Prison Protest

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.4 • 997 Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prison protest: Laurie Taylor explores the way in which prisoners have sought to transform the conditions of their imprisonment and have their voices heard. Nayan Shah, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California, considers the global history of hunger strikes from suffragists in the US and UK to Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland and anti apartheid campaigners in South Africa. What is the meaning and impact of the refusal to eat? They’re joined by Philippa Tomczak, Director of the Prisons, Health and Societies Research Group at the University of Nottingham, and author of a study which examines the way in which the 1990 riots at HMP Strangeways helped to re-shape imprisonment. Was the change lasting or significant?

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of
0:07.0	Happiness Podcast.
0:08.0	For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want
0:14.4	to share that science with you.
0:16.1	And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.
0:19.4	I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that
0:25.4	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:36.8	This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co.uk.
0:47.0	UK.
0:48.0	Mark and Pulls and Prison, that's where I want to stay.
0:56.0	Well, that song by Johnny Cash, together with the enthusiastic responses from his fulsome prison audience became very special to me and my
1:05.2	sociological colleague the late Stanley Cohen back in the early 1970s.
1:10.0	You see at that time we were conducting research into the conditions which were being
1:14.9	faced by the serious offenders who had been locked away in Durham prison for periods
1:19.9	up to 30 years and those shouts of enthusiasm for cash, well at least they allowed us to
1:26.9	hear the prisoners own voices, something we were intent on allowing rather
1:31.3	more extensively in the research that we described in
1:34.6	our book Psychological Survival. At that time the the Home Office seemed not at all
1:40.1	interested in learning what the long-term Durham prisoners thought of
1:44.8	their conditions. We were actually threatened with the Official Secret Act if we went
1:49.2	ahead and published our findings. Well I could hardly keep these personal memories out of mind as I was
	...

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