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1:54for those of you who were listening yesterday now is now and i'm going to tell you about the friday edition so we were contacted by the prison phoenix trust who are a charity that do really amazing work in prisons to do with yoga, meditation and mentoring. If your first reaction is, oh, goodness, here we go. It's the Be Kind Brigade telling us about something warm and fuzzy that doesn't really make a difference. Well, I would say stay those thoughts because actually the evidence is that their work is really changing people's lives in prisons. Our prison situation at the moment is dire, Jane, isn't it?

2:33I mean, really, really dire. There's overcrowding. Prisons are underfunded, under-resourced, and prisoners are just spending so much time in their cells. And the re-offending rates are massive, one of the highest in the Western world. So we need to view prisoners somewhere where people can kind of get better from the life they were leading and head back into society, not going to do the same stuff that they did before. and a lot of charities are doing some very, very valuable work trying to give people the skills and the tools to exist better on the outside. Richard is a former inmate of many jails, as he will tell you, who's really benefited from some of the work that the Prisons Phoenix Trust has done.

3:15So it's over to him. I found myself at my lowest when I was in a local prison, the Dorchester Prison it was called, and I was on the wing and they come and took me and said you're coming down segregation and there was no reason, I didn't know why and they took me down the segregation and they said to me we believe you're trying to escape and I wasn't and they said you need to wear this suit it's called like a banana suit they call them a blue and yellow suit and I was refusing to wear it and it got really heated because they were like you are going to wear this suit, you are trying to escape. And I was just standing by what I believe was wrong, and I was like, no.

3:59And that got heavy. That was probably my darkest time, because when I was down there, they were like, look, we don't want you in our prison. And they come and they said, we're going to cut a year now, you're going to be a high category prisoner, which changes everything. Which I didn't actually understand that thing, but just in myself from them few days in the segregation, I went into my darkest place because I'd only just recently been arrested and I wasn't taking any accountability at the time anyway we don't think like that I felt a lot of shame with myself and from my family and how I was in there kind of um and that was a really really dark few days that was that was terrible terrible darkness and that's when it brought to my change really because I think sometimes you've got to go down to that low place to get back up, right?

4:56And how did the Phoenix Trust find you or you find it in that dark time? Well, I found them then. And then I was going to, I got escorted out of the prison to a place called Longerarton with a police escort late at night. It was surrounded by all these prison officers. And it was really like heavy situation. and I didn't find them there to be, I got moved there, and I was having a really, like, it was like I was in a different world. The prisoners, I was on the high security wing, and it was just crazy, the world I was in. And then one day they came and moved me again, and I went to Belmarsh, and I was starting to settle a bit, and then all of a sudden I seen this picture on the wall, yoga in prison, and I was like, yoga in prison?

5:47Really? i thought i wonder if they let me go on the yoga class because i was high security they were very they wouldn't even let me go on the education class so i was trying to say if i could get any opportunity to just do anything to get out of my cell and just see interact with whatever i could to keep myself my mind occupied and then um they passed me they was doing yoga and the next minute I'm walking around this like, say, big part of Belmarsh, down in the healthcare and doing walking meditation. And would it be fair to say, Richard, you're not the kind of guy who would have been drawn to yoga and meditation in the outside world?

6:29If you'd seen that sign somewhere in the outside world? Well, I'll be honest with you, I actually tried yoga once in the outside world because I trained a lot and I kept my fitness up. I always believed it. And I did it in Westminster. I seen in the Marriott Hotel they had a yoga class in the gym and I decided to try and I tell you what after half an hour I thought I do not like this this was so difficult I could not believe it I thought I was some super fit guy and I was blown away and I thought that this is not for me Okay so you find yourself in prison and I think we can all understand that an awful lot of prisoners would take any opportunity to get out of their cell so you go along to yoga but you find it actually works for you this time around it wasn't just the fact that it took you out of your no it was we were surrounded by other men all in our we're all in different situations but we're all in prison right and the guy was very good and it was like you was out of prison it was all there was no talk about prison it was just listening to him and then the guy was just explaining us seeing us through these movements and he concentrated a lot more on the meditation and that was giving us a tool to take back to ourselves to take back and use that as we went through our journey and it was a powerful tool through the stressful times you can have just the breathing techniques and the counting to 10 and and then you started i'd already decided that i was going to start looking for changes and to do that i had to look into myself of why i was there what brought me here in this position now and that meant looking into my going back on my life and really opening up on myself and that's a that can be very difficult because you have to conquer yourself and the yoga sorry is there anything else in the what the prison service offers you that is enabling you to have that kind of self-reflection there was a few i went on i worked with a amazing charity they're not there no more called safe ground and they used to do family, man and father's inside courses, which was all about art.

8:37So art was good. I think art was very powerful in jails. Education is good. Some prisons offer more education than others. I found that the private jails seemed to offer more courses and opportunities, but there was never no yoga in them private jails. It was quite interesting. Most of the yoga I found was in state prisons. and I did get moved quite a lot so every time I got moved I was like is there yoga here for people who are listening thinking uh prison should never be some kind of uh fun camp some kind of even a mental health institution it is not there for people to find their inner sun salutations what would you say to them about the relevance of providing stuff like that Because you need to have hope and give people hope and encourage change and growth and understanding and make them understand themselves so they can go back out in society.

9:37Because they're going to be your neighbour again. And it's about accepting, okay, people make mistakes and do wrong things. And there's usually stories behind there. There's a lot of powerful stories about why people are in prison. And they're being punished because they're taking their freedom away from them and they're locked in their cellar. lot and it's not a people seem to think it's this holiday camp but i mean as far from holiday camp it's a very volatile place and having people like the prison phoenix trust coming in there doing their yoga is powerful and another thing i'd like to say they do they write letters so you become you can write to someone and you don't know who they are and you become you just start interacting with someone and you can just write open letters about whatever your situation is and they would always respond so i spent my five-year journey with a lady called caroline sharing letters and when i come home i met her and that was a powerful moment to meet that lady who and i was just amazed these people were then just putting their volunteering time in not no judging nothing and they don't know and they're just writing letters to you and i found that really quite amazing in itself what is the overlap between the kind of care and opportunity that you are given in prison and any care and opportunity that you are then given by the state outside when you leave prison what happens to you well i i spent five years in secure prisons and um i had no home leaves or any no no um family days out or absolutely nothing um the day i got out i was given 43 pound 50 and let out the gate and basically told to report to probation the next day that was it there was so it was down maybe to probation to try and support you but their job is to make sure you're abiding by and you're going to be a law-abiding citizen and keeping through the rules and not going back to committing criminal acts but the tool i i realized that i when i was doing the sanitation to the sun every day in winchester i was saying to myself be grounded this is going to be such a new challenge be grounded just to go out and face your family and be back in their lives and that is strange and that can create a lot of tension in the family's environment and you know there's still people having forgive you for going away or your your children letting your children down so you've got to rebuild them relationships and they're really challenging and it's i don't know i wouldn't say there's so much support out there it's usually you've got to find yourself.

12:19We have a terrible re-offending rate in this country. I mean, it is one of the worst, certainly, in the Western world. What would you say to people who are listening who are capable in positions to try and change that re-offending rate? What do you think would be the best thing? More needs to be done. More support needs to be done when inmates come out. I noticed a lot of inmates. when I was in some prisons, they were going, I'm going out tomorrow. And they go, they'll have nothing. They'll have no clothes. I go, where are you going? And they say, I've got nothing. I'm going to nothing. And I'd be like, wow.

12:57And I used to go around the wings trying to find them clothes and get people to give clothes. And we're finding clothes in prison to give the inmate to wear to when he's getting out. So he's got some warm clothes or just something to hold, to take with. And that's a very hard start to go with. So it's very hard for him to go out there or her or anyone when they only know one thing, right? And there's no support to change. It's amazing how the revolving door, how many people come back in and out. There is also a very serious debate being had at the moment about the early release of some prisoners, I mean, particularly men who've been convicted of assaults against women, which leaves the women feeling incredibly vulnerable to know that they haven't served a full sentence.

13:42Can I just ask you, Richard, whether you have seen in prison men being given early release who you thought there's absolutely no way that they should be going out? That wasn't happening in my time, no early release. And I think, yeah, the government are definitely going to make some mistakes sometimes. I think it's a real big topic of what is right and what is wrong, really, because some people, I think maybe they should do a system where you can earn time off. I think that would be a great way of doing it. So you go in and you've got a system where maybe you can get an early release, but you've got to earn that through courses or through rehabilitation.

14:24That maybe would be something that would be more kind of, well, productive. The thoughts of Richard. It was a real pleasure to talk to him, Jane. I think that voice of people with experience from behind bars is not heard enough. actually. I mean, sometimes for very, very good reasons, you know, people who've done truly awful, awful things, whether victims who would run the risk of listening to an interview, you know, for very sensible reasons, we don't put those kinds of things out. But I thought everything that Richard said had come from a place of great thought, actually, and lived experience.

15:04And if you want to know more details about the work of the prisons, Phoenix Trust, just put it into a search engine and up will come the goods. That was very interesting, I thought, actually, really interesting. And good luck to him. And we did, inevitably, because we were always going to, people were asking, well, what did he do? So is it OK to say what he did? So his offences were drugs-related. Right, OK. So to everybody wondering, there's your answer. Thank you very much for listening. We are back next week and we love hearing from you and we're very grateful to those of you who do communicate with us regularly.

15:39it is fantastic. Jane and Fee at Times.Radio.

15:58Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.

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