Prison Radio Research Articles

Radio What's New? Someone Still Loves You: The Impact of Listening to Prison Radio

This study examines the impact of listening to prison radio on the well-being of inmates. Its main quantitative findings are that listening to the radio had no significant impact on inmates’ anxiety, anger, emotional distress, or self-esteem. The qualitative results found that listening to the radio has a positive impact on inmates’ well-being, their outlook, the atmosphere of the prison, and peer relationships. We conclude that the practice of prison radio reflects sophisticated prison administration, reducing feelings of hostility and anger on the part of the inmates and promoting trust among inmates and between them and the staff.

Sound Cage

Throughout the 20th century, the prison radio and the prison PA system differed in the auditory experiences they brought to imprisoned listeners, but each technology was scrutinized by penal staffs for its potential to meet institutional goals. One common assertion—often recirculated within popular media depicting the prison—was that sound leisure could offer prisoners a temporary reprieve from their incarceration. This commentary sifts through the repressive and regulatory uses of sound technologies in the prison to search for this promise of a freedom that is more than metaphorical.

“The Shawshank Redemption”: an analysis of prisoner and prison radio

ABSTRACT Israeli prisons have recently initiated a rehabilitation program known as Prison Radio. This article suggests that since prison radio shares similar characteristics with educational radio, inmates may operate the radio stations with high motivation and self-fulfilment since they determine the content of the programs. Inmates may also acquire work-related tools and habits and strengthen their self-confidence, which allows adopting constructive behavioural patterns. Therefore, empowering prisoners through radio station activities may encourage their normative reintegration into society.

Author Response

Author Response

The Open University Law School’s Public Legal Education in Prisons: Contributing to Rehabilitative Prison Culture

There is a massive unmet need for legal knowledge in prisons. The Open University Law School, through its Open Justice Centre, has trialled various ways in which to meet this unmet need. Most prison-university partnerships in England and Wales follow a model of prisoners and university students being taught together as one group in a traditional higher education learning format. The Open University Law School’s public legal education in prisons follows instead the Street Law model to disseminate knowledge of the law throughout a prison, either through prison radio or through the work of the charity St Giles Trust. While this article confirms other research findings which evidence the personal benefit law students derive in researching and delivering audience-appropriate public legal education, it also considers the benefit for those imprisoned in the context of rehabilitative prison culture.

Prisoner radio as an abolitionist tool: A scholactivist reflection

Prisoner and prison radio – audio production and broadcasting that services prisoner and prison communities – has existed in a variety of forms in a diverse range of countries for over 30 years and has recently seen a surge in popularity and awareness. At the same time, the prison abolition movement has also gained momentum and visibility, after an equally long presence and history. Recently in the United States, the New York City Council voted to close Rikers Island by 2026 in response to community campaigning driven by an abolition agenda. Likewise, the Black Lives Matter movement has introduced an abolitionist discourse (especially around defunding police services) to the mainstream vernacular. This article considers the relationships between broadcasters/audiences and the State – embodied through government departments responsible for managing the incarceration of its citizens, and how these impact on prisoner radio’s capacity to act as an agent of change. To do so, we take a scholactivist approach to critically reflect on our experiences as prisoner radio practitioners and researchers and consider the potentials for prisoner radio to either support or hinder a prison abolition agenda. Can the genre contribute to the prison abolition movement when it often requires the support of the prison-industrial complex to exist?

Making Waves behind Bars: The Prison Radio Association, Charlotte Bedford (2018)

Review of: Making Waves behind Bars: The Prison Radio Association, Charlotte Bedford (2018) Bristol: Bristol University Press, University of Bristol, 195 pp., ISBN 978-1-52920-336-3, h/bk, £36.00 ISBN 978-1-52920-343-1, ePUB, £7.19 ISBN 978-1-52920-336-3, Kindle, £8.50

A History of Brixton Prison

Reviews  c:\users\ken\documents\rj\type\red\rj   red.docx -- : A HISTORY OF BRIXTON PRISON Sheila Turcon Bertrand Russell Research Centre Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 turcon@mcmaster.ca Christopher Impey. The House on the Hill:Brixton:London’s Oldest Prison. Foreword by Raphael Rowe. London: Tangerine P., . Pp. . £.. isbn: ----. mpey is a Senior Producer of the Intelligence Podcast under the auspices of The Economist and the Managing Editor of National Prison Radio. He has written a popular book on Brixton Prison to draw attention to the many issues of imprisonment. He wants to attract as many readers as possible. His chapters are short and snappy with intriguing titles like “The Oyster Eater” and “A Kiss byWaterloo Bridge”. Raphael Rowe, who was wrongly imprisoned in Brixton for twelve years for a crime he did not commit, introduces the book. Let out in July , he now serves as a bbc investigative journalist and the host of a Netflix series on prisons. The book is arranged chronologically in five sections covering the period  to . He takes the reader through the various lives of the prison. First it held men and was notorious for its introduction and use of the treadmill upon which prisoners toiled all day, creating power to grind wheat (Part ). Scheduled to close, it was saved by becoming a women’s prison in  and was actually run by a woman, Emma Martin. It changed again in , reopening as a men’s prison. It was now a public works prison holding men who were unfit for heavy labour. Instead they manufactured and repaired items like uniforms and mail bags. In  it was turned into a military prison for those with sentences two years and under (Part ). It was closed in  but then reopened in  as a remand prison; that is, one holding men awaiting trial. It had been rebuilt and expanded with new land acquired. In addition to those on remand, it also housed a few debtors, juveniles, and convicts (Part ). Impey does not stint on providing details of crowding as well as the wet and cold conditions prisoners had to endure. By  well-furnished private cells could be rented. Other inmates could be hired as cleaners and food could be sent in. An outside barber cost threepence. One letter could be written every day on prison letterhead (pp. –).The quota on letters is far higher than what Russell was allowed in . Russell’s first imprisonment is covered in the chapter “Spies and Paci- fists”. He shares this chapter with Anton Kuepferle who was a spy and committed suicide. Another spy was taken from Brixton to the Tower of London I  Reviews c:\users\ken\documents\rj\type\red\rj   red.docx -- : and executed three years before Russell arrived (p. ). Impey provides several Russell quotations about his time in Brixton. None of them are footnoted (this is not an academic book). His only Russell source is Ray Monk, but most of the quotations are from the Autobiography. Also, in Part  Impey writes that smoking was banned in , but before that it had been allowed in the cells. A  experiment had even allowed it in the exercise yard (p. ). This treatment of tobacco conflicts with the smoking-ban Russell faced in  and which Impey notes (p. ). Russell’s return in  is covered in the chapter “The Sixties”. Mick Jagger also features in this chapter. Again, Impey provides a few quotations from Russell.They are not from Monk, who barely mentions this imprisonment,1 nor are they from the Autobiography. Brixton remains a remand prison but the “threat of closure still looms” (p. ).Why Impey calls this a threat is not clear as he is working toward reducing the population in prisons (p. ). One of his aims in writing this book was to engender more empathy in the public at large towards the imprisoned. works cited Monk, Ray. Bertrand Russell: the Spirit of Solitude. London: Cape, . —. Bertrand Russell, –: the Ghost of Madness. London: Cape, . Russell, Bertrand. Auto. , . 1 Monk, Bertrand Russell, –, p. . ...

Theorising the many faces of prisoner radio: developing a holistic framework through process and product

There is a nexus where radio and prisons meet that is yet to be explored to its full potential, both in practice and in academia. This article consolidates two separate bodies of knowledge, examining ‘prisoners’ radio’ (usually broadcast to the general public on community radio or the Internet) and ‘prison radio’ (broadcast to a prison audience within a prison setting), to propose a theoretical framework that incorporates both. It draws on two case studies from the United Kingdom and Australia and is informed by the seminal work of alternative media theorists Clemencia Rodriguez, John Downing and Chris Atton.

Facilitating Active Citizenship: Participating in Prisoners' Radio

Defining prisoners' radio programming is no easy task. The most important element to note is that programming broadcasts outside of prison. Prison radio does exist inside prison confines; however, this research focuses on programs that broadcast to the wider community, as it is this connection to the “outside world” that strengthens the empowering nature of prisoners' engagement in media production. This article connects prisoners' radio production with notions of active citizenship. While the concept of citizenship is highly relevant to alternative media practice, the issues are compounded when we consider prisoners because of their tenuous position as citizens.

Radio behind bars – The Polish case

Abstract There are as many as 157 closed-circuit prison radio stations across Poland. However, as they are almost completely cut off from the world outside, awareness of how they work, what content they broadcast and what role they fulfill is rather limited. This article seeks to address this lack of information. The goal is to characterize such radio stations, the programmes they offer and the role they play in prisons. The article also examines prison radio as a form of community broadcasting. Moreover, special attention is paid to the rehabilitative function of involvement in a radio production process. The main research materials are interviews with representatives of prison radio stations, a one-week programme sample from the prison in Olsztyn, the programmes submitted to the prison radio contest and a visit to the radio station in the predetention centre in Olsztyn.