The scandal hiding inside Britain’s prisons

0:00This is a global production. What percentage of prisoners do you think are recorded as being functionally illiterate? This is confined for the purposes of the statistics that I have to England and Wales. But I don't imagine it's any different anywhere else. I don't want to answer that question yet. But here's a question I want you to answer immediately. How clued up do you think you are on current affairs? How plugged in do you think you are? I mean, you're listening to LBC. You're now listening to me. You are therefore already in the upper percentiles of people who pay attention to what is going on in the world. Increasingly, I encounter people who have given up, who just don't for various reasons.

1:00It's a little bit worrying for me on both a professional. Well, no, not necessarily a personal level, but it's certainly a little bit worrying for me on a professional level. But I get it. I mean, everything is so bonkers and has been for so long that the sense that there's no point trying to cling onto comprehension is not difficult to grasp. But I just wonder, I'm not going to just do it in your own head as a scale of one to ten. In your own head of how clued up you would say you were about current affairs. Okay? So, for example, you are well aware of the fact that prisoners are being released early. Prisoners who would have been released anyway are being released earlier than they would have been released to free up spaces in our prisons for prisoners who need to go to prison. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. You can't want a bucket is full. There is nowhere else for the water to go, the new water to go. The bucket is full and the tap is still on. You cannot get the water from the tap into the bucket unless you take some of the water out of the bucket that's already there.

2:01Or unless I'm going to leave the analogy behind now, unless you don't put any new water in the bucket. So you let all the new prisoners convicted of all the same crimes that the early release prisoners have been convicted of, avoid prison altogether. So, okay, you know that, for example. Did you know, you knew, I reckon you know that Rishi Sunak still hasn't explained why the election that he called a couple of years ago was so much earlier than it a needed to be and b, crucially, than anyone expected. That was a little speculation at the time, but you probably knew it was early. So, what have you given yourself? 6, 7, 8, or I mean, I doubt it's lower, simply by doing what you're doing, but perhaps it is. Perhaps it's modesty that's kicked in. Did you know this? Did you know this? Okay, now let me put another one on the list. Alex Chaw. Do you remember Alex Chawk, who was the Justice Secretary under Rishi Sunak? He has confirmed.

3:01Did you know that he'd already prepared plans to release some prisoners after just 40% of their sentence and to cut the number of people going to jail in the first place because he was conscious as Justice Secretary of how acute the crisis was? Did you know that? That the Tory Justice Secretary had prepared those plans. He's made that. Did you know that? Did you know that Alex Chawk had warned Rishi Sunak about what was going on? I reckon you probably did. What would that be? That would be a 7 or 8, right? A 7 or 8 on how clued up you are about current affairs. They were blocked because they were worried that they wouldn't be able to get it through Parliament. Because people like Suéla Bravaman would oppose it. So they would, if you like, defy gravity. They would deny arithmetic. And of course, it left Labour with no choice but to extend even further the early release scheme. So what's the bit I don't think you'll know? All right, I'll be honest. The bit I'd missed.

4:01I knew about Alex Chawk warning him. I knew he'd called the election early. Sticking around this morning, waiting to discuss the latest developments. And stumbled across a story that I think I might have missed at the time, because the ship had already sailed by the point at which it was published. Rishi Sunak was warned by senior civil servants one week before he called the election. One week before he called the early election. That he was at risk of breaching his legal responsibilities if he failed to take action over the prison, overcrounding crisis. This official advice was sent to him on the 15th of May, and warned him that if he did not make an urgent decision on prison capacity, and those sorts of decisions would involve, as Alex Chawk, his own justice secretary knew, either extending the early release scheme still further, or sending fewer people destined for jail to jail, or perhaps a little bit of both. And if he did not do that, then it would leave the criminal justice system in England and

5:05Wales at the point of critical failure. Now, there is a lot of coverage in the newspapers, and indeed on broadcast outlets today of the early release scheme. Understandably, the more hysterical of our media have gone in harder on it than the more sensible of our media, the Daily Mail, perhaps inevitably, is the most hysterical of all. Thugs in every postcode is on their front page today. Labour frees first of 10 tidal waves of convicts. Now, if your mum still buys a Daily Mail, and well, first of all, if of course she's worried about the recalibration of the triple locked, tell us you can save 800 quid a year by cancelling that subscription now, and she'll be much happier for it, and the grandchildren will enjoy spending time with her again. But she will not know this. If you're relying upon right-wing media, if you're coverage of the prison release story, you will not know that one week before he called an early election, and of course, remember that Rishi Sunak has never explained. Why he called that election so early, a single week before he called it.

6:06He was warned by senior civil servants, adding to the warnings of his own justice secretary, that the situation was entirely unsustainable. I just leave that with you, because it is my job to ensure that you are among the best informed people in this country about the major issues of the moment. Some people think it's their job to do the exact opposite. The editor of the Daily Mail thinks it's his job to groom and gaslight his readers into not knowing the facts, so that they can be more easily manipulated into the positions of anger and ignorance that allow things like Brexit and Boris Johnson to happen. So you now know that one week before he called an early election, Rishi Sunak was warned by both his colleagues and the most senior civil servants in the sector, that the situation was entirely unsustainable. And now the second bit of the percolation, if you like, the second bit. We look now at the percentage of adult prisoners who are either functionally illiterate or have literacy levels below those expected of an 11-year-old.

7:08What would you have said? Honestly, now it's going to be a little bit higher than you thought, otherwise I wouldn't have turned it into a sort of quiz would I? But the percentage of adult prisoners that's going on the worst scenario who are functionally illiterate. What would you say? Honestly, hand on heart. I'd have gone 25 and then I'd have thought, well, James wouldn't be asking me unless it was even higher than I might have initially suspected. So I'm going to go 30 percent of prisoners in England and Wales are functionally illiterate. No. No, I don't want to channel the late grape bruise foresight. Actually, it's nothing wrong with channeling the late grape bruise foresight. It's one of the only entertainers from that era that you can channel without fear of embarrassment or worse. Higher or lower than 30 percent. It's higher. Nothing in this game for two in a bed. Well, I guess in our prisons, I'm not quite two in a bed, but certainly four in a cell that was originally designed for one person. It's 50 percent. 50 percent of prisoners in

8:14England and Wales are functionally illiterate. I don't even know what word to use to describe the levels of naivety that I have as I approach a number like that. And I must have known this before. This isn't like the civil servants warning, Rishi Sunek about what was on the horizon. I must have known this before, but I don't know whether we sort of file away difficult or dis-comforting statistics to the back of our mind sometimes and forget that they're there. In the olden days, and I'm going back a while now, like 15 years, I think I was at my least liberal or my heart was at its least bleeding when we turned our attention to prisoners. And to prisons, we live in fear of violent men. All of us do. Even violent men live in fear of violent men unless they're sociopaths. And we bulk enormously at the fundamental injustice of being stolen from. So, simply for prisoners is a very, very difficult thing to muster and I didn't used to even try. But if illiteracy

9:15runs at 50% of the prison population, you find yourself wondering whether we've made any progress whatsoever from the days of Charles Dickens. 50% of the population of our prisons are illiterate, functionally illiterate. 57% of them, the figure goes even higher if you're counting adults whose literacy levels are below those currently expected of an 11-year-old. And you see the man being released, are you see them having microphones thrust into their faces and many of them welcoming the experience and being encouraged by journalists from right wing newspapers to San Candy Burnham. I don't know whether they turned up with bottles of champagne this time so they could hand it to a prisoner and encourage him to shake it and pop the cork and then stick it on their own front page. I haven't seen that this time round. But again, my mission to ensure that you're among the best informed people in this country means I explain to you how that happens. Get them to San Candy Burnham,

10:16that'll be a good one for the news bulletins. Whatever you do, don't mention the fact that Rishi Sunak was facing, preaching his legal responsibilities over the crisis that Kirsta Amar inherited and that Andy Burnham has now inherited from Kirsta Amar as well. This isn't an indefinite excuse, by the way. Give it another couple of years or another five years or another election and Labour can't say that this is still the fault of detouries because they've had plenty of warning and plenty of time, or they will have had by then, about the scale of the crisis. But here is the combination of information. Here is the combination of information that I want you to dwell on while I come up with a question to ask you that I think is going to be really simple today, really straightforward. But those are the two things. So the politics of it are absolutely corrupt, already. Front page of the Daily Mail, absolutely dishonest. Trying to turn this into some sort of labour-created crisis,

11:18when even the most cursory understanding of the facts makes it crystal clear that it's nothing of the sort. But of course, a cursory understanding of the facts is the sworn enemy of the people who brought you Brexit, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Donald Trump, or at least fandom of Donald Trump, or indeed climate change denial. That's the way it works. Those are my big five at the moment. Feel free to add anything else to that list, but it seems to me that if you want to be collating examples of how populations are persuaded to believe things and vote according to things that are fundamentally bad for them and untrue, those are the five best examples. Although we didn't actually vote for Liz Truss, I suppose I need the Tory members did that, but they're prizes for guessing what newspapers they're most likely to be reading. So those two things there, illiteracy and responsibility, and alongside responsibility for the crisis utter dishonesty for most of the media about what's caused it, what has created it. Combine those two factors together

12:20and ask yourself this, what actually happens in prison? I've got two questions for you today. What happens in prison? Particularly given that half of the men there, we know are functionally illiterate. What is prison for? What does it actually do? I don't know how many prisoners listen to this programme. What happens? What purpose does it serve? Well, or more easy to answer? What actually happens in prison? All of these conversations conducted in almost blissful ignorance of what actually these men are walking out of. I don't care, I just want them locked up. But what actually happens? Surely the two major priorities of prison are justice and reducing recidivism, reducing the likelihood of the person that is being released from prison going back to prison sometimes soon. Some of these men who are being released and interviewed are, of course, going to be back there soon, not least because they're still illiterate, which means their chances of finding a

13:21role to play in the modern world are slimmer now than they have ever been. And coming out of prison just adds to the burden of unemployability. What does prison do? What is it? So that's it. I mean, that is the question that I would like you to answer. What is it? I mean, it is a kind of what was it like moment, isn't it? But sometimes when I stare at a story that's dominating the news agenda, I have this tendency to try to take a few steps back and wonder whether or not we should start the conversation before today. Have a conversation about what happens before today. And today is the second bit of the conversation that I want to have. What happens when you leave? Some of the boxpops that I've seen are chilling. You know, I've got nowhere to go. Where are you going to sleep tonight? Do you get a bit of a hostile place for a couple of weeks, do you? What about after that? How many people are able to carry on paying the rent on their home while they're in prison, particularly if they're single? What happens when you leave? What happens in prison?

14:24And the second question is what happens when you leave? All right. And underpinning all of that, the utter corruption of our media because this has been portrayed as a somehow a labor-related story when it's obviously nothing of the sort and the utter failure of everything that we might call the system if 50% of prisoners are functionally illiterate. Pending for a little break now after that, I'll try and shut up for a bit while you talk. We all have routines. I'm Gibran and with diabetes, my was finger sticks. Sometimes I skip them because they're hurt. The freestyle liberate 3CGM changed that. It gives me glucose insights without finger sticks. Learn more at freestyle-liberate.us. Finger sticks are required if your glucose alarms and readings do not match symptoms or when you see check blood glucose symbol for the first 12 hours. The views expressed should not be used for medical diagnosis or treatment as a substitute for professional medical advice. Individual circumstances may vary. For prescription only, safety and for found it for style-liberate.us.

15:31Denise is in awesome style. I was not expecting a woman caught up first on this Denise, but here you are and welcome. What would you like to say? So I'm now 44 years old but I went to prison when I was 15 years old. There was a group of us. I was in the care system as well. Okay. But there was a group of us and we decided to go and attack somebody and we got caught for it and essentially got sent down for assault with intent to rob. We all went to, we got sent to an adult prison and it was fine. Not a yet via a lie. Not a youth offender institution. No, adult prisons. Okay. The time was over our Christmas and new years, so you can imagine that was absolutely awful. Not as awful as getting beaten up by a bunch of teenagers. I don't imagine, but I take your point. No, of course. Of course. But in terms of rehabilitation in the prison system, there is none. It's all about personal choice. Whether you decide to stay out of what's going on in there or you get involved. What do you mean? What's going on in there?

16:37So you've got a lot of offenders in there. Obviously they've come from different backgrounds and there for different things and you either get involved with what they're offering in terms of the struggling things like that, there's little separate gangs or you stay out of it. I mean, I had a female who had an interest in me and I wasn't interested. So they wanted to fight me. I couldn't defend myself. I was told by the prison guards that if I defend myself then I'm going to be given extra time. So it was just a case of I had to shut up and put up. So essentially I just kind of kept myself and I was actually looked after one of the older women in there that kind of took me under her wing and protected me from all the stuff that was going on at in the prison. How long were you in there for? So it was a three month sentence but I don't six weeks. Yeah, I mean, it's a reminder there's nothing new about early release, of course, although the people being released yesterday are people who have been released even earlier than would have

17:37been expected when they were actually sentenced. Did anything change? I mean, did it work as a short shock shock? More than 100 percent. I've never been in trouble again. I mean, I went to university. I don't know. It's like a therapist. So yeah, that's not something I'd want to do. I don't know what the statistic is on on care. People in care who end up in prison. People from the care system who end up in prison and I will find out, I mean sooner rather than later, but I suspect it's just as shocking and at the same time unshocking as the literacy statistic. It's such so over represented and that says to me that it's something that could actually be addressed. It's something that could actually be accommodated. And when you left, I mean, you're a success story. But on the day that you left, what's and presumably your parents were still in your life when you were that age, but or not, if you were in care, had you lost them completely? What happened when you left in these? Yeah, there was no no parents. So my my key work are and another member of staff from the children's

18:38home come and pick me up. Right. But I made a decision because this was not in London. This was up in the Midlands. I made a decision that I didn't want to stay in that area anymore. So I actually ran away and came to London and made a life for myself at 15. Flip it out. I mean, I guess you're not that illustrative of the bigger picture. Are you of kind of serial criminals or serious criminals being released from jail over over the last 24 hours? But in answer to the question of what prison gave you apart from the shock of incarceration, it gave you nothing. Nothing at all now. It's personal choice, as I say. What you do when you're in there? You choose them. Yeah, you choose as I say, you choose to either get involved with the rubbish that's going on in there with the badness that that continues to go in there or you you stay out of it and you make a make a change and of course, I mean, you say that because you're a strong woman but not everybody is. I don't know, I don't know whether I'd be strong enough in those situations to hold myself together

19:39in the way that you did and a lot of people of course are not and in a sense they're probably the ones that are most likely to see the prison gates as a revolving door and thankfully you didn't. What an incredible story, didn't he? So I hope we talk again. Joseph Bristol, Joe, what would you like to say? I went to prison in 2017 on the 28-month sentence and came out in 2018 after doing ten months inside and then I came out on tag and I went in and had to do very basic English and max courses just to check that I could read and write, so it wasn't a course, it was just a test and that would allow me to get a job in the prison but when I tried to do anything there was a thinking skills course which I wanted to get on to make better decisions and they just said you've not got a long enough sentence to get on that course so you can't do it and I was only able to go into sort of very rudimentary courses like an IT course where you learn how to make a PowerPoint and things like that and it's kind of pointless really. For you, but it

20:41wouldn't necessarily have been pointless for everybody. No, you're absolutely right and they also, there was prisoners that really couldn't read and write and would you have you encountered people like that before? No, but I think so. No, I don't think most of us have you see and so it was one of the weirdest things isn't it? It's what our normal is. You know, my normal is not somebody else's, you live in that world where illiteracy is 50%, it means it's normal for these men, it's normal to be spending time with other people who can't properly read or write and what helped did they get? Well, a lot of them would ask other people to take the tests for them. Wow. And I have to admit I did fill in a couple of people's English and maths courses because I didn't really want to say no, a lot of the time. And that would allow them to just get a job and get earning money and when I say earning money, I mean, I think when I was there, something like 40-per-day and you're

21:43working for external companies. I'm going to 40p more than zero, isn't it? But it's, I mean, as you've viewed to, it's a bit of a shocker. I mean, you don't sound, forgive me, I can't read too much into voices even as a radio phone in host, but you don't sound like a hardened criminal. No, I don't know what a hardened criminal sounds like, Joe, to be honest with you, but you take my point. No, I'd like to, you know, it would be cool to be thought of as that, but I mean, I went to private school and I've got a degree and they thought I was lying when I said I had a degree when I was in there until I had the form sent in. So I didn't have to do more tests when I went to the next prison. The staff thought you were lying? Yes, which is okay. Because they encounter people with degrees as often as you'd encountered people with no functional literacy. Was it drugs? Yeah, buying them or or or in time. Yeah, I've stupidly bought some extra ctablets, about 50 off of the dark web and to do so out friends and yeah, you got caught in your integer, what I mean, a massive shock to the system and and a privately educated graduate, a very different experience on release

22:48compared to most of the men that we're watching walk out of prison gates today, but just to answer the question, what happened when you left? When I left I was lucky enough to go home to a family that had a room for me and I was able to get a job. I mean, there was people being released, I think with a tent, getting given a tent when I was inside and there was, you know, you don't get about 30 or 40 pounds from release, which is, you know, nothing but people. Only just, only just and then we're going to be ringing our hands and clutching our pearls in a couple of days or a couple of weeks when we start reading reports about people that have already been sent back. Joe, that was really helpful for me. Thank you. Catherine is in York. Catherine, what would you like to say? I feel like I have a bit of a unique perspective on this, to be honest. I mean, the judge of that, Catherine. My position was, I mean, this is going back about 15 years, but I actually worked in in a prison in the education department as a teacher. So I taught literacy and numeracy and that was really driven by doing some work experience when I was doing my degree and just

23:54understanding how ashamed some prisoners felt at the fact that they couldn't read. And we're having to have people read the letters, read their birthday cards for them. And it kind of fared something in my heart that that's what I wanted to do. So it's been a number of years teaching and seeing people in that revolving door situation. And it was heartbreaking, you know, just seeing them come back time after time. And then there were other people who were coming in because of a really bad era of judgment, I don't know, maybe looking at their phone while they were driving, causing an accident that ends up with them serving at a length sentence. So two totally different ends of the spectrum really. People who were almost career criminals. And those who were just caught out by doing something, you know, we spoke on the program today. Exactly. And look, I think part of the problem is that there are some great courses and part of my role was getting people up to an educational level where they could go into workshops. So that

24:59could be bricklaying. It could be painted in decorating workshops. The problem with those were that there were so few places on those courses, loads of people wanted to get on them. You'd got to do your level one level two literacy and numeracy to get on to them. But the way to this could be so long that you never got to, you never got there. And they were great because they were obviously aimed at upskilling you. So upon release you had the qualification. I think part of the problem with that is that once you get out though, it's not as simple as that. As soon as you have a criminal record, now, what I then go on to say is I again found myself in a desperate situation of serving a prison sentence myself. Not a great twist, not a great twist. I took in a phone, a mobile phone for a prisoner and it got found. I admitted that it was me and I

26:04received a custodial sentence. Now, I already knew the prison system when I got obviously not a male prison, but I went to female prison. I knew what the regime was like. So that part, it wasn't so much a shock. But what was a shock was that on release, my whole life changed beyond recognition. I mean, I had a loving family. I had people who supported me. I was well qualified. The job that I was done good at, I didn't no longer get any more. I couldn't get a teaching job for love and money. If I went for any other job, I was overskilled, over qualified for and I had a criminal record. And it impacted every area of my life. I couldn't get house insurance. I couldn't get car insurance because as soon as you say you've served a custodial sentence, it doesn't matter. In my experience, it doesn't matter what it's for. It closes the doors.

27:05And obviously, we're not ever going to be at risk of recidivism. I mean, it's not even a crime. You'd be able to commit twice because you weren't working in the prison again, but the perspective it gives you on why people with a less secure background or a less secure life are going to go back again. Even if they're determined not to, it's extraordinary, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. And you suddenly get a different perspective on why people come back. People come back because I used to think, well, I'm not surprised people drive around without insurance from their car. I'm not surprised people drive around with a car that's taxed because they can't get it. If you can get it, it's absolutely extortion, regardless of whether your crime was relevant. Yeah. Just a red flag. It's a red face computer says no, it's exactly that, isn't it? Absolutely that. And 15 years later, you know, it's the same thing. So what are you doing now?

28:13If you don't mind me asking. I now, I work in similar, in a similar field, but I'm self-employed. And I work with adults who are neurodivergence at ADHD autism, normally who are at university and struggling with their studies. But the easiest option for me was actually to go self-employed. Because the pain of going through it, or the time I applied for a job, or you have to declare your, and I think that may have changed now, actually, how long you have to go before you have to, you don't have to declare your conviction anymore. But it was painful. It was like bringing it back up. A part of my life almost belongs in a boxmark. Did that really happen? I can only imagine how long were you inside for? Oh, I got a nine month custodial, which was, I mean, everybody was shocked about, I don't think anybody would expect me to get a custodial. But I think they want to make an example. Yeah, I'm going to encourage you to let them. And I don't underestimate what I did.

29:13Of course. But because, I think because we're not going into too much, there was no money involved. I didn't get paid to do it. I think I probably got a more lenient sentence than others in my position. But it's a lifetime ago. But every time I take out, it's almost as if the system is designed to make it harder for people. Yeah, almost impossible to get on the straights and narrow after coming out of jamming. That's bonkers. And for me, there was shame attached. Of course. A hell of a lot of shame attached. But for many of these guys who I worked with, there was no shame attached because their family members, their friends, that where they live. That's what everybody does. I think Dean conveyed that perfectly when I asked him about regret. And it was almost like it's a commodity that doesn't really exist until you reach a certain age. But I'll tell you when you did mention shame. And I found it fascinating. I'm so bad at not interrupting. But I managed to resist the urge thing because you said that your perspective was unique. And I was very, I think we can all agree that that was not an exaggeration. I think from prison work at

30:18the prisoner does indeed provide a unique perspective. But you talked about the shame involved in illiteracy. And I found that a remarkable moment because the mental image we have of these men, these serial criminals, these hardened criminals is of people who lack perhaps an emotional life for people who are as tough as old boots. But in fact, you said that phrase that they are ashamed that they can't read or write. And I automatically saw little boys in my mind's eye. Yeah. I mean, I didn't teach adults who were, you know, what we would call entry one, you know, people who really cannot read at all. That wasn't my skill set really. But when you saw people who were at that level of literacy and learned to read the first book. So when they had visits from children or grandchildren, they could actually read a book. It was incredible, you know, but just absolutely, I mean, a very emotional experience to them. And for everybody

31:20working around them, I'm not saying it got my job when they got out, but actually it's life changing just in a different way. I mean, there should be votes in it as well. Actually, you know, thinking about it, if anyone bothered to explain it as powerfully and as clearly as you have done and my other callers have done today, they're, I think I honestly believe there would be votes in it, but the problem as so often in this country is on what platform do you get to explain this stuff to people? Because, you know, we've only got one half million listens. I don't know where else you're going to hear conversations like the one you've just had with me. Thank you. And good luck, I suppose. I mean, it's such an extraordinary thing to think that even after all these years, it is the system is working to prevent people from not going back to jail. Even people, of course, who are never likely to all going to like Catherine. Time for a quick break now. Then you're going to hear some of the most insightful callers in the history of phoning radio, as ever. The standard

32:22today was incredibly high. Gavin is in Liverpool. Gavin, what would you like to say? My mum brought me up on benefit. My dad's a scrap man, yeah. And I have been slammed and slammed and slammed all through my life. And that has always been a factor that that's an unconscious bias there that police don't realise they're doing it, the courts don't realise they're doing it. It's just part of our culture to hurt working class people more for the exact same offenses that middle class people have to do. I witnessed it in university, a middle class kid, attacked somebody, punched a bell out of them when he was drunk for no reason. On the other hand, I got attacked and I did jail for one blow of modern, inexpensive self-defense, two blows in total. It was just ridiculous. You were talking earlier about prison and inside prison, that was what I originally called for, to say what goes on there. And in the nutshell,

33:26people are just sat around, student. You're just in a waiting room, waiting to get out, forever. It just causes a huge amount of mental health damage to people, which then has to be picked up by everybody else. There's also a lot of crime. The hotbeds for crime in Britain are the prisons. There's more crime in there than there is anywhere else, partly because stupid things, like the criminalisation of foreign calls. Your last caller got jailed for bringing in a mobile phone and I can understand how she would have felt, perhaps sympathetic to somebody's plate in prison. I couldn't apply for university in prison, which is ridiculous. It's because you couldn't communicate with the outside world. You've got your looking at someone whose marriage is falling apart and he's convinced that if he could just talk to his wife a bit more often, it wouldn't. You could hold it together. How's in situations, you need to call around. I never thought of that. I'd never thought of that. The private sector is scamming prisoners like you wouldn't believe. You can see the credit

34:28to disappearing live in front of you on the phone systems. Be up in there. It's infinitely more expensive than phone contracts. Why we can't have just an equivalency, a 10 pound a month phone contract or something like that and have somebody outside of the prison system pay it for you so that you can have that contact in a safe way through the phone systems. We need to pay that. We're 30 years behind on that. We need to make it happen. I know that calls have to be recorded because of this, the whole drugs industry in prison, but it needs to happen because... You could find a middle ground where you have communication. So, we'll tell you about that. How many times have you been in and out of jail? Subsequent to that. I've been in jail twice on Remander once for a sentence. The first time I was victim, I remember a boost for 12 months. That's when a lot of you listen as well, what Remander boost is. That's when you get reminded and cost to be. And at the end of the process, you find out you shouldn't have been in jail anywhere.

35:31I've been because your sentence would have been so low that you couldn't have went to prison or because you get found not guilty altogether. And so you shouldn't have been there. And there's no compensation for this as well. We're not an honest decent nation that compensates people for their losses. So, you turn away from your job, you turn away from your home and then you just throw out there with a little chit and a train ticket back home. And a deadline, oftentimes a deadline too, but you know, that have no people released in the north of England that have got us to now get to the south of England before the office is closed at the probation at five o'clock. And if they don't get there, bang, recall straight back to prison. So, I alluded to earlier the fact that people getting recalled. We think on the outside world. So, you've been recalled to prison, you've committed another crime, but it can be the fact that the bus wasn't running, can't it? Exactly. You released 10 hours away from your probation office and you know, you released six hours before it closes, you know, stupid things like that.

36:33There's just so much, like so many stupid things. Nobody has went in there and took a lean approach to it. Nobody would, nobody would any sort of project management background has went in there and looked for the law hanging in through. Looked for the opportunity to improve the system. There was one guy who did try and his name was Michael Groff. Believe it or not, he didn't think I was going to say that then. No, I didn't. I didn't. I was hoping it would take me by surprise. And he took his responsibilities as Justice Secretary quite seriously, I think. Well, he's straight, I think he probably reflected on his time as education, such a thing, and realized he did everything wrong there. Well, you're not expecting this. Let's play that game. But I'm not sure that's true, actually. I'm having a bit of a rethink about some of that. But well, that's a conversation for another day. Another day, I might be a bit tongue-in-chick, but one thing he did, he listened. He went quiet for months. He went and spoke with Nils Orsberg over in Norway. Yes, that's right. I remember that. He wanted to look at their systems. And he was effectively silent on the subject for months.

37:36And then he gave a big speech. And the hall of like the prison system, from the guards to the prisoners, to the teachers, to the persistent networks, and like the long-for-trust, brilliant organisation, who helped me, all the other unlock, etc. They were all blown away by his plant. But then of course, bodies and near-mother-floor loads. He was only there for a year. And do you remember who they replaced him with? I can't remember the near, but I remember they were... Go on, go on. Think who was the worst possible name I could say now. I think it was a female. It wasn't a problem. No, worse. Yeah, worse. Can't remember. Let's trust. Let's trust. Who banned the books? I think it goes, Grayling goes, trust. Grayling banned the books. What an absolute. I was a victim of that, James. I was locked up on remand.

38:36After I was assaulted, it was decided in the end, it was excessive self-defense, two laws, and second, one was too much. I still... Most people don't agree with that when I tell them the story. I won't go into it. But I was locked up, middle of a degree, when I was trying to reform my life, and did three months on remand, and I couldn't get my textbooks to continue studying. It was so frustrating. I think it was one of the large, long-feds family who actually challenged that in the court and got it over to the end. Pack kind of, pack somebody packing them, I think. You're right. Yes, I think she's a descendant of Lord Longfeds. That's correct. That's the family name. Exactly. Exactly. Here you go. I said I wasn't going to patronize you, but you already know this, but you're really clever. Yeah, I mean, I've an AQ over, and I'm a polymath. I'm a polymath. I know you know it, but I'm just pointing out that if you had had a slightly different start in life, goodness only knows where you would be now, and that's why you understandably mentioned class first when you came onto this program.

39:38Omar is in barking. Omar, what made you pick up the phone? Hi, James. Well, is my mother-in-law actually message me so being there pod? I'm an avid listener, but I just wasn't listening this time. I'm an expert. Not good enough, Omar. Not good enough, mate. Do better. I'm a master of publicism. What I will say, I'm an expert in our poor community, served over seven or half years, and it was a literacy aspect, actually, and made me call, because it was reading that really charged more my life within the prison system, and I can actually pin it to that. Tell me more. What were you in for? I can help. Okay, well, all of my crimes were commercial related, so commercial burglar break into building. Robbing businesses. Basically, yeah. Unfortunately, and I went to prison first on my 15, and it was the first time I picked up a book. It was the ego was landed by Jack Higgins, and I read half of it. I understood about a quarter, but it just allowed me to escape from that self-lectorial time, and every time I went to prison, I picked up a book. And so you change me as a person, my identity, my value system, my outlook on life, the older I grew, the more I read.

40:38Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of people outside, supporting my reading, and there's only time I would pick up a book if I was in prison. That's one of the maddest things I've ever heard. The only time you'd pick up a book, so you weren't illiterate. We weren't functionally illiterate. You could understand some of what you were reading, enough to get the gist of the story. I could read words, but understanding them was different, and I think that was the challenge, just understanding what I was reading, and that was the task, and that's obviously combined of education, and really supported that. I think just reading a lot around the world, and I think I was, you can imagine, prison has got a large gambit of all conspiracies going around, and they're going bleed all types of stuff. I had to navigate through all of that, and I had to show in tell when I'm having debates, and a lot of people lucky around some really educated people that showed me how to research, and how to show in tell when I'm trying to. Yeah, absolutely. I think it was a seven-year-old, who taught me, and it was... Almost a movie, isn't it? A 70-year-old fraudster played by Bill Nyey, I think, in the film, wouldn't it, Bill Nyey? And actually, he was actually a Howard Cameron Cottenberg, because someone said, who's that man pal walking the exercise up?

41:40Gosh. Anyway, he told me, actually, at the back of my book, there's something called references. Yeah. And that's what, oh my God. Actually, there's more to the reading than the entertainment, and that's when I fell in love with mom fiction. I'm going to read you something that Emma sent to me earlier. The problem with functional illiteracy is not just writing lists and filling in forms and reading to your kids. It's comprehension of what you're reading. It's the ability to string together a coherent narrative to correctly draw inference and implication from the actions of others. It's about holding attention long enough to read and digest the meaning of even a short paragraph or three or four sentences. And inability to use any of these skills is an obvious disadvantage to remaining on the right side of many laws. I'm going to stand up on end. Mine too. And you know what I'm thinking about when you're saying that it's the second book I'm going to mention James. And the book that really chast for me, it was picked the Frankles mouse search for meaning. And I read that twice and two different sentences. One one was a bit younger, a bit really understanding what I read in. And when I was an old man, I actually understood,

42:41wow, actually there might be purpose and meaning for me to get in this situation. And that's led me to where I am today. You know, I've got my own business. I go back into prison. I support prisoners through literacy programs, through mental and programs, and get people job at the end of the day. It was a Holocaust survivor, I think, Frankles. Were there people apart from the 70 year old fraudster? Were there the system help you were tall over? Yes. Tell me a bit about that, if you can. Well, I'd like to give a shout out to the Shannon Trust. It's organised actually that support for literacy and reading within the prisons. When you speak to your mother in law later, she'll say, someone else already mentioned the Shannon Trust, I'm like, oh, I can't be the one. I can't be the one who's not a student at all. But what, yeah, the Shannon Trust, the six book challenge, and I think the six book challenge, put anybody where you're in prison or not. It asks you to read six books out of your comfort zone. So if you're into horror, read fantasy, if you're in the fantasy, read romantic, and come back and talk about it, and understand what you're reading. And it's beautiful, you sit with a librarian, and see the library, I would say, this is funny enough in James. Yeah.

43:41But some of the rarest places of oversaw fighting prisoners in the library. Wow, you just made the eyes on my next stand up. I've seen fights in religious places of worship. I've seen fights in the GEP, I've seen fights in the gym, rarely sore fighting the library. That's incredible. That's absolutely incredible. And yet it makes absolutely perfect senses, we both know. Was there a pivot here? Is there a moment when you realized that your life had changed? I know you've mentioned Victor Frankl's book, but in terms of your actual existence, was there a moment when you thought, I think I'm over there, I think I'm over the line? Yeah, it was. I think it went on my partner and the co-op father. And that was it. And went to university, because I left school really when I was nine years old. I hadn't actually been trained at my last five years old. It was eventually couldn't write a week for many years. Went to prison month of 15, like I said. I was really useful when I was nine, formally when I was 13. So when I became a father, when I come out in 2017, I decided I went back to school, studied at college in the two years, got my, went to university, got a bachelor's degree in business management, worked my way up the corporate sector,

44:42become a social value consultant, working with some of the largest corporate, you know, as my, and then supporting them, and how to support under-privileged communities and people that I used to be. And then started on my own company and, you know, and the Anabraj Plus, I thought I'd plug it there. Yeah, I could say again. Anabraj Plus. And James, you're a very wise man. And if you have a word of the word Anabraj. No. Okay, so I'll tell you what I mean. Yeah, please. I can. Anabraj is a part of a river that breaks away from the main course, that only reads a connect of it further than downstream. Wow. What a beautiful thing to do. I'd say it's like an oxbow lake, but stays a river. It encapsulates my own journey. I've been brought, I've been drawn away from the main part of society and being retenant and bitthirv in our stream. And that is an entire point of this conversation. And it should be the entire point of justice policy in this country. Shouldn't it? He's getting people back in the river, getting people back in the, in the flow, in the main street. Oh, mate, I'm so glad that your mother-in-law was listening today. Janet, Janet, the brush out loud. Janet, Janet, Janet, you're the best.

45:43And she's obviously very proud of you. And she knows your story. And she knows your story. She really is. She really is. What's your most greatest champion, honestly, she really is. Wonderful thing. Wonderful thing. I'm, I'll take care. And, and good luck with the business as well, with the work. And a branch plus, just a sector rehabilitation and employability program. So paying it forward, as the saying goes, or, or, or, or learning. From what has benefited him and seeking to provide similar benefits to others. I'm not sure Chris Grayling would understand any of that last sentence. Time for a quick break now, then. An entirely different conversation. Another story that is currently leading the news agenda. And I really want to know what you think about it. At CERDA Bravaman, very much in this category. Somebody who is obviously damaged, obviously desperate for attention, and obviously dedicated to spreading

46:44bile and bigotry in ways that have become increasingly acceptable and fashionable in this country. And because she is a woman of color, I don't want to and will not talk about her in exactly the same way that I would talk about a white person. So you've got that dreadful woman saying that she doesn't like seeing black faces and brown faces on her television in Nigel Farage's party. And I, I feel differently. And I think, by the way, that it's right to feel differently and correct to feel differently. For example, it is wrong to tell someone of color that they're not allowed to have profoundly anti-immigrant feelings. It took me a while to work that out. You're just as entitled because you are English, you see. And so you're just as entitled to be jingoistic or bigoted about immigration as somebody who is white. It's a weird thing. It's relevant to what's coming, as you've probably already worked out. So I have largely ignored her even when she did my holiday cover on this radio station.

47:45I filed it under regrettable and ridiculous and best ignored. This is now a tragedy. This is now a story of a woman brought so low by her desperation for approval from people who despise her for the color of her skin that we're watching the media 21st century equivalent of a bearded lady on our television screens. She is, like, Liz Truss, a freak show who people queue up to gawp at. And again, because these people are doing it to themselves, as well as having it done to them, the temptation to ignore is big. But I'm white. And so when she tells black people or brown people that they can't be English, I don't feel it. I think she is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. But I didn't think she was dangerous. I was really wrong. And I'll tell you how I know how wrong I was.

48:47I'm going to read you something that a very, very good friend of mine posted on a little group chat that we're on together. Because he hadn't really clocked this stuff. He's too busy delivering milk every morning. So he just saw the question time bit last night that I didn't see. And I'll play you a clip in a moment. And the point is it matters who she is. This is the point that I missed. Coming from a brown woman who held high office, mate, it's effing awful. I'm 45 and this bleep, my friend Wayne, is quite foul-mouthed. I don't think he'll mind me telling you that. So I'm having to edit this message as it goes. Coming from a brown woman who held high office. That line right there. I want you to hold on to. Coming from a brown woman who held high office, mate, it's effing awful. I'm 45 and this bleep gets me. I'm Wayne from Baselden. Probably conceived on the bonnet of a Ford Capri. All right, mate, we'll wait for the autobiography.

49:49I am Arsenal. I'm a muse fan. I couldn't be more Baselden. I couldn't be more Essex. I couldn't be more English. I couldn't be more British. And then this Wally, that's his word, actually. See, you can do it when you try. Then this Wally tries to undermine all of my identity based on racism that she's effing followed. Off you pop, you effing tent peg. I woke up to that this morning. I was reading this. The first message I read, I'm sorry, Lads. But this one is really effing done me. My entire ambition was to be England's number one. I only ever wore England goalie tops for every team I played for. When I saw David James turn out for England, I got proper emotional. I was like, yes, braw, me next. And I don't think I'm telling you, we actually turned down schoolboy terms from Nottingham Forest when he was a kid. So this is real. All these years later, a mixed race England team nearly gets over the line. And this former home secretary says, I ain't English.

50:51I will literally intellectually devastate that woman's whole world view. I will tell you who I am. You privileged so and so. You don't tell me. And I read that this morning and I had in my ear the echo of the conversation I had yesterday with Elinorma producer about how sorry I feel for Sue Elibra-Avaman. And I felt, what did I feel? I think I felt a bit ashamed, actually, for having missed it so acutely, having missed it so complete. Oh, here she is, the bearded lady, popping up on LBC again because clicks are everything. I missed it. I missed how gross it is, what she's doing. How absolutely gross it is because, hey, I've got an apostrophe in my name. There's probably some people out there who think that means I'm not English. But it's not the same, is it? Because she's not really talking about white people. She's talking about people like Wayne, who's mixed race for the record. And of course, she's talking about people like herself.

51:51So there was an extraordinary thing on question time where she almost addressed directly this racism and said categorically, I think, and I'll play you the clip now, that because she's brown, she can't be racist. Here's the little clip where she responds to an audience member explaining that she is being racist against herself. What you've done, it's just basically reinforced the racist argument. I've been on this planet for 54 years and the amount of times I've been told I'm not English, even though I was born here. If I'd had a penny for what we talked been given that. And do you consider yourself English? And being racist against myself. Basically. Right, well that makes a lot of sense. Basically, you are. I'm not going to be racist against myself. Basically, you are. If someone's going to call themselves English, I presume you've got an idea in mind as to what they would be. But what would be? I would be. But what would be the difference? We're not born in England. So in my particular instance, no, I am not a English, but I get what you're saying. Or is it, but what is it?

52:53You have to take a view, obviously. But what do you always do? I'm not the one saying that it has to be five generations or four generations. I think it becomes pretty obvious when people have got a lineage and ancestry, a connection to the heritage of this country which dates back a few generations. And I think the bad is not unreasonable to expect of people who come to this country. So that's the phone. Is she being racist against herself? And of course. I want you to tell me, and I'm sorry that I haven't asked you before, and I'm sorry that I missed it. The importance of asking you how you feel to be told by her that you're not English. How does it make you feel? That man in the question time audience, by the way, was a black man, obviously. I think, but this is the radio. So I thought I'd better illustrate that for you. Evon is in Bexley. Evon, what would you like to say? I don't see how someone can speak for me. I'm born in this country.

53:53My parents were British subjects over colony. My children are born here. My grandchildren are born here. How did somebody get to decide that I'm not English? What am I? If I'm not English, what am I? What are my children? What are my grandchildren? If I were an Italian, if I was born in Italy or somewhere else, would that mean that I'm not Italian? I mean, you know, as far as I'm concerned, I'm a product of this environment. I went to primary school. I went to nursery school. I went to secondary school. You know, I've lived here with my life. I've never lived anywhere else. So how can someone decide where I come from? Or what my identity is? Yes, I'm Caribbean origin. I mean, everybody's. You sound calm. You sound calmer than my friend Wayne. You haven't taken it as personally as some people might have done, because she's just ridiculous or because you've heard this song before so many times. I think she's a bit of an idiot.

54:55So I really don't think. I mean, I really don't. It's not nice to call people names, but how can you, if someone is intelligent as her, obviously doing that job, she has to have some degree of intelligence? How can you make a sweeping statement like that that alienates thousands of people? It's not your job to do that. If you feel that you're not British or you're not English. Well, she would make a distinction. This is why I talked about the tightrope between ignoring and acknowledging and the mistake I made in ignoring this previously, because she was home secretary. That's the point, I think. It's a position. It's a status. You know, it's why some people still think it's worth listening to Liz Truss because she was Prime Minister and Donald Trump is President. So you can't just dismiss them as the bigoted idiots. So they so clearly are. The office speaks. And it's that. And so the argument would be, as I understand it, that you're British, but you can't be English because English is somehow an ethnicity in a way that Britishness is not.

55:55It's utterly bonkers. It's disgusting and it's base, but that's what she would argue. No, well, you know, at the end of the day, I had to make a distinction myself. Having, other said, Caribbean origin and having been to the Caribbean. And I love Jamaica. I love the Caribbean. I love everything about it. I love when I get there how my shoulders go down and I feel relaxed. But I do realize the English, there was some Englishist in me because of things that I missed and things that I've become a used to because I'm here. You're talking about values and culture, actually. Right. That's right. She's talking about, I don't spell it good for a bit. I don't know what she's actually talking about. So racist who aren't yet prepared to admit that their racists will say things. In fact, let me find someone in this cat. Here's one, David. You're deliberately mixing up ethnicity with nationality, but then that wouldn't fit with your agenda or using the racist labels. So David's not ready yet to own his racism. He wants to pretend that English is somehow an ethnicity that can be measured or counted out.

56:55Presumably, I don't know. Norman Heritage would exclude you from being English. Or Saxon Heritage would exclude you from being Anglo-Saxon. This is the logic of these bigots as they end up having to argue that, oh no, you can't be Anglo-Saxon if you're Saxon because Saxon is not an... Oh, oh, I assure you is in Bethnall Green. I assure you what's going on. I kind of were listening to your point about you kind of didn't pick upon what she may have said. Yeah. And I want to make a few points on that. So her views are a bit distorted. I feel anyway because of her privilege being in home office and then also because of her partner and telling everybody else that whoever's bound they're not British. English. English or British? Because she'd say they are British, but they're not English, which is I think a secret paper of distinction that allows us to pretend that this is about ethnicity rather than about color, but or about something measurable called Englishness when there's no such thing really.

57:58Well, exactly. So, you know, where the... I will answer a generation and I wouldn't say that I'm anything different. I might look... I am, you know, different, but I wouldn't classify myself as being anything other than English. Of course you would. That makes sense. Yes, and now I'm thinking, I wish we weren't having this conversation because we're feeding her the flames of her bigotry, but I think we have to have it, right? If she's a former home secretary and she's... Exactly. ...touching this nonsense on our television screens, then we have to have the conversation about why she's so ridiculous and reprehensible and wrong and racist. And it's more worrying that she held that office and has these views. That's more alarming to me being in that position. But again, you know, nothing will come of it because she's now blinded and her views are distorted because she's never felt it in that the same way I will because I'm just a lay person. And she was... She's obviously a person of power or was in power.

59:00So it's completely different. And seeks power. I think this Tally Slyley was something that Joe is saying. She's not being racist about herself. She believes she belongs. Because she's successful and well-staffed. Exactly. No one can say to her what she says to other people who share her skin tone or background. She's not even hypocritical. She's just an opportunist with little or no respect for anybody else. Yeah, I completely agree with that. That's all right. Her views are completely distorted to what everybody else... A-thinks. She's probably the most hated woman in the UK right now, but she won't feel it because somebody was in high office and of power, so she won't know to take. She won't even feel it. I've got a horrible feeling. You've taken me back to that tightrope between giving attention to attention seekers and starving women. I've got a horrible feeling that she would like to stick the most hated woman in Britain on her Twitter profile to be. I mean it. And that's why,

1:00:00under the lens of my white privilege, yesterday, we toured with the idea of doing a phone and asking what's wrong with the poor woman whereas, of course, I wouldn't have done that if I had given my head a bit of a wobble and thought a little bit more deeply about what she's doing to people like you and people like you've longed and people like wait. That's what it's about, of course. An-analysis and evaluation galore. Thank you for listening and thank you, of course, to all of today's contributors. We're back on Monday from 10 on LBC or right here shortly afterwards. Have a fantastic weekend. This has been a global production.