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The Secret Life of Prisons podcast attended the annual Longford Lecture at Church House in Westminster, which was broadcast on National Prison Radio.
The Secret Life of Prisons is the smash-hit podcast from the Prison Radio Association.
It was devised as a way of allowing listeners to understand the reality of life in the UK’s prison systems. Each episode features guests who have spent time in prison, who work in prisons or who study our criminal justice system.
The Longford Lecture is a key date in the criminal justice year. Hosted by The Longford Trust, who support people in prison to engage in education, a keynote speaker is invited to deliver the annual lecture.
This year the lecture was presented by Prison Radio Association trustee Hilary Ineomo-Marcus. The keynote speaker was Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who spent nearly 1,800 days in the notorious Evin prison in Iran after being imprisoned in 2016.
At the end of a visit from the UK to her family in Iran, Nazanin was arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow the government by running courses in journalism that the Iranian regime said aimed to train people to spread propaganda against Iran.
She vehemently denied these charges but remained in prison until 2022.
In this year’s emotional Longford Lecture, Nazanin spoke about what she learnt from the experience and explained her passion for penal reform.
“In Evin, inmates had come up with ways to bring more meaning to their lives. For them, prison life was something more significant than simply walls, bars, locks and clang of gates. They had found threads to connect them to their life outside the walls. They had found hope.
The solidarity amongst women in Evin prison was bigger and stronger than anything I had ever witnessed in my life. Women, regardless of their religion, political views or social class, would come together for one specific reason; to defy oppression, fighting for their rights and standing up against the authoritarian regime that had unjustly incarcerated them.”
All of this was captured by our microphones and the episode is now available wherever you get your podcasts.
The Longford Trust runs a programme of scholarships for young people who have been in prison. They are awarded to people who want to rebuild their lives through education after release. 85% of scholars go to university, graduate and move forward to have careers.
Frank Longford was a politician and prison reform campaigner who was passionate about standing up for the unpopular.
You can listen to this year’s Longford Lecture on The Secret Life of Prisons below. The Secret Life of Prisons drops every Monday.
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The Prison Radio Association is a registered charity. The Secret Life of Prisons podcast responds to the obscurity of life behind bars as told by the people who are the experts in the matter, the experts by experience themselves; the prisoners. If you would like to support our work, and enhance the futures of people in prison across the UK you can make a donation at prison.radio/donate.