Justice Focus

Khatuna Tsintsadze is the Co-director of The Zahid Mubarek Trust (ZMT), an independent national charity founded in 2009 by the family of 19-year-old Zahid Mubarek who was murdered by his racist cellmate on the morning scheduled for his release from Feltham Young Offender Institution, London, UK.

Khatuna chats to Omar about Zahid's legacy, her aspirations for the Trust and her personal approach to the heavy topics inherent in human rights work.

Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Institute of Criminology’s Prisons Research Centre. Alison has recently been awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to embark on significant further research and took a moment to reflect on her career-to-date with Omar. 

Alison's work includes a series of successful books and publications on several topics including suicides and suicide attempts among adult prisoners, public-private sector comparisons, the work and role of prison officers, and the nature and quality of staff-prisoner relationships.

As well as reflecting on her inspirations and how she came to 'appreciative inquiry' as a research method, Alison discusses three of her papers, including some past and some present work:

Paper 1: Women in our own Right or ‘Honorary Men’? Reflections on a Professional Life in Prisons Research

Paper 2: Finding George Eliot In Prison: Reflections On Its Moral Life

Kerry Carrington is a Professor at the School of Justice in the Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

In this episode, Kerry chats to Omar about the paradigm shift that is ‘Southern Criminology’, which exposes dominant forms of knowledge production as distinctly Northern/Western and challenges their claims of universality.

Kerry also discusses her preference for co-authoring, the numerous David & Goliath battles that she has taken on, and her passion for open access – ending with a call to action to aid the democratisation of knowledge.

Kanika Samuels-Wortley is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Carleton University in Canada.

Kanika specialises in race and racism, youth delinquency, policing, corrections, and critical race theory. Her current research explores how perceptions and experiences with racial discrimination by law enforcement officials may contribute to victimization and offending among Black and Indigenous youth, thus maintaining their oppression and marginalization in Canadian society. She chats to Omar about her recent paper:

Dr Jamie Bennett has a huge wealth of experience in senior management positions across a range of specialised prison settings. These include as Governor of high-security prison HMP Long Lartin,  and as Governor of HMP Grendon, the only prison across England and Wales to operate entirely as a series of therapeutic communities, among many others. 

Today Jamie is the Deputy Director of the Operational Security Group for Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, AND also a research associate at Oxford University’s Centre for Criminology AND editor of the Prison Service Journal. He has published over 100 articles and in this episode he talks with Omar about his journey through prison management and how he has come to question managerialism in prison. He also talks about prisons in the media, his role in Gold Command response to COVID-19 and getting his hands dirty in search of real-world impact.

Dr Martin Glynn is a Critical Race Criminologist at Birmingham City University – but that does not come close to telling the full story. Martin is a writer, a dramatist, a data storyteller, the Writer in Residence at the National Justice Museum, and much more besides.

In this episode he speaks to Omar about his alternative outlook to working within Criminal Justice, how he is able to produce so much work – academically and creatively – all without compromising on his goals. He also discusses the 'BME attainment gap' at universities and navigating white space.

Nina Champion is Director of the Criminal Justice Alliance (CJA), a coalition of over 160 member organisations working towards a fairer and more effective criminal justice system. In this episode, Nina talks with Omar about her vision for the CJA and about steps towards reform – especially in the areas of systemic racism in policing and the valuing the contribution of those with lived experience.

Dr Hannah Graham is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Stirling.

She talks with Omar about 'pracademia' and being close to both the practitioner and academic worlds.  Hannah talks about her book:

Andrew M. Jefferson is a senior researcher at DIGNITY the Danish Institute Against Torture. For the past two decades, he has been studying and writing about prisons and prison reform processes in the global South with a focus on countries undergoing transition. He aims to contribute to social scientific understandings of the conditions under which torture and inhumane treatment thrive with a view in the end to transforming such conditions and making the world a safer place for all. In this episode, he discusses two upcoming papers:

1) Prison Reform and Torture Prevention under Compromised Circumstances.

2) Prison Ethnography in the pursuit of imponderable knowledge

Dr David Rodríguez Goyes, a Colombian lawyer by training is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oslo, where he gained his PhD in Criminology. His main field of research is green criminology, with a focus on bio-piracy.

Men’s prisons – one of the places most associated with a macho identity. In Part 1 of this 2 Part Episode, Omar is joined by Dr David Maguire, an expert in prisoner masculinities, especially the adaptations of those lower in the prison hierarchy.

In this Part 1, we’ll be concentrating on Dave’s personal journey and how an inspirational moment with a committed volunteer sparked a journey in education that would take him from council estate to prison & then to a PhD at Oxford University.

Omar is joined by Dr. Baz Dreisinger, founder of groundbreaking Prison-to-College Pipeline program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and author of the critically acclaimed book ‘Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World’.

The chat includes discussion of the issues with thinking about rehabilitation and the importance of restorative justice, reversing the school to prison pipeline and how the projects have been impacted by COVID-19, as well as how to balance activist work with academic demands.

Omar is joined by Bella Sankey, Director of Justice & Human Rights based NGO Detention Action. They discuss how the UK is a complete outlier for immigration detention, the realities of detention during the pandemic & the long term effects of the demonisation and criminalisation of immigration specific to the UK.

Omar is joined by Madhurima Dhanuka, Programme Head of the Prison Reforms Programme for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) to discuss the realities prisons in India and how the criminal justice system is responding to the pressures of the pandemic.

Omar is joined by Dr Adriana Cruz, a federal judge in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to discuss the realities of working from home as a judge during the COVID-19 quarantine. Dr Adriana also talks about combining her work as a judge with her role as a university lecturer and its benefits for students, as well as her specialism on confronting racism and patriarchy in Brazil's judiciary.

Omar is joined by Jago Russell, Chief Executive of Fair Trials International to discuss how to ensure fair trials during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Omar is joined by Olivia Rope, the Director of Policy and International Advocacy at Penal Reform International to discuss how criminal justice systems across the world have responded to the  COVID-19 pandemic. 

See PRI's briefing note on prevention measures in prisons and wider impacts of responses to governments on people in criminal justice systems:

Omar is joined by Andrew Neilson, the Director of Campaigns at The Howard League for Penal Reform to discuss recommendations for the UK government during the COVID-19 pandemic.