Dr Tania Rodrigues and Natalie Miller join Dr Marianne Trent to discuss what happens when someone leaves prison, why the first 48 hours after release are the most dangerous, and how homelessness, trauma, institutionalisation and lack of support contribute to reoffending. We explore real experiences of people leaving custody, the emotional toll on staff, the challenges with probation and GP registration, and why short sentences often cause more harm than good. This episode offers a clear, compassionate look at life after prison and is particularly useful for aspiring psychologists, forensic practitioners and anyone interested in rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. #prisonreform #traumainformed #prisonrelease

Highlights

• 00:00 - Setting the scene and the reality of post release homelessness
• 01:06 - Introducing Dr Tania Rodrigues and Natalie Miller
• 02:12 - Why people rarely enter prison from stability
• 03:08 - The gap between internal progress and external life circumstances
• 04:13 - Who actually picks up the pieces when someone hey baby, just leaves now, loves lots, x x custody
• 05:40 - The fallacy of believing release is a linear journey
• 07:30 - Short sentences, women in custody, and family breakdown
• 08:25 - Lack of time to build trust and its impact on psychological work
• 10:23 - Why every prison session may be the only session
• 12:27 - Prison is often too unsafe for trauma focused therapy
• 14:22 - Staff anxiety and helplessness when people are suddenly released
• 16:06 - The contradiction between punishment buildings and rehabilitation goals
• 18:18 - Housing, instability and the struggle to register with a GP
• 19:37 - How losing homes, jobs and family ties worsens outcomes
• 21:17 - Imagining the fear and uncertainty of having nowhere safe to go
• 22:35 - Staff emotional experiences and the weight of safeguarding
• 26:37 - Public perceptions of prisoners and the reality of low level offences
• 29:04 - Institutionalisation, safety and why some people reoffend to return
• 32:38 - Unstructured freedom and the overwhelm of sudden autonomy
• 35:44 - How tiny things like controlling a light become enormous
• 36:29 - The importance of trauma informed practise across all justice roles
• 39:40 - Why prisons reflect societal failings rather than ‘bad people’
• 41:22 - Stigma, inequality and the real barriers facing prison leavers
• 44:27 - Final reflections on compassion, accountability and community safetyLinks:

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Imagine leaving prison, hopeful changed, determined to start again, and within 48 hours you're sleeping on the street hungry, scared and completely alone. Sadly, that's the reality for so many people every year in the uk. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Tania and Natalie who both work within Imprisoned Mental Health Services. Together we are pulling back the curtain on what really happens when someone leaves prison. The chaos, the system failures, and the small extraordinary moments that keep hope alive. We are talking about trauma, about institutionalisation and the emotional toll. This work takes on staff who care deeply but can't always change the system. This episode is a raw and compassionate look at the human side of rehabilitation, and a reminder that us and them might be far closer than we think. Hope you find it really useful, and if you do, please like and subscribe for more.

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist. Today I am joined by not one but two guests. We've got Dr. Tania Rodrigues, who is a consultant, clinical psychologist, and we've got Natalie Miller, who's a deputy regional manager, and Tania and Natalie both work for the same organisation. Just to kind of set the context for what we are talking about, Natalie, you first caught my eye on LinkedIn because you made a really powerful and interesting post about what the reality is like for people when they leave prison, when they go from perhaps having really good intentions, they've had some really good rehab work, they're really thinking about this new kind of genesis of their life. People know their names, people are on their side and then they're released, they're discharged, whatever the right term is these days and very quickly the wheels can fall off. Could you talk to us a little bit about that post and about that kind of concept and reality?

Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. My post was to talk about and highlight when people come to prison, they're not coming in from a stable, everything working for them in the community outside. They're coming in with perhaps chaos already happening outside already is trauma. There's a lot before somebody comes into prison, which they're not coming in and they're a prisoner, they're a person who's got loads of other things going on. And we do our really best to support them in prison and to try to find out what their needs are so that we can meet them. And sometimes we do better than others and we have a little bit longer time. Sometimes we don't have enough time because of the short sentences, but we do make progress with the people that come inside and then they go back out into the community. But unfortunately nothing else. Their life outside didn't progress forward.

Their life outside is exactly the same as how they left it when they came in. So they might have progressed further in themselves inside, but then they go back out. They still might not have a home to go to or a job or money in the bank, or they've got problems with their family or the life they went back to that led them to addiction or the crime or any other negative impact on their life is still there waiting for them. And because those ties don't always link up very well and we can't resolve everything in that short time, they see no other option. But to go back to what they had before, it is easier because it's there and there's no one else holding their hands and putting their arms around them and saying, well no actually go this way. They're just left out there with nothing really. So yeah, that kind of was what I wanted to talk about. And it is really sad and we forget that when people leave prison we just say bye and they've gone and there's someone else's responsibility now, but who's out there picking up those pieces that we released?

And sometimes the answer is no one, no one's picking up those pieces. I guess people will have a probation officer, but that's not always, well, often not an attuned experience. I know individual differences, but sometimes I think it feels like there's not anyone really on your team and necessarily as trauma informed as you might want people to be. Who wants to talk to that point? What is life like for actual practical support when you leave prison?

So there is support out there and that's the frustrating thing is that there is pockets of amazing support out there in all over the country. It exists. Unfortunately, there isn't enough of it. There's not enough people to deliver it. There's not enough training to keep up that consistency. There isn't enough support around it while we're doing it, the supervision, the understanding, you need to have those constant conversations. And we know that staff lead physicians, organisations change contract change the systemic barriers that exist. Those things will cause the other things. Lots of work very well. So we can have the great people and the great services and the great ideas and all that innovation exists, it's there, but we're just not quite able to tie it together long enough consistently. I mean, that's how I feel. I'm not sure how Tania's thoughts.

No, absolutely Natalie. I would absolutely agree with you. I think the other fallacy for us is that it's not a linear journey. People coming to prison and all sorts of things are still happening in the background. In many ways. Their lives are paused in certain areas, but in other areas things continue. So for example, we have a lot of people that as they come into prison, they've left a home behind that may or may not be taken away. And so whilst they are with us, there's still things going on in the background to decide whether they will keep their property or not. And sometimes these things are not known, not known by them, not known by the team supporting them. So by the time that they're ready to leave prison, we're not always sure what the answer is going to be. And that is the same thing for families.

We have people that come into prison with relationships that by the time they leave prison relationships have ended. And my focus often is thinking about women because I find that women are perhaps the most affected when it comes to family breakdowns because they're usually the ones caring for children. And because we have such a high number of women that come into prison for very short sentences, it means that we don't have enough time to plan their care in the way that would be clearly managed inside and outside the prison in terms of communication with external agencies and to make that care planning in the way that is meaningful. But already, the fact that they've come into prison means that children have been left with no care, might have been taken into care or been left with other families. And by the time that these women are ready then to leave prison relationships have been torn.

Some people might not want to then accept them back into the families. And that has a massive impact, not just at that individual, but then we're starting to see the ripple effects on families and children and intergenerational trauma and all the things that we understand. So I guess the lack of understanding that the journey is not linear is that it doesn't follow a process where you come in and everything else is being done at the same time. We all have different priorities. Services have different priorities. We have finite resources both in prison and in the community. And so things are not very aligned. I think one of my biggest frustrations always has been as a clinician is never fully knowing how much time do I have to work with an individual because actually it's beyond my control so I can have the best plan for that person.

And then halfway through that plant, they just disappear into the ether of the system because they've been transferred, they've been released. And so there isn't enough time to have the kind of planning that we would like to have to make sure that by the time that the people come out of prison, the system is ready to accept them and to receive them. And like Natalie was saying, we all people. So everything that we do is based on relationships. And I have worked with amazing colleagues in that really have taken the time to go above and beyond to think about what will this person need upon release. But even when they have done their best job and they've done everything they've thought about everything, we are then dependent upon external services capacity to offer those services at the time that that person is ready to engage with them.

Which is the other thing because not everybody leaves prison and they're absolutely ready to engage with that service for different reasons because priorities are different. My priority as a clinician when I think about somebody leaving the prison might be that the first thing that we need to do is to make sure that you register with the gp. Because from our point, from a clinical point of view, we want to make sure that their healthcare needs are dealt with immediately. Whereas the priority for that individual might be that they need to have money because they need to eat or they need to find a place to sleep, or they need to know if their children are okay. So I think we are always running against everybody else's priorities and we are fighting against resources whether we like it or not. And so that complicates matters. So it's not to say that there aren't services available, there are, but the services, the numbers are not there, the capacity is not there. And then the priorities, the agendas are not always aligned. So that makes things really difficult

And it really is a very different way of working with people, isn't it? If you often we will even informally contract or in our minds we'll be thinking, oh, this might be a 10 to 12 session piece of work, but it's almost like you are having to almost do every single bit of work that you do as a potentially single session intervention because you just don't know what's going to happen. But it's really tricky if you're trying to do some kind of stabilisation work or work through someone's trauma that might be really leading to some of the behaviours and some of the life choices that lead them to offending behaviour. If you don't get to finish that because it's really hard to open up and have that, I think what we don't often realise is therapy is a, even psychology, any kind of work is intimate and to open yourself up and be vulnerable, not knowing if you'll ever see that person again, that takes a great deal of trust. And if we're asking people who have often been let down by people to put that trust in people, that's really tricky, isn't it?

Very, very tricky. It's not just about not knowing about when the end is going to be. It's also taking into account that it takes time to build trust. So when you are in a chaotic environment, when in most cases a lot of the people that we work with have already been failed by services time and time again, they probably have already started these types of conversations with 10 different members of staff and now I'm asking the same questions or similar questions that they've already repeated 10 times before. It doesn't lend itself to feel very trusting of the process. So it takes time to build trust by the time you're starting to perhaps build trust or start to see that maybe it's worth investing your time, all of a sudden maybe there's a change and you're now going to be released or you're going to be transferred and you've just opened a can of worms halfway through those interventions.

And you have to think, okay, is this the right time to do the work? So one of the things that we need to be really clear and really careful is that not everybody in prison is at a level that they are ready or it's right to even start any kind of trauma-focused therapy because the environment itself is not safe. So why would we do that? So it is important absolutely to invest in building stabilisation skills, emotional regulation skills. It is important to start giving people a sense of autonomy and a sense of control over their own environment and choices and empowering them to take on a more collaborative approach. But we have to be really careful that we always have to think that every session could be the last session. And it's very different if you're working in a cut a prison where you've got people that might be there for 10, 15, 20 years.

But majority of people that we work in, remand prisons could be there. I mean female prisons, the shortest that we have is about 10 days. What exactly do you do in 10 days? Remand prisons, male prisons, we pretend about four weeks, isn't it, Natalie? So I mean, when you think about it and you think, is it even safe to start having those conversations? Because you also know that when people leave prison, they need to survive out there. And we may not like to say this or to think about this, but a lot of the things that we deem to be unhealthy and risky are really survival mechanisms that allow them to still be around. And without them they wouldn't survive. So we have to always be thinking about what is the best that can be done right now for this person with the knowledge that there's a lot of uncertainty around what it is that we are trying to achieve.

And that's equally difficult for the individuals, the patients, the prisoners we work with. It's also really hard on the staff because most staff, most of us always are thinking that we want to make sure that we do the best that we can with that individual. And we always thinking about the long-term, we've seen them today, but thinking the long-term is they going to go back into the community. So we want to think what we need to do to get them ready for that, but we might not really have the ability to work with them for that amount of time.

Yeah, absolutely. And the episode before this one is with a guy called Chris Do KC, who is the author of Justice on Trial. I know Natalie and I, we spoke about him briefly in our dms, but he's really like, well, what is the point in a sentence of a month, if you are just seeing people for 10 days, what is the point? Why are we ripping people's families apart? Why are we giving them that prison time? Why are we forcing that shame upon them? Surely there must be something better that you can do or offer as a sense of justice or something than a one month sentence or less than that. Is this a system that's fit for purpose? And then the really tricky thing is, is that you guys are then having to be in the justice system and maybe people are not always feeling that warmly towards you. They, I guess they're thinking of you as the bad guys, the others. Does that play out with you guys, Natalie?

Absolutely it does. It's difficult, isn't it? Because prisons, they're not a healthcare setting, they're not a therapeutic setting generally these are buildings that were built for punishment. They're built to give people punishment for crimes they've done. So we are in the business of rehabilitation though that's not what we are here for. So we are trying to rehabilitate people as a whole person. And as Tania mentioned, there are so many elements to that. It's not just that someone comes into prison and we've just given them psychological therapies or medication, they'll be having contact with so many different services across primary care and mental health and potentially external secondary care services as well. And that we are facilitating all of that. But ultimately it is bringing somebody into prison for 10 days or two weeks, four weeks does more damage since I feel more damage to them than it does help them because they can maybe get a taste of what potentially they could get or maybe they'll see there is support out there or say, do we start working with them?

Do we start talking to them, get them to do? We start trying to understand what they're feeling or what they're thinking and then just release them back out into the community with more questions. Now they're more confused. Hold on a second. We were just starting to get somewhere and now I'm back out here, back in this again. So I don't think that's helpful. There are obviously other things that, there are other services that support. So we have programmes, we use reconnect programme for example, which supports people when they're released from prison. So they work with people in prison and then they also connect into the community as, and they work with them. I'm not sure how long before a period of time after they leave prison. And they help with things like housing, medication, substance abuse, all kind of elements. There are services like that that do link up and help people once they go out, but they don't always work consistently. Well, just as Tania said it sounds with resources, staffing, training, lots of other things that mean that isn't always easy to do.

And even thinking about where people are going to go physically. So when I worked in Youth Justice, the young people would know they were either going to go home to their families or if they were in care, they were going to go back into a care setting. Is that the same for adults? Do they always know where they're going to be spending their first night when they're released from prison?

I wish that I could say yes to that. I really do. The first 48 hours after someone was released from prison are the highest risk period for self-harm recall back into prison relapse. It's a really, really fragile time. The average person released from custody, they've only served a short sentence. We're not talking long sentence is we know the turnover's huge. I dunno the numbers, but there are a large amount of people that leave prison and they are homeless or they go into temporary accommodation and we have to, as a healthcare service, we're trying to register people with GP services. We want to link them up with substance abuse services or mental health services in the community. We want to make sure that they can mirror the support we were giving them in prison in the community. And that's really hard to do if someone doesn't have a base.

They might have chaotic lifestyles that mean that they are moving from one area to another. They might not have stable relationships or friendships or family. They might not have a base and that means that it's hard to knuckle them down in one area and get that support streamlined into them. But I know that we do have a small number of, I think 15% of prisoners in the UK are released without a GP registration, which actually is really, really good progress from where we first started register people with gps. It wasn't always easy to do, but that is still 15% of people that are leaving prison without a gp. And that means without a gp, they're unable to access other services that they might need. So it is progress, but it is a real struggle when we're fighting against decisions like putting someone into prison for two weeks, ripping them apart from their family and their jobs.

They could lose their jobs because they've now gone into prison. They might have had a stable ish relationship before they came into prison. They now come in that's now upset their relationship, the relationship with their children, with their partners, their family. So potentially there's a lot more disruption coming from putting someone into prison than there is maybe looking at other services that could help rehabilitate that need. And sometimes we see people come into prison for things that are crimes in the eyes of the law, but ultimately they stem from other problems which could be helped with psychological support medication. Any other kind of healthcare support services that could prevent you, prevent it from leaving to that point that got them into prison in the first place?

Yeah, absolutely. I could not agree more. And as I'm kind of listening to you, I'm just really trying to think, gosh, we're all recording from home today, right? I've even switched the heating on because my son is on teacher training today. So it feels like tropical in here. It's comfortable. And I know that I've made my bed upstairs before we started speaking and I know that I'm taking my kids swimming this evening and when I get home, my husband will have cooked us dinner. But can I just ask all of our viewers and ourselves really to just take a moment to stop and think, what would I be feeling in my body? What thoughts would I be having if I didn't know where I was sleeping tonight? And if I didn't know that when I lock my door that I will be safe and that I won't be kicked out or that I'm only here for a day, let's just take a moment to connect to that because this is what we are asking so many people to do, carrying that with them. It's massive, really massive. What went on for you, Tania, when I asked you to do that? What were you thinking?

I'll tell you what happened to me. It just took me back to a situation actually with a lady that I worked with. She came into prison pregnant and stayed with us probably for about three weeks. And upon release she had no home to go to. She'd lost her home. She was pregnant and she was in a domestically violent relationship when she came into prison. So she couldn't go home because of that. She didn't have a place to go, she didn't have family because people had cut off ties with her. I remembered the panic within the team, the frenzy, when we found out that she was going to be released and we were all thinking, well, this is a safeguarding concern. She's pregnant. There's all sorts of things for us to consider. And I remember the panic and I don't think we often consider that, that we sit with a huge amount of responsibility for these individuals that we do get to know.

And we are all human beings. There are certain people that you connect with more than others. There are certain people that you come to really like them because they are really pleasant characters to engage with personalities that you come to think, you know what? In different circumstances, this is somebody that could have been a friend of mine because we are human beings. And I remember when we were together as a team, and I remember looking at some of the women in the team thinking, imagine myself pregnant and going through the situation. And I could see people tearing up just thinking about this. And this is perhaps far more common that we want to give it credit for because we live this day in day out. And although a lot of the times we have to be almost desensitised to cope with the depression, the nature of the job, when you have a case where you have a minute to really sit with it and think about it, it becomes really overwhelming because we could all end up in a situation like that.

So to think about it, I mean immediately my stomach gets in knots. I can just feel it in my stomach. But this is a case that really stuck with me and it stuck with me for several reasons. One because I just thought the whole circumstance of it was just unthinkable. But I also remember the kind of impact it had on the team and everybody rallied together. Everything that we did was the right thing to do. It doesn't necessarily mean that even when we do the best that we can as professionals, that it leads to a positive outcome for the individual. And I think that's one of the hardest realisations in this job is that we can follow all the processes, we can talk about all the different agencies, we can make all the connections, we can make all the referrals. It still doesn't guarantee success.

And that's a really difficult thing to sit with. And for me sometimes I'm not above to say that I've lost sleep over some of the cases that I've worked with, that I've cried, that I've cried with some of my colleagues over some of the cases because they really get to you. It's impossible not to. So yeah, when you take a minute to think about that when you've got children, and another case that sits in my mind and I'll never forget, is somebody that was so distressed because actually the most valuable, the most strongest attachment they've had was to their dog and they went into prison and the dog had to be taken into a kennel. And if it hadn't been paid within a certain amount of time, the dog would've been put down. I'm a dog lover, I've got animals. And I couldn't bear the thought of it.

So yeah, it's really hard when you actually just take a minute to with the human experience that these individuals are going through. I think public opinion is that we detach ourselves, they are criminals. It's us versus them. They've done bad things, therefore they have to pay the consequences. What I want to say is last week I got a fine for speeding. Maybe not my best moment, but that means that I've acted in a way that I knew was wrong, that I've breached the rules and so there will be consequences. I'm still waiting for the consequence, which I'm hoping is just going to be a fine. And I'm lucky enough that I can live with the fact that actually, even if it is a fine, I kind of okay enough that I think I can pay the fine, I can afford it and that's not going to take food out of my plate.

But the reality is one could say, well, why would you engage in such behaviour if you know it's wrong? Because every day we make decisions a split of a second. You make a decision that may actually change your life. And I was speeding and I think that I was safe enough in the way that I was driving that I wasn't going to cause an accident. But what if I had, and what if something had died and what if I had ended up in prison and all of a sudden I'm a criminal and a bad person? And I think these are the kind of things that we don't always allow ourselves to think and to remember that it could be our child, it could be our brother, our sister, our parent, our friend, our neighbour. So I think connecting with human experience is really important so that we understand what people are going through and that maybe just we start to have a think about what do we as a society need to do differently to maybe support these people when they're coming out of prison? Because it's not just about services providing a service, it's about people coming out and feeling scared for their safety because they might be targeted.

All of that plays a role into it. So I think it's such a big question. I'm not sure that I've got the answer, but there's so much to consider and it does heavy. It's very heavy to think about it. It does weigh heavy on our shoulders. The minute you take a moment to really think and connect with it, it's hard.

Yeah, it really is. And I think even with the best intentions to go out there and try and create new life for yourself as you were speaking, I was thinking, well, I often do think, God, what if something happened that meant that I had to go to prison, but there would be lots of people that I could call on for emotional support, people that I could call on probably for practical support. I haven't got a dog, but if I did have one, there's probably people I could say, I'm going to be away for four months. Could you look after my dog? But often people are really very isolated. And when we are looking at complex trauma, we're like, well, did you have anyone? Did have a mom or a dad that was kind to you or a granny or an aunt, even a neighbour? Was there anyone who was different, who bucked the trend for people that were unpredictable and unreliable and harmful and abusive? And sometimes you can dig and dig and dig and you can find one, you can find one example and you're like lovely. Sometimes you can't. And I think that's the hardest thing to relate to is that there hasn't been anyone that's good or safe or that thinks that they're important or special or worthwhile, and that is the real difference. That can be so hard for people to tune into like, well, they should have made better choices. And it's like, well, it's actually very, very difficult, isn't it, Natalie?

Yeah, it is. When Tania was speaking, I was smiling because it was very relatable because I also had speeding fine last year. And I also had the same thought process was that we all are one kind of decision away from where the people that we're looking after in prison are aren't. I have bipolar and I have a DHD. And with both of those diagnoses has come some maybe unpredictable behaviours and choices and some erratic decision making maybe. But I've always been in a position where I've got a network, I've got friends, I've got family, I've got an organisation that I work for that cares about my wellbeing. I've had access to resources, therapies, support systems that have been able to teach me skills that I need to recognise and work with myself and understand how to manage those emotions or decision-making and give me the tools that I need to manage my health to prevent me from making silly decisions that can hurt other people or myself.

Unfortunately, a lot of the people in prison don't have all those things that I just mentioned. So because they don't have that, they're not able to prevent and have the tools to make sure that they're safe or that other people around them are safe. And it seems ineffective to me that the best solution for that is to put them into prison, whether that be for two weeks or two years where that's not helping them get those things, they're still going to come back out without them. I was thinking about when Tania was speaking, a young lad who I worked with who was in one of the prisoners that I worked in, and he was about to be released, and you would think everyone leaving prison would be really excited and happy to be released. But sadly that's not the case either. He was really, really anxious about being released because he was part of a gang in the community and he didn't have any family, no mom, no dad, no friends.

The only friendship group that he had, the only support network he had was this group of young men who were in this violent gang. And ultimately because that was the only support system he had, that's what he was going to go back out to and he didn't want to, but it's all he knew, it's all he had. That's the only people. And they supported him. They spoke to him every day. They came and met him outside of prison. They wrote to him, they were for him what felt like the support system he had, but it was really challenging for us. We knew he was going out to that again, and we obviously don't want to do that. We have to safeguard him. We have to protect him and make sure that he doesn't have to go back out to people. He doesn't want to be so be around.

So we have to work with that as well. But there's a lot of people that be released from prison who don't want to go back out there. They even go out and re-offend so they can come back into prison because there's the faces that they know the nurses, there's the staff that know their names that make the effort to talk to them, that there's food, there's a roof over their head, a warm bed at nighttime. There's friends. There's that culture, that community, they don't have that outside, so they will come back into prison just so they can experience that again.

Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of the concept of institutionalisation, but it goes a step beyond that actually, doesn't it? Because actually it's this is where I feel safest. It's not that I don't know necessarily how to do these for myself, it's that I don't trust the other people around me. Whereas I do trust you, Natalie. I do trust you, Tania. I do trust what I know and the unpredictability out there, well, that's not for me. And even things like my teeth are really hurting. I can't get a dentist appointment if I'm in prison. That will get sorted.

Yeah, it's like a clash, isn't it? Between institutionalism and unstructured freedom. It's that inside every decision's made for them when their door gets opened, that decision's made for them. They don't open a door without someone else doing it for them when they sleep, when the light goes on, those decisions are all made for them. And the dentist is there, the physio is there, and services they probably wouldn't even have thought about accessing maybe in the community they have right there and there for them in the prison. And then suddenly they go outside. There's this demand for autonomy that maybe they haven't had to deal with for a while. And then the disorientation and everything else that will come with that. And that can be really hard to function on top of everything else that you're trying to deal with.

And actually thinking about that if my husband wakes me up with the light, I am grumpy with him and with everyone else for a good half an hour probably until I've had a shower. Really? And this is what we're doing to hold populations of people every, that's really hard. I've never really considered the light aspect before.

And the light aspect is bigger than you think. It really isn't. It really is a thing. People, I've been walking on a landing and a young man press's cell belt call me to come over and he said, she's like, please turn my light off because someone's walked past, turned it on, not turned it off. And they're like, I can't sleep. And it's really stressful that they're in that little box and everything they can control essentially is in that box, but the light, and that's incredibly frustrating. So it sounds like a really small thing to us, like you say, but it is huge for them, really, really huge.

Absolutely. I'm just really conscious of the time, and I wonder if there's anything that either one of you think we really should convey today before we finish.

I guess Marianne, I'm just thinking about, I mean, we've been talking a lot about seeing people in prison for the human beings that they are and put a human face behind everything that has brought them into prison. I also want to talk about public perception and the idea that there are people that are in prison because they have committed some horrific offences. We are not trying to minimise or undermine why people may end up in prison. But I do want to make a caveat to say that the majority of people that we work with have actually committed low level offences for which they end up in prison and complete rupture of their lives and relationships for things that perhaps really we would be better off investing in community mental health services, in social care services. And I think because the fabric of society is torn, because there's so many things going on at the moment that are having a massive impact in the way that we see people.

I guess my reflection today is just for us to remind ourselves that actually not everybody that is in prison is there because they've actually committed atrocious offences. That is not the truth. And we do have high level prisons, high risk prisons for people that have committed those types of offences. And it makes sense that we do need to invest in that too, because nobody wakes up a morning in a morning and decides, I'm just going to go and do something horrific. There's a whole history behind that to consider. So this isn't about excusing or justifying poor behaviour or criminality, that's not what we're saying. But what we are saying is that behind any kind of crime, there is a story of a person that we need to understand because we have the responsibility of rehabilitating people that come into prison because these people are part of a society that has failed them in the first place for them to end up in prison.

And I think for me, it is incredibly important to acknowledge that because we are the ones on a day-to-day basis responsible for making sure that our friends, our neighbours, our families, that they're okay. Because if we start to pay a little bit more attention to the person next to us, then perhaps we might just connect enough with them to give them an escape so that they have somebody to talk to. I think there's so much in the media at the moment about thinking about men's mental health and high risk of suicide rates. We know that. But we also know that there is a culture where as much as we want to support men, there's always barriers for that. And we also know that when we start looking at crime and serious crime, the majority of serious crime and serious offences are committed by men. And when we talk about gender-based violence, the majority of those victims are women and girls.

But we also know that part of this comes from a position of us having to change the narrative about how we see men in society. We need to do better, we need to do more. We need to think about people going into prison. They're coming from our families, they're coming from our communities. So it's not us versus them. And the people that work in prison, which are doing amazing, amazing jobs in the most incredibly hard circumstances with really high pressures, the nurses have got such an incredibly hard job. The officers have got such incredible hard job, but these are the same people coming from the communities where the prisons are coming from. So we need to be thinking about working, supporting people in prison means doing better for our communities. So this us versus dam, it really needs to change. For me from today, for anyone listening to this discussion is really to keep that in mind is that we all in it together. I know it sounds a little bit corny, but that's the truth. And if we do start thinking about how to support each other at a very human level and think about the struggles that we are going through and create space for those conversations, we might just be the catalyst to stop somebody from jumping in front of a train. And that is something that we can all do for each other. So that would be, I guess that's my parting thoughts for today.

Thank you. Absolutely. Such important and powerful words, and thank you for saying them. Tania, how about you, Natalie? Is there anything you'd like to leave us with or have us really consider?

Thank you. I think I would just like to add on to Tania's words. And for me it's very much about, when I talk about people in prison or two people in prison or anything, it's about there's more than just that snapshot. And I mentioned that earlier, and I think when I speak to people that don't work in prison who aren't exposed to the information that we have and understand how processes work and what may be got people there, it is really interesting to me that their views are basically, well, they're prisoners, they're bad people. And ultimately that is the end of it. And as Tony said, we are not trying to say that we're not trying to condone anything they've done, but ultimately you can hold someone accountable and still have compassion. We're not saying that they're not two separate things. You can have them both.

I think if we talk about trauma informed practise, and this is so Tania is very passionate about and is working with in our organisation to support teams to be more trauma informed and to ask the right questions in the right way and to use the right language. But we are one kind of fraction of the people, the resources that will be in touch with those patients. So we need prison staff, offices, education, social workers, probation, to also use trauma reformative practises to better on understand and be able to deescalate situations and to really understand what you're looking at when you're talking to someone and what they're saying, what they're not saying. They have that clinical curiosity and read more than just the words that somebody says because it isn't always just what they say is it is so much more than that. But we are so caught up in the process of put someone in prison, they do the sentence, they go back out and just go around in this cycle.

It is just a struggle. And I think that stigma in the community, that inequality that exists. So women will leave prison and they will face more stigma leaving prison as a man would, leaving prison if there is so much more jobs. People don't want to give people a job if you've been into prison, I'm not sure what the figures are on employment rate from prison leavers, but it's not great because if you've been in prison, they want, it doesn't matter what you've been in there for, they just see that you've been in HMP and judgments are made. So I think the message for me is society needs to remember that prisons are still part of our society. It's the same people on the outside. It's a reflection of what we have in the community, just a condensed version of people that need help. These, these are not just prisoners, these are people who all need help, lots of different help from lots of different services. And then eventually they're going to come back outside into our communities with us on our buses, on our streets, in the house next door to you outside your school with your kids. They're going to be there. So let's help rehabilitate them and give them the tools and resources they need to get their life back on track. Because somewhere it went wrong, didn't it?

It absolutely did. And what wonderful words to leave us with. And that's really touched me. I sort of feel myself tearing up really. But yeah, this is a narrative we must all adopt. And yeah, thank you so much for your time today, both of you. I absolutely loved this episode. So interesting. And it's a companion episode to the previous episode I did with Chris Do kc. So if you haven't already checked that out, I would urge you to do so. Please do let me know what this episode and what previous episodes have evoked for you. Did it connect with you? Has it inspired you to think differently about things? I would love it if you would let me know. Please do drop some supportive comments or let me know what your thoughts are in the comments, which you can do on YouTube and which you can do on Spotify too with asking a question or making a comment.

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