Trauma | Resonance | Resilience
Hosted by Dr Lisa Cherry, this podcast is a multi-agency, inter disciplinary resource for those who work in education, social care, criminal justice or health and to listen to conversations that make a difference. Utilising the wisdom of lived experience, academic research and practice knowledge, we will support you in your work of developing trauma informed, relationally focused practice developing safe, supportive and healing environments. Our collective focus is threefold; preventing harm, not adding to harm, seeking to mitigate harm when it has already happened.
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Trauma | Resonance | Resilience
Season 8, Episode 5, Andi Brierley on Stigma & Criminal Justice
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Join Dr Lisa Cherry and Andi Brierley as they explore how stigma in criminal justice turns labels into lifelong identities and shapes whether people feel safe to speak about their past. We connect lived experience, criminology and policy to show how stigma can block rehabilitation and make reintegration harder than it needs to be.
- Defining stigma through Goffman and the idea of being deeply discredited
- Unpacking discredited versus discreditable identities and why it matters
- Challenging language like offender and ex-offender as timeless labels
- Noticing how “disclosure” can reveal unequal social norms
- Linking stigma to institutions, politics and austerity narratives via Imogen Tyler
- Using David Garland to explain punitive policy and public fear
- Questioning lived experience recruitment when DBS checks override intent
- Arguing that relationships, housing, education and belonging support desistance
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Welcome To The Stigma Series
SPEAKER_00This is the Trauma Resonance Resilience Podcast. This is for you if you are interested in compassion, connection, and relationships and how we can all work together creating services that do not add to harm but rather seek to support recovery from it. I'm your host, Lisa Cherry, and this is your time to sit back and listen in on conversations that make a difference.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Stigma series. Yes, we're having an entire series on stigma. And if you've not listened to any of the other episodes, then please go back, have a listen, because I know that you will really enjoy those. And you're going to absolutely enjoy today because my guest today is someone who's been on the podcast a few times, although not for a while. And we are going to explore stigma and criminal justice. And do you know what? I'm just going to let you introduce yourself. Hello, Andy Briley.
SPEAKER_02Hi, Lisa. So yeah, my supposed introduction. My name's Andy Briley. I'm a I'm currently a senior lecturer at Leeds Trinity University. I'm in the School of Social Sciences there. And I teach in the Department of Criminology, Investigation and Policing. I've done that for about five years. And prior to that, I was in Youth Justice. So that's really my background, and a lot of my early passion is with children that find themselves coming into conflict with the law. And what really kind of drove me into that work was my own personal experiences of going into care and then being adducted to drugs early and spending much of my early adult life in and out of prison and on off of heroin. So I've had the quite an interesting, I suppose, transition from one social space, i.e., addiction, care, prison, and all the things that come with that. And then that just piqued an interest in me taking a career up and trying to work with some of the children and young people growing up in Leeds, which is the area that I grew up in. But the interesting bit that you mentioned is that uh I haven't been on this podcast, albeit I haven't been on any podcast or even on social media recently, and that's partly because I've spent the last four or five years doing a PhD looking at the relational dynamic, I suppose, between people that are in the criminal justice system and people like me that come back as professionals to work with them. So hence I've been a little bit quiet. But when you contacted me and asked me to come in and talk to you, how could I say no, Lisa?
SPEAKER_01Oh, and that's so lovely. And thank you so much. And um, and I know we'll have a really rich conversation. And and like you, my own personal experiences are what led me into my work as well. And I think that is something that's really interesting about how different things can happen to us, whether that's care, criminal justice, poor mental health, but actually that that can then guide us into an interest into what we do. So thank you for starting there. And and you speak to my um the triad of knowledge, uh, which is around how that wisdom comes from lived experience, professional practice, and academic research. So thank you. Um, so today we're talking about stigma, and I don't really know where to start because we could actually start with your own personal experiences. We could start with what the research says about that, or we could dive into your experiences as a practitioner in youth justice. I mean, when I say the word stigma and criminal justice, where does that land for you?
What Stigma Really Means
SPEAKER_02So for me, uh the starting point for talking about stigma from my position now, I suppose, is looking at the work of someone like Irving Goffman. And in the 60s, he's a sociologist that looked at um performance management and how people operate in society, but he specifically looked at stigma. And my understanding of Goffman's presentation of stigma is that it's something that deeply discredits somebody and it's often relational, and it's when somebody's identity can be defined by something, uh an object. And and this has real, I suppose, this has real consequences when we think about criminal justice, for example, because there are lots of labels that come from navigating through the criminal justice system, so offender, criminal, prisoner, ex-prisoner, addict for many people who have that experience. And for Goffman, he would say, I suppose that somebody who's had those labels, those left labels often become dominant for somebody else, and that can discredit the person in any given community or any relationships. And and so I suppose I would start with his ideas of discredited. But interestingly, he did, if I if I remember rightly, government did two different things, and I think on my personal experience they're interesting. So he talks about the discredited, and I've just outlined what that might be. We're talking about criminal justice here, but it could be care experience, mental health, you know, being on benefits, all of those things. But then he also talks about the discreditable, and there's a distinction between those two things, and I think that's really interesting because in my social spaces now, Lisa, I'll go in and I'll almost rework that stigma into something that's quite positive because of how I present and the other labels that I've got now, such as author or senior lecturer, academic, and so so we're all multifaceted and we're all interpreted by other people in multifaceted ways. But he talks about the discredited and the discreditable, i.e., that people can be discreditable because they've got something about them that can be discredited, but it's not disclosed in public. So they can be discredited, but their position is to navigate that information not getting out. So I mentioned that because when I'm in social spaces now and I disclose the fact that, yeah, you know, I was I was in custody when I was younger, I can almost do that in a space and assume that there might be some connotations with it, but people will predominantly see me and my current circumstances. But there'll be probably other people, well, there will definitely be other people in the room that might not have gone to prison, they might have gone to prison, but they might have something that's discreditable but not disclose it because it's not out there in the public domain anyway. So I think that distinction was really important. But one of the one of the books that I read quite early on in my academic career was Imogen Tyler's Stigma.
SPEAKER_01I was just going to bring up Imogen Tyler because, of course, she talks about the arm being stamped. So this idea that you can even hide something, you can't hide it if you have a stamp on you. And there's been many points in history where that's been used. And I loved her book.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And she could she critiques Irving to some degree, which is a pretty brave thing to do, with kind of my understanding of his work and how prominent he's been, I suppose, in sociology. But she raises an interesting point that actually, and I don't think he does he doesn't, because he does talk about the ecosystem. He doesn't, he's not just saying it's it's only interpersonal and relational, but she definitely takes it one step further, doesn't she? And says that actually what we need to do and use numerous case studies about how we need to think about how politics and institutions inscribe stigma on communities. And I read it some while ago, but I thought I was just thinking when you asked me to come in and speak about this, because this isn't an area my area of expertise for me necessarily. But one of the case studies that I remember that stood out for me was the way the Conservative Party from 2010 to 2012 prepared everybody for the austerity measures that were going to come in, i.e., talked about like the undeserving, the people that were on benefits, and and in some ways, what that was doing is preparing everybody for the austerity measures that they were going to put in place. So I suppose it's interesting for me because we've got to think about stigma on the interpersonal level, but we've also got to think about stigma on the kind of macro, the institutions, the policies, and all that kind of stuff. Uh so that's what comes to me, I suppose. And then one final thing from the literature is that obviously for deviants and criminology, Howard Becker and a whole field of people talked about the master status and how labelling theory, i.e., how the criminal justice system, schools, etc., respond to deviants actually creates a second tier of an identity of being the deviants as well. And that links obviously to criminal justice because you've got DBS checks and also stigma coming out in the community from being in prison to coming out and reintegrating back into society, given the fact that you've got these labels and what does that mean for the individual and what does that mean for different people as well? Because women will probably experience that different to men, minority groups might experience that differently to white groups, for example. So these are all different things that we've got to consider. But when you asked me to come in and speak about it, I thought, well, where would I start? I suppose that's where I would start is is with the literature rather than my own personal experience.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the thing about thinking about stigma,
Discredited Or Discreditable Identities
SPEAKER_01you've already spoken about the language and how it gets embedded in the language. And one of the things that I really struggle with, uh, I do quite a lot of training actually in the criminal justice space. And I really struggle with some of the language that's used in those spaces. But also you mentioned offender, which I really struggle with because you're either an offender or an ex-offender. And this to me strikes me as being timeless in terms of labels. Um, even yourself would, you know, could be called an ex-offender. You know, this troubles me deeply because at what point does a person stop being an ex-offender? Does that ever happen? And what is the purpose of that? It can only be to stick uh a mark on somebody that is with them forever, because of course it is, it's on you have a DBS, you know, for a start.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, and I think I I think it's really complex like most things, because I think it depends, as I've just said, when I when I'm in any academic space or I'm writing, even in my PhD, my PhD isn't really about my lived experience per se, but but obviously I mean I don't want to go into academic jargon, but my positionality of experiencing the phenomenon that I'm interrogating or investigating, it means that I can't be neutral in my analysis of the things that I'm looking at. So one of the papers, I'm doing a PhD by publication, so one of the papers is just me analysing my own experience of working with the young men that was working with the young boys and children in the youth justice system. So the reason why I point that out is that I'm all it it can be reworked depending on where your social position is, right? So so me, okay, an example, picture paint a thousand words. Me operating in my university with a lanyard on, and everybody seeing me as a staff member, which I was doing in the discussion and debate the other day, and just disclosed that none of the people in the room know or on the table knew that I'd been to prison or on heroin or in care. But when I wanted to interject that because it was part of what we were discussing, um I disclosed it. And in fact, one of the I didn't have to do it for this reason, but one of the women on the table said, Oh, thank you for disclosing that. I said, That's not I've not disclosed it for that reason, I'm disclosing it actually to have a conversation about X and Y and Z, right? But that's very different, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Can I can I step in there? Because even describing it as a disclosure is also quite problematic. Like even saying to you, thank you for disclosing that, I mean, did that land in that way, or am I just picking it up in that way? It always does.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. Um, it it's meant intentionally well, isn't it? It's well intended, what I'm making. But there is something strange going on within, let's call it, the machinery of inequality, right? Because anyhow I'm and this is the thing about stigma, and this is why I think people get caught up in operating in Bourdieu's sense of a social field and not transitioning to another one, right? Because if I come out, if I come out of jail, yeah, and I've been out 20 years or so, but if I come out of jail and go into some of the social circles that I've always grown up in and moved in, and say, I just come out last week, someone will say, Where were you? Right? It's just it's a just a fluent part of the discourse, yeah. It's not uh it's not thank you for that disclosure. So I agree with you. The response is in and of itself an exposure of the the social field that I'm now sitting in. And whether it's oh, I don't want to sit next to you because you're a criminal, or it's thank you for this for your disclosure, it's still exposing that really that's not normative language in that environment. And so I think people get stuck in the environments because they just know, and I know I I I'll give you another example. We do open days at the university, right? And so I'm always there because I love doing that stuff, speaking to parents, engaging them, trying to say, look, LTU's a good university to come to. And when we open up and talk about our backgrounds, even now, 20 years later, off uh your PhD, this kind of stuff, well, touch wood, I'll get the PhD, but but I've still got to decide in that room, you know. My experience is fundamental to my professional and academic development, right? But I've still got to make a decision where I disclose in that room that driver into this space. And I would say, is that stigma? I think it is.
SPEAKER_01I think it's because you've got no idea. It's not safe. That's the bottom line. You don't know because you know what the public thinks about criminals. We know that the public's view is lock them up and throw away the key. It's not even uh focused on rehabilitation because otherwise we wouldn't continue to just give long sentences and think about building more prisons, you know. And you don't know if that's what's going to be in front of you. You don't know who's in front of you at an open day. And so why would you put yourself in that position? And that is that that is stigma.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so I do think it it's it operates at different levels, doesn't it? Because the the re So go taking a step back a minute. Well, the reason why I gave that example in the first place is because my brother's just got out. My brother's been addicted to heroin pretty much his entire life. He doesn't look and present like I do, he's certainly not got any, he's never really worked. So the reason why I point that out is that there's levels, right? So, yes, me making a decision about whether I disclose my background
The Power Of Labels And Disclosure
SPEAKER_02in an open day to parents and potential students coming to LTU is something that I need to think about in his potentially a stigmatizing experience. But that's very different to how my brother, when he walks into the uh to the housing centre or to the job centre or whatever, and how he stigmatized because he looks and presents pretty much like somebody who's homeless. So it operates on different levels for different people. But like when you were saying there about uh like rehabilitation, uh David Garland wrote um The Culture of Control, and he did a sociological macro analysis of criminology and the criminal justice system, and he argues that actually up until the 60s, the fundamental philosophy that underpinned both criminology and the criminal justice system was that actually people who committed crime although needed to be held accountable, they were actually seen as people who weren't socialized, right, for a number of different reasons, and that actually the criminal justice system was pretty much left alone to respond to those people to try and rehabilitate and socialise them. But he argues, and this links to the point that you just made, that the current political discourse about crime is caught up between two different ideas, criminology of the self and criminology of the other. And the idea of criminology of the self is that actually we're all just capable of committing crime, and people who commit crime they're just like us, but they're just taking the rational choice to commit crime. And you might think that that's okay, that's a good way of looking at it. And that leads to CCTV cameras, crime prevention measures, environmental changes to prevent crime. But it also leads to higher sentences because if everybody believes everybody's just the same and these people are just deviant and committing crimes for financial benefit, then we end up where we are. But he also says there's an alongside the criminology of the self, there's this almost like contradictory philosophy of criminology of the other. That these people are dangerous, they're criminals, they need locking up, they're not like us, they're completely different. And I'm not saying I agree with that, I'm just saying that this is for me, that was a really interesting sociological analysis because that would, to him, to David Garland, would explain why we are where we are with a prison soft population that's completely at breaking point because we've got these two contradictory philosophies, and he argues that up until the 70s, the criminal justice system and politicians weren't tough on the causes of crime, IPP sentences, these kinds of things, that were actually the criminal justice system wasn't following populist sentiment. So that's stigma as well, isn't it? Because that means that actually what's happening between the politicians and the populist movement is that we need to put these people in prison to protect them from you, but also simultaneously that there's nothing wrong with them, they're just rational actors that are committing crime, and that means that we're in a situation that we're, you know, Labour took over, and now they've got to try and rectify this situation that we found ourselves in. These are things that we need to think about. So I'll get we get this girl's name right, Francesca Barker Mills. She won't, I'm sure she won't mind me sharing this because she did a video recently, but she contacted me yesterday and said to me, and it's before I thought this is perfect timing for this podcast with Lisa, right? She contacted me yesterday and she's was recruited into a job that was that was primarily for people with lived experience, right? So that was the criteria for the job. She's got lived experience of being in prison as far as I'm aware. She's applied for the job. I think that was in December. She was successful. Six months later, she's had the she's gone through numerous different processes, DBS checks, and they've now withdrawn the job for her on the basis that she's got lived experience. Wow. That's that is yeah, that is bad. She was asking me for advice, but I'm not a legal scholar, so I don't really know. I I and I said if that was me, I would fight the bigger fight, but probably wouldn't go back to fight that specific fight because it'd take too much negative energy for me to do that. And I think I've you know I've tried to focus on the positives, which is the advice I gave her. But that is really bad recruitment policy practice, and also means that when people are recruiting lived experience, they're not actually quite sure what it is they're trying to recruit in. And that's my worry with the term is that actually I think it's and I found this in some of my research, it's run ahead of itself, and everybody's like thinking, okay, we want lived experience. Without actually thinking that through, what do you want? Why do you want it? And what do you want it to do when it comes into
Politics, Policy, And The Culture Of Control
SPEAKER_02your organization? Um, it's almost like become a bigger way. How are you going to look after the people?
SPEAKER_01How are you going to? So there's a bit of a delay on our communication here, but how are you going to look after the people who you do recruit? Because by definition, you know, they're bringing in a set of experiences where they have experienced stigma, where they will have experienced marginalization, you know. So how are you going to take care of them? There are organizations that do that really well, and equally there are some that really don't.
SPEAKER_02And I don't know. She didn't tell me the organization I didn't want to know, and I wouldn't share it here anyway. But the point is that if we're not having these conversations in public about what people are experiencing, then I don't think we're going to be able to address some of the some of these issues. Now that might be just what you might describe as a one-off. I'm so I'm so far removed from this stuff. Now I I in fact I was contacted by a prison recently that asked me if I could do some work and how much I'd charge. I said, I'll come in and do it for free. Right. The reason for that is uh it's I miss it, right? So I'm in the university and that's fine, it's a great space. And some of the students actually at my university, but certainly not what you would define as um as uh affluent or or middle class, so to speak. So so it's not an issue in that sense, but I do miss the hustle and bustle of working with people that are actually on the on the edges of society, prison, addiction, homelessness, this kind of stuff. So even thinking about us, I think working alongside those people for me keeps me grounded because you know I'm doing a PhD, I'm looking at legitimacy, Pierre Baudieu's ideas, Foucault's ideas, and and I believe people might disagree with this in my field, but I believe some sometimes education can be like finance, right? So what I mean by that is you can get you can get a lot of education and you can stop being on the ground because you you've you've learned all these fancy words, and Bourdieu would say that these things give you a distinct taste and value and all this kind of stuff, and so you can think you're grounded, but then not be grounded. And I think the best way to stay grounded in my experience is to stay close to the people that are operating on the margins of society, and so that's gonna I think that's gonna help me. I'm not saying that that means that I then stigmatise other people or middle class people stigmatised per se. What I am saying is that actually not being on the front line sometimes and recognising how privileged we are in and of itself can mean that we become disconnected from the Realities of some people.
SPEAKER_01So thinking about the public and what we've already talked, touched upon the needs of the public politically, for me, I think one of the things that the public don't understand, I say the public, is that we're all capable of doing really bad things. I did a little post a few days ago that just saying that really, because the othering that you've already mentioned, I think, and the stigmatizing of people in criminal justice supports the view that somehow there is something different between us. But in the right circumstances, I am equally capable of doing something terrible. I'm I mean, I hope I never find out, but I'm certain that I have that capability. Do you think that's one of the things that people avoid reflecting upon for themselves? Or what do you think about that?
SPEAKER_02When you break it down on an individual level, people are probably more accepting of some crimes than others. And so they they might thinking about criminology of the self and criminology of the other, it probably that might change dependent on crime, right? So we know through data that you're more likely to be employed post-prison
Lived Experience Hiring And Hidden Stigma
SPEAKER_02if you don't have sexual offences or murder. Yeah, they're the two kinds of crimes that tend to uh employers towards caution. I would say my own, although I went to prison four different times, I was quite dysfunctional and committed what I would describe as low-level crimes. It doesn't mean there's not a victim, right? So do the public understand that? I think once you've gone through the criminal, most people have done things that that would be defined as deviant, as you're saying anyway. I think most people wouldn't think that they're capable of committing a a heinous crime like murder or rape. So I think I suppose my answer isn't straightforward. I think it depends, and I know it depends, because even in prison, if you're in prison for rape, then you're not even acting, then you're othered by the general population in prison. If you have you know abused children, then you are othered by even the prison population. So yeah, I don't know, it's it's a c it's a complex answer. I think it probably differs. I think I get away with it because I can say, oh, well, you know, I was in and out of prison, dysfunctional kid, went into care, grew up like most people do. The data shows that most people grow out of crime. I think that's what we should, as a public, as the this as the discourse unfolds with the populace, if that's the way we want to frame it, or in the news, we should really be saying most people grow out of crime. That's what the data shows. If not everybody grows out of crime, it's quite a young adolescent thing to do because they take risks and all that kind of stuff. The other bit, I suppose, just to add, I suppose what we're talking about policy is that if we take this, this is my interpretation, anyway, and I suppose I've been around a little bit, so I've got some authority to speak to the to the subject matter. But when we're talking about the early release of these prisoners, prisoners now, even that I suppose is a stigmatizing discourse, right? Because we found ourselves, as David Garland would talk about, it being more punitive over the last for certainly four decades, right? Because of policy and discourse. But then people look at it and say, well, they're gonna do 40% of the sentence as opposed to 50% of the sentence, and actually we want them to do 50%. But those people are not really thinking that if we were 40 years ago, right, those sentences would have been a hell of a lot shorter. So the idea that if they get out two months, three months, or even 12 months earlier, that they're gonna be dangerous and they're gonna harm us. Again, I'm not undermining the fear that people feel, but they're just not based on any evidence. People are not gonna re-offend because they get out two months or three months or even 12 months earlier. You can have a punitive conversation and say they should do their sentence because I think they should serve their time. That's a different conversation. But the idea that they're gonna come out and be more dangerous to the in through a public protection lens because to do a sort of sentence, I just don't really see that unless you really buy into the fact that these interventions in prison really change people. Most of us that have been through prison don't really believe that. It's it's a social process, it's about relationships, it's about housing, it's about education, it's about multiple things coming together that mean that you've
Early Release, Fear, And Rehabilitation
SPEAKER_02got an identity that you are less likely to offend. That's why stigma becomes really important in the process. Because if you feel stigmatized and less able to get all the things we know help people desist from offending, then actually we as a society make them more likely to offend as opposed to the prison system itself. So those are things that we need to be talking about, but will they get headlines? Probably not.
SPEAKER_01No, uh honestly, there's so much there, and it's particularly poignant because of what's been occurring around the dialogue to do with early release, which looks to me like an absolute nightmare of exploration because every which way you turn, there are unintended consequences that are distressing to somebody. Um, I mean, one solution that I think has to be looked at would be around. I mean, there's only three and a half thousand women, um, most of which are not in for violent crime. Some are, but most of them aren't. Whereas for most men, the statistics show that most of them are in for violent crime. So that is quite different. But I mean, I would have a lot of women released with a lot of support, and that would free up spaces. But then, of course, that means that women will be, as was pointed out to me on um in a conversation on Twitter, uh, which will never be X to me, um, that that would mean that lots of women were then removed from their relationships and removed from their connections because they'd be placed further away from home. And you know, every every time they offer a solution to look at that, there is an unintended consequence that that someone else has to point out is an issue. And I think so much of this discussion is driven by stigma. But I do think there is huge validity. I mean, some of the stories that people are sharing, horrific, traumatizing experiences that they had at the hands of a predator or a paedophile, and to have them not serve their sentence strikes me as more important to those people from what I've heard than whether they have been rehabilitated. Which is interesting because what I want is for people to be rehabilitated and to go into prison for things to then improve and be better, and for it to be treated as the public health concern that it is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, again, going back to David Garland, he would say that that the the victims getting as much, and when we say victims, we're talking about the victims of the offences, right? Because people that go to prison can often be victims of social circumstances. But but I I take your point. What David Garland would say that that's a recent phenomenon. So victims being central to policy and being brought up with, I don't know, Donald Trump or or even the you know a Labour politician and being brought up and saying, you know, this is somebody whose voice we need to centre. David Garland isn't saying for one minute that we shouldn't censor, he's saying that it's a recent phenomenon, it's become part of the political discourse, right? And it leads into more punitive policies. Uh so I I agree with you, and that's why the conversation is so complicated. Look, if the the PhD for me has done anything, it's made me realise how little I actually know, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, what is that great about a PhD? Is it just literally puts you straight back in your place? 30 odd years I've been in my space and doing my PhD did exactly the same thing, Andy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. So but a lot of people say the same, so I suppose when when you get to that point, it's PhD's been affected, right? But the the the question goes down to what do you think prison is for? And if you go to the general public, and I I I say populist, but I don't really like that term, really, because really we live in a democracy. And although, like David Garland might say, you know, the populace and the politicians are having this negotiation and it's led to penal policies, and I probably agree with him. But you can't ignore the populace, can
Trade-Offs And What Prison Is For
SPEAKER_02you? You can't if you if you believe in democracy, you can't say, well, the general population shouldn't have a say. But the problem with that is I think if you asked the average Joe on the street or Joanne, you'd get different answers about what they think prison's function should be. And that's that's a problem for politicians, and I'm glad I'm not a politician, so I can sit on this podcast and have a little stab at things with you, but I'm not responsible for because I agree with you. A great scholar, American scholar called Thomas Sowell, he talks about trade-offs. Everything's got a trade-off. You've just mentioned women, it had the same thing happened with children. So we reduced the children going to cut. I when I was locked up in in 1999, there was nearly 3,000 under 18s legally defined as children in the country in custody. As we speak today, it's around about 400. That's a drop of about 85%. So everybody pats themselves on the bat that that's a really good job. But then I've worked in young offenders institutions since, and you end up with kids from London up at Whetherby Young Offenders Institution because there's no places for them. That's the trade-off. And often, like you've just described, you don't really know what the trade-offs are until you've put the policies in place and then you deal with the trade-offs after. So it's a it is a tricky one, but yes, you are right. If you ask some people, some people would say I want people to prison to be a rehabilitative experience. Others would say, I'm not really asked about whether it's rehabilitative. If people, if somebody's raped somebody, murdered somebody, burgled somebody, or stole from somebody, then they should be accountable for that crime, should go to prison, and prison should be a punishment. But that feeds back right back to the original stigma conversation, doesn't it, about how people then respond to whether somebody is rehabilitated. Because the reason why I say that, dependent on what you think people go to prison for, will depend on whether you're an employer, whether you believe in their potential to be rehabilitated and desist from crime.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
Key Reflections And Closing
SPEAKER_01Listen, Andy, it's been great talking to you. We have had a lot of technical problems to uh to to get us to this point where we could have a conversation, and um hopefully that doesn't come across too much in the um in the podcast. But I really appreciate you joining me today, and let's hope we don't leave it so long next time.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for having me, Lisa. Take care.
SPEAKER_00You've been listening to the Trauma Resonance Resilience podcast with me, your host, Lisa Cherry. Brought to you straight from the heart of the knowledge that high-quality relationships are the cornerstone of learning, healing, and growing. If you've enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing or reviewing. Until next time.