Lynn Ruane's new podcast series examines life behind prison walls
Lynn Ruane recording podcast
Throughout her career, Lynn Ruane has worked in many areas of social justice. As well as working in the community and homelessness sectors, she has worked with people with addiction to drugs and alcohol. For the last seven years, she has been a legislator and in that time has seen “how far away from the reality of people’s lives that society can get”.
“Often we wait for people like me, people who have lived with addiction, to succeed at a really high level before we listen to the realities of their life and the path they took,” says the senator. “I wondered why we wait to talk to those few that break through the system, rather than having meaningful conversations with people that are trying to navigate through it now, so that we can get an understanding of what’s involved.”
It was with this in mind that Senator Ruane came up with the idea for , a podcast series examining the life of people within the prison system.
The nine-part series works off the basis that it is often people that are closest to the problems who have ideas for their solution. Her interviews with inmates get to the heart of the person rather than focus on the crime they have committed. The tone is much like the presenter; gritty, straight-talking and positive.
“Often when we talk to people in difficulty, we only talk to them about their experiences, we never ask them about their ideas,” says Ruane. “This podcast is just normal conversations about art, life, family, addiction - whatever it is they wanted to talk about. And you meet the most extraordinary and talented people. They have ideas both for themselves and for society as a whole.”
Lynn meets talented muralists, qualified football coaches, musicians, fitness instructors, qualified psychologists, barbers and fathers; lots of fathers. She talks to them about their past and their present as well as their hopes and concerns for the future.
A big focus of the series is around the post-incarceration experience and how support for former inmates needs to be bolstered. Senator Ruane makes the point that all the self-improvement, education and training in the world won’t help anyone if opportunities are closed off out in the real world.
“If someone is completely ostracised after leaving prison, after doing loads of psychology, after getting a degree, engaging in mindfulness, alternative to violence programmes, if they’re not given support, you actually increase the chances of them returning to crime because, in many ways, at least they are accepted there.”
Senator Ruane also talks about former inmates returning to their communities with little chance of employment and gradually falling back into the same routines that led them to prison in the first place.
“I would love to see more investment in social enterprises which closely align with what the lads are doing within prison,” she says. “Lots of them come out with qualifications and we should be walking them into apprenticeships. So how can we create these social franchises for men as they leave prison so they’re not knocking on doors getting told ‘no’.”
This is something that is echoed by Edward Mullins, Governor of Mountjoy Prison.
“If we don’t look at ways of supporting people when they have completed their sentence, the cycle just continues on,” he says.
Mullins has known Senator Ruane for many years so when she approached the governor about the podcast he jumped at the opportunity.
“I’m all for raising awareness around the challenges faced by people in prison,” he says. “The reality is that recidivism is not a prison issue. It’s a community issue. When a person finishes their sentence that’s it, or that should be it. But when the circumstances back out in the community don’t support rehabilitation, people drift back into crime. It’s obviously not all the fault of society, of course, but society has a big role to play in helping those who want to be helped.”
While Mullins says he is no way “idealistic” he does believe that when you “strip down some of the reasons for people being in crime and deal with some of the systemic issues, we will certainly reduce recidivism rates”.
Caron McCaffrey, Director General of the Irish Prison Service, has been working with the prison system for over fifteen years. In that time she has seen and overseen substantial reform and there are now many more opportunities for inmates who wish to press the restart button.
“The quality of the prison accommodation has improved dramatically,” says McCaffrey. “I mean ten years ago there were one thousand prisoners slopping out, now it’s down to thirty. That kind of thing is about creating an environment that’s conducive to working with services there to help people turn their lives around. There has been huge investment in education, work training and sentence management.”
McCaffrey says the system is still “constantly evolving” and learning from other services around Europe.
The Director General’s view of prison might not tally with everyone’s, but one of the strengths of is its ability to encourage the listener to think differently.
“The sentence that is handed down is the punishment,” says McCaffrey. “Prisons themselves are not places of punishment. If we simply took people who committed an offence and decided that they were bad people, then we wouldn’t be able to reduce the risk of them creating more victims of crime when they’re released. I see our prisons as places of hope and opportunity.”
One inmate who has taken full advantage of that opportunity is Aaron (not his real name). Now an inmate at an open prison, Aaron has been in the system since his early twenties. During, what he calls, his “long while” in there, he's studied yoga, learnt the guitar and successfully completed a Degree in Sociology & Criminology.
“You mature while you’re here,” he says. “And that plays a role. There are more opportunities here and the longer you’re here the more likely you are to engage and therefore transform.”
“That transformation has been easy and it was enabled in prison,” he continues. “It’s been encouraged here. I'm hoping that society will accept me and that the opportunities to evolve and grow will still be available. I can’t say that they’re not but there are no guarantees either so those concerns would be at the forefront of my mind.”
When Aaron leaves prison he will be walking into a job. He hopes to use his qualifications to help others reform or, better still, avoid the necessity to do so.
While success stories along the lines of Aaron’s should be celebrated, the problem of recidivism is still a major one. For Lynn Ruane, it’s a question of using prison as a place to reform and not as a place to keep people off the streets and out of the way.
“Short prison sentences are pointless,” says Senator Ruane. “A six-month sentence doesn’t give people time to work on psychology, addiction or education. Prison works best for prisoners that are in longer, ten or more years. So we need to think about how we can deal with short term offenders in a different way, within the community, and keep them out of prison.”
Reforming the prison system might take some time but with Senator Ruane and a podcast like , we at least get a better understanding of where we might begin.
- Conversations on the Margins is a GoLoud original podcast
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