Prison Radio Association’s flagship BBC Radio 4 series Behind the Crime has been shortlisted in two categories at the True Crime Awards.
The series is hosted by two forensic psychologists, Dr. Sally Tilt and Dr. Kerensa Hocken, who have decades of experience working with people in prison.
Their job involves engaging with people who have been convicted of the most serious offences. The purpose is to help them develop a greater understanding for the reasons why they have caused harm to others, and to develop strategies for avoiding reoffending in the future.
In each episode, Sally and Kerensa conduct an extended interview with someone who has committed a crime. Instead of focusing solely on the crime itself, they trace that person’s life back from their earliest memories to understand some of the factors that led them to commit crime.
The programme has been nominated in the Impact for Change category, while Sally and Kerensa have been nominated for Most Captivating Hosts.
Previous episodes of Behind the Crime have included a remarkable interview with a prison officer, Sinem, who received a prison sentence for smuggling drugs into the prison where she worked.
They have also spoken to ‘Ian’ – a man whose compulsion to commit indecent exposure led him to walk into a police sting operation.
And in the most recent series, they interviewed Gary, who learnt to withstand pain as a way of combating bullying because of his weight – he worked as a bouncer, was convicted for supplying millions of pounds of heroin, and then became a conceptual artist.
The True Crime Awards are in their second year and celebrate the pinnacle of the True Crime genre in television and audio formats. The winners are announced at a ceremony in London on Thursday 25 April.
Behind the Crime will be returning for a new series on BBC Radio 4 later in 2024.
