Very recently I have been working with prisoners in England and Wales who have their own radio station. Their programmes are a mix of speech and music and deal with rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. Crucially, it can only be heard inside prison. No one outside prison can tune into this radio station and programmes and contributors must abide by extremely strict editorial and security deadline. The station is called National Prison Radio.

 

But with the support of The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust I am now travelling to countries where programmes made by serving offenders and ex-offenders can be heard by you, at home, on the public airwaves. That means on your normal radio or via the internet. First, I go to Sweden then it's Washington DC, Houston in Texas and then Portland in Oregon.

 

I want to know what offenders get out of making programmes that can be heard on the "outside" and what society gains from it. Does it create some mutual understanding or does it present risks too hard to manage?