The Anglican Bishop for HM Prisons, the Right Revd Rachel Treweek, in conversation with John Podmore.
In this fifth podcast in the series of ‘Holding the Key: Unlocking the door to doing prison differently’, John tells us, “We should be locking up people we’re scared of, not mad at.”
John was a prison governor and inspector of prisons, and now acts as consultant with a particular interest in human rights and prison anti-corruption. Bishop Rachel and John discuss potential ways to transform our approach to using prisons and sentencing. John tells us, “We don’t have prison problems, we have community problems.”
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John tells us, “At the moment we’re stuck on “Let’s build 1,600 bed cells”. And an interesting stat there; this came from a former Secretary of State who said publicly that the cost of building a new prison cell is £600,000 per new cell, and £50,000 per year to run it. If that sort of money is available, boy what can we do with that in terms of developing different sorts of facilities, different training.”
Talking to Bishop Rachel, he says, “You went to [the Netherlands] recently and there you saw people working very differently; they were prison officers working very differently; they were ‘mothers’, ‘fathers’, mentors, teachers, doctors, drug workers and it’s about developing that role. And in [the Netherlands] they do, over two years. What do we do? Six weeks of training.”
Bishop Rachel is currently recording a series of Podcasts called – ‘Holding the key: A series of conversations to unlock the door to doing prison differently’. Bishop Rachel will be joined by influencers and change-makers as they ask the questions – what is prison really for and more importantly what could the alternatives be?