. Prisons are so overcrowded. If I was in charge tomorrow, I would half the prison population knock down all of the Victorian prisons that are no longer fit for purpose. I'm pro-building new prisons. I'm not pro-building new prisons and keeping old prisons open. Will we just sort of dig down further into a pit of our own despair or are we going to be like maybe we need to come out of the pit and actually build something new? criminal justice does prison work. Okay, so to wrap up today's show, Heli and I are going to reflect on what we've talked about.

Heli, do you have anything for listeners to take home? Yeah, I thought that conversation with Lady Unchained and David was so interesting and I really appreciate their messages of rehabilitation and education. Something that we didn't manage to get into was the reaction against Labor's emergency measures. These measures are their decision to release many prisoners early after serving 40% of their sentence rather than 50%. While this doesn't apply to people convicted of sex offences, terrorism, domestic abuse and some other violent offences,

it is expected to see 5,500 people released in September and October, including some of those involved in the recent riots. And this reaction against Labor's Emergency Measures has actually united commentators across the political. spectrum, you know, the day, we've had those daily mail headlines of scores of criminals could be set to be freed by Labor in days. Yeah, they've dubbed it Labor's Amnesty Day. Right.

But actually what I found interesting is that it's not just the Daily Mail. I got a press release from Women's Aid in my inbox. So women's safety charities have also expressed concerns about abusers benefiting from early release because many of them only end up in prison under lesser offences. because, you know, we have a broken justice system when it comes to violence against women. So, right. So even if they're not going to release people with domestic abuse charges or rape charges, it doesn't mean they're not going to release abusers and rapists.

Exactly. One case that I thought was very relevant to reflect on this is the case of Zara Alina. I'm sure you remember her, a law graduate who was sexually assaulted and murdered in 2022 by Jordan McSweeney, nine days after he was released from prison, having already breached his probation. Her aunt, Farah Nas, went on BBC breakfast to share victims' concerns around early release. The probation service was not fit to deliver supervision and to act in a timely way. But even before he was released, there were issues of... of lack of shared intelligence

from prison probation service to community probation service, which resulted in the incorrect assessment. So he was assessed as medium risk. At one point, he was assessed as low risk. What we have to remember is risk is dynamic, it changes. So given certain factors, what happens to a person, how they behave, what's happening to them in prison, means that their risk changes.

They can move from low to high in a matter of days. So he was already high, but misassessed, because of lack of high-quality services, which we still have in probation. That was Farah Nas, who was the aunt of Zara Alina. And what actually what she points out, it does line up with so much of what Lady Unchained and David was saying in the studio discussion, like these problems with overcrowding, these are deep, rooted problems.

It's misleading to be like, oh, these are new sudden crisis in the prisons. As Farah points out, the probation system is broken. This has come from over a decade of cuts, austerity cuts, to the prisons and probation system. Now, we did mention at the end of that discussion that there's a new prison minister in town James Timpson and he is talking new talk about prison reform and we've seen this talk about prison reform in the media like as a result of this all happening so maybe there's cause for optimism the one thing I want to say here and I want listeners to watch out for talk to people about is the biggest barrier to prison reform in the past has been the media

the media is supposed to call out the government when their policies aren't working but this is a case where the government is actually like going ahead on the charge and maybe calling the media out on its bullshit because the thing with prison reform is it doesn't make good headlines. It doesn't pass what I like to call the Daily Mail Test. So the Daily Mail test is however much evidence there is in favor of a policy.

If it's likely to be spun by the tabloids as government spends taxpayer money making prisons five-star luxury hotels, which is basically like word-for-word example, you know, MPs avoid that policy. And this always, always happens when conversations about prison reform begin. So, yeah, to listen, as I would say, it's about time that this conversation was happening. But be on guard because I think that one of the biggest barriers is going to come from the media.

Thank you all for listening. If you want to support us, make sure you find the Patreon link in our show notes. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new. episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. Media Storm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfire. Our assistant producer is Katie Grant and episode research was done by Camilla Tiana. You can follow us on social media

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