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The Birmingham Literature Festival Podcast - Welcome to the very first Birmingham Literature Festival podcast, bringing writers and readers together to discuss some of 2020’s best books. Each Thursday we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. Join us each week for exciting and inspiring conversations with new, and familiar, writers from the Midlands and beyond.
Casey Bailey 0:07
Hello wonderful people. Welcome to the Birmingham Literature Festival presents podcast. I am Casey Bailey, former Birmingham poet laureate, and I was delighted to be one of the guest curator for the 2022 Birmingham Literature Festival. For the next few weeks, we're going to bring you some highlights from last year's festival for you to enjoy whenever you'd like. You can subscribe to this podcast feed and get the new episodes as soon as they're available. This week's episode features two people with unique insights into the UK justice system. Wendy Joseph KC sat on cases in the Old Bailey for decades. In that time, she also mentored young people and tried to demystify the way justice is served in this country. Dr. Shahed Yousaf is a prison doctor who has worked for most of his career in Birmingham prisons with the most violent inmates. They were joined on stage by Owen Brown.
Jonathan Davidson 1:15
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Birmingham Literature Festival on our first event of our Sunday. Love to see some of you here, it's a great tribute to our panelists that so many people have gathered at this point in the day. My name is Jonathan Davidson and I work for Writing Werst Midlands, which is the organization that runs the Birmingham Literature Festival. You may also be interested in knowing that as well as running the literature festival each year, we do a lot of work with emerging writers and established writers, including for children and young people. So we run about 160 workshops a year for children from the age of eight upwards. And we run a program for emerging and established creative writers and various other things. So if you are interested, not only in hearing our guest speakers, but in your own writing, then please have a look at our website. And hopefully you'll find something of interest. So my job is very simple this morning, this afternoon, we should say is to welcome you to thank Arts Council England for their continued support of Writing West Midlands and Birmingham Literature Festival and to thank the rep for making it possible to use these lovely venues. I will be saying a few words at the very end to direct you to the book signing table and so on. But before we do that, we're going to have a wonderful conversation. So I'd ask you to welcome please, Olwen Brown, who is going to be chairing the event with Wendy Joseph KC, and Dr. Shahed Yousef. Thank you.
Olwen Brown 2:32
Thank you, Jonathan. And, and, you know, I'll repeat Jonathan's thanks to so many of you for coming along this morning or afternoon, but whatever it is, anyway. So thank you so much for coming along. And I am absolutely thrilled to be presenting this event, chairing this event with with Wendy Joseph KC, as it is now and Shahed, who have both written I think some of the most interesting, empathetic human books that I've read for a long time. I have to say that they have been stolen by my children many times because they've wanted to read them as well, which is a good sign. My daughter Isabella is in the audience and is no doubt sort of blushing at the moment. But there we go she's so wandered off. So I'm going to start off because I want this to be a real discussion about some of the issues. Sorry that's my Apple watch, I'm sorry, I do apologise. I'm going to start off by asking I think both Wendy and Shahed about, you know, you're here now as authors. But obviously you, though, you know you have come to that from a career in both in your terms in health, and then on his terms in the law. Did you think that you would be here? What led you to be here, writing those books about your experiences in life? Wendy we'll start with you.
Wendy Joseph KC 3:56
Well, curiously, I wanted to be a writer. When I was seven, I made the decision then. And then I lost sight of it completely. When I was seven I was ill, my dad was reading to me from a book called 'Justice Stories' one night. And in the Justice Stories, there's a story about how the alphabet was made, how you can make shapes into sounds, sounds into letters, letters into words, words into stories, and stories into people's heads, even if they're miles away. And I thought that was so magical when I was seven. I thought I would do it. And then of course, you grow up, and you suddenly realize you can't make a living doing that or not very easily. And so when my mum said, well how do you think you are going to pay the rent? I changed from reading English at university to reading law, and that's how I got into the law. So it's an extraordinary thing. But at the age of 70, when I retired, I've sort of come full circle and come right back to being a writer. So to answer your question, Olwen, if you'd asked me when I was seven, I'd have said yep, this is exactly where I expect to end up. But if you'd asked me at any time between seven and 70 I'd have said no.
Olwen Brown 5:23
And and when you, that's really that's really interesting, Wendy. And when you were writing your, your, when you think you've been a writer, did you think that you're going to be writing about the experiences that you have had in your in your role as a judge?
Wendy Joseph KC 5:39
No, that came about completely, by coincidence, because of lockdown. As well as being an ordinary judge doing the day job, I was also what was called a Diversity and Community Relations judge, which meant I spent a lot of time with people who didn't understand the system and wanted to. School children, lots of work with those who are mentally unwell, lots of people who came from diverse backgrounds, where they felt excluded by the system. When locked down came, I couldn't do any of that. I couldn't have children in, I was out of London, I have the door locked. And I thought, you know what, I'll write about it instead. And so I began to write the stories about what happens in a courtroom in the way I would have explained it to the children and to others, if they've been there.
Olwen Brown 6:37
And of course, all stories are about people. You know, whatever you write, whether it's fiction, or fact, or whatever. They're all about people. They're all stories are about people, those common threads that are within us, always, I think. And Shahed, how about you? Did you think that you were going to be an author, when you set out? What brought you to write your book?
Dr Shahed Yousaf 7:02
So if you'd asked me when I was seven, I would have said, I, I would like to be a writer, artist, doctor. In that order, yeah. And so even before studying medicine, I was writing, so I write short stories, flash fiction, novels, and I've been painting as well. And then obviously, medicine took over, but I always had the interest in writing. And I never thought I was going to write, I didn't think the two worlds were going to come together. Because my writing is very different from what you know, I've written here and stitched up. So and that happened by chance as well, actually. So I tell the story in the book, it's in the epilogue, I went to I love coming to literature festivals. So even it's it's an honor to be on the stage, because this is one of the festivals I come to every year. And I look into masterclasses and writing courses, and I happen to meet someone you may have heard of a ma'am called, Kit De Waal. So I met her in London, and her train got canceled, and she needed a way to get back to Birmingham, and I offered to drive her. And then when when I was sort of driving her back, she asked me about my writing endeavors and was clearly unimpressed. Probably correctly. And then she asked me what I did. I said, I'm a doctor. And she said, Oh, that's interesting, which I don't often get. And then she said, Oh, do you know any prison doctors? Which was really extraordinary because you know, we are a rarity, even amongst GP. So I'm a general practitioner. You don't often meet a prisoner GP, and then I said, yes, I am. And then I told him my story, which is the book.
Olwen Brown 9:00
Okay, so that's how you, that's how you started off. And I think one of the things that and I do urge any of you who haven't read these books to buy and read and read these books, because they are extraordinary. I think the one of the things that comes out of both of both, both of your books in different ways, because obviously the you know, you're coming from two perspectives, is the issue about how do people get to where they are? How do people get to be in front of you, when do when you were, you know, when you were a judge? And how do people then get to where they get to where they are in prison, and they're facing all of those, all of those issues? And I just suppose, I suppose it will be interesting to explore that a little bit and what your thoughts are about so. So Wendy what do you think about, about the consequences that get people to be up in front of you faced with a murder charge or manslaughter or infanticide?
Wendy Joseph KC 9:57
It's easier to answer it from Shahed's point of view because I know how people get kept to where he was. It's because they've been infected me and I felt intrest
Olwen Brown 10:05
Yes.It does follow on
Dr Shahed Yousaf 10:08
There is some crossover in our work
Olwen Brown 10:12
But the same principles are there.
Wendy Joseph KC 10:14
Yeah, it's, I think the first thing to say is you look at people in the dock. And it is true that occasionally you see someone who is just bad. And you just know this is a dangerous person. And whatever you do with them, they are always going to be dangerous. That, you know, there are so few of them, really, of all the 1000s of people I've seen in the nearly half a century, as I've been both barrister and judge, I could count on the fingers of one hand that people I thought really had the seeds of badness in them. Most people get into a dock because they get into a way of thinking that sort of amuse them to doing wrong, they come to think of doing wrong as fine as being okay. And once you're into it, it just gets worse and worse. So one of the major problems at my court, the Old Bailey, which is where I sat for the last 10 years, one of the major problems is knife crime amongst children. And when I say children, I mean children, we sometimes say young people. The number of 16 and 17 year olds, I've sent to prison for life, following convictions for murder, and they are young people, you know, if they were yours, or mine, we'd say these are children. And they are without the maturity to think through what they're doing. Now, of course, a child stabs another child for the very simple and obvious reason he's got a knife in his paw-
Olwen Brown 12:04
There was a colorful conguration was it though, where is it in, in Lincolnshire where, you know, 15 year old struck outside.
Wendy Joseph KC 12:11
And I thought all the time. If you're not carrying a knife, you can't do it. However angry you get however much you lose yourself control. You haven't got a knife on you, you're not going to stab someone. And the question of why kids carry knives. It's something people say to me all the time. And I usually give this answer. If there was one simple answer, you wouldn't be asking me the question. We would have sorted it out a long time ago. There isn't a simple answer. There's many, many complex reasons why different kids end up carrying knives for bravado, because they want to commit crimes, because they're frightened of other people who are carrying knives, because they want to show off, you know, the knives they can buy on the internet these days. And not they're not kitchen knives. They're carrying knives that are designed to kill. They're designed to kill animals with all the etchings and carvings and, and the metal punched out of them. So that when they are put into a body, they come out more easily. You know, these are knives which are designed to kill, but they are status symbols amongst the children. And they're so easy for them to get these days. So for any problem, like the carrying of knives, there's a multiplicity of reasons why kids or older people get into doing it. And, you know, we'd all like to think it isn't our children who do that. But I always think it could be anyone's kid who did that. And it could be anyone's kid who was on the receiving end of that knife. So it's a problem. It's a problem, first of all, and I've seen too before when really, it's not much good looking at the courts to sort it out. Because by the time it comes to court, it's too late. By the time it comes to court, there's one dead child on a mortuary slab and there's another one in the dark and there's nothing in the universe a judge can do to put that guy.
Olwen Brown 14:36
No absolutely Wendy and you know and I can recall I was saying to you know before that I don't know if any of you see the Inside Man series. Stanley Tucci, his character says we can all be murderous you just haven't met your person yet. And I think that there is something very few of us, thank God, will be murderous. But of course we don't know what could happen today or tomorrow or the next day, which would, which could move us into a situation that we didn't anticipate at all that we will be in? So Shahed I mean, of course, you're dealing with people then who have been through been through the court environment and and so what what do what do you find with your with your patients because they are your patients, aren't they whether they're prisons or not they are your patients, when they when they come to see you what sort of what sort of environment do you think that they have? And how does the environment that they've been brought up in, then take itself forward into what what you're facing when you see them as your patients in prison?
Dr Shahed Yousaf 15:41
So I echo what Wendy said about, it's not for the court to fix a broken system. And it is a broken system. So 75% of people who are in prison are there for non violent crime. So obviously Wendy work in the High Court in the Old Bailey. So those cases are few and far between the vast majority of people that we see in prisons are there for fines and drug possession and things like
Olwen Brown 16:08
And do you find you find that the prison environment encourages violence against people who are not violent before?
Dr Shahed Yousaf 16:14
So what keeps a prison safe is prison officers. When you have adequate numbers of prison officers, violence will be controlled, and that's violence from prisoner on prisoner, prisoner on staff. And when those numbers are cut, it becomes a violent and dangerous virus
Olwen Brown 16:34
And of course they have been cut a lot over the last 10 years or so.
Dr Shahed Yousaf 16:37
Absolutely. So I've been working in prisons for 10 years. And the book covers my first year of working in prisons, which was when we had so in 2010, we had the first set of cuts that came in, and that's through the coalition government, and then it was carried on so we cut the prison budget by about a third. And it was prison officers and staffing that formed the majority of the budget. And then we saw violence. So over the past 10 years, I can only speak to my what I've witnessed, the violence went through the roof. And that's because prison officers, the numbers, what was that prisoner on prison violence or prisoner prisoner prisoner on staff. And so it became a dangerous environment, because we didn't have the officers. And in this book, I hope I celebrate the role of healthcare staff and prison officers who are often forgotten. Yes. And the work that they put in to keeping us all safe, and protecting us, sometimes from the worst of the worst, they put their lives on the line, sometimes they put their bodies, you know, in danger to protect us. And I think, you know, sometimes they see themselves as the fourth emergency service or the Forgotten emergency service. And I think we do need to celebrate them as frontline workers and what they do to keep us all safe. But if we don't have adequate numbers we'll be in chaos, which is what's happening, unfortunately, and to talk about what sort of people I see in prisons, it is societal. So we do see a higher proportion of people who've had a background in care homes. We do see, I think approximately 70% of people report having mental health issues. And if they didn't have mental health issues coming to prison, they're probably going to develop them. It's a brutalistic situation. It's a it's a brutalizing experience. So even if you went in with a mild or moderate mental health issue, it's going to be impacted and worsened. Is there a treatment there for mental health issues? Yeah, so I was very ignorant before I went into working in prisons, and I kind of fell into it. I was always wanting to be a homeless GP and work with the homeless community. And so I found that with the homeless community, they would commit petty crimes in winter so that they could be in prison where it be warm and then have food. And that's I followed my homeless patients into prison and it was a new world. I wasn't aware there are paramedics there are mental health teams, forensic psychiatrist, dental technicians, dental therapists, dentists, chiropodist, podiatrists, GPs, nurses, healthcare workers, There's this entire infrastructure looking after the 88,000 men, women and children we have currently in custody. I wasn't aware of that. But a lot of the people that we see who have got mental health issues are going to be sectioned, have been sectioned, or in the process of being sectioned and need to be in a mental health unit, which we don't have because we've lost 70% of the mental health units. The community beds aren't there. So we do see people in prison who should not be in prison unfortunately.
Olwen Brown 19:54
And the issues about you know one of the things I do as a, I'm a charity volunteer and I talked to prisoners quite regularly as a result of that, but one of the issues is about, and I suppose it's a question for both of you, about the literacy levels, the education levels, you know, which, which obviously come through, Wendy you will see it as you're talking about children before, in terms of in terms of that, and obviously, that goes all the way through into adulthood. Do you see that as a common thread?
Wendy Joseph KC 20:25
I do. I don't know whether you know, but something like a figure in excess of 50% of those in prison, are functionally illiterate. Now, that's not a coincidence. If you can't read and write, it makes life outside so difficult. It's not just you can't read nice books. It's that you can't fill in forms, you can't apply for jobs, you sometimes miss out on the right benefits that you're entitled to. You get a letter and you don't know that it's telling you your electricity is about to be cut off. It makes life really difficult. And it just puts you in a place that separates you from everywhere else. When Chris Grayling said, We shouldn't be giving prisoners books. But you know, if you or I, or any of you, I guess were unlucky enough to be locked up in a cell. Almost the first thing we want to do is getting a good supply of books so that we could mentally be somewhere else. People who can't read just can't do that, they are they're just shut off from it. And you know, I don't know what you think Shahed but I feel that an awful lot of crime happens because defendants have people who don't empathize with how other people react or feel to what they're doing. They commit a crime of violence, because they don't stop and think what it feels like to be the victim. And you ask ourselves how we learn to emphasize quite a lot of it is when we are little kids. And we read, you learn what's going on other people's minds by reading what they're thinking in books, because I can't look at Shahed and read his mind. But if I read his book, I know what he was thinking. And I think that people who have cut off from reading are4 real risk of not developing that talent, that ability in the way that society really needs them to.
Dr Shahed Yousaf 22:37
Yeah, I agree. And so it's exactly as you say, and it's a staggering statistic, that approximately 50% of the people in prison have a reading age of less than an 11 year old. And we have excellent charities like the Shannon Trust Literacy agency, which goes in and teaches people to read. And I think one of my proudest moments is because I believe in the power of literature as medicine, I believe in therapeutic literature, I believe exactly as you say that if you teach people to read, they can increase their empathy and their sympathy and widen your experience as a human being as a sentient being. And then you'll see someone who is functionally illiterate, learn to read and then if you encourage them and say, Okay, well, you know, if you want to bring me a poem, I'd like to. And that's one of the main features of this book is I follow a guy called Jamie Lavelle, who is illiterate, and really violent, then over the course of 12 months, learns to read and writes poetry and is less violence. And that is something that we see that teachers see. It's the power of literacy. And it's the power of literature. And that's been my proudest moment to be involved in things like that, where you encourage someone to read, and then you see the change in their behavior. We don't want this revolving door of seeing the same faces. And it's, they're in the same position, you do everything you can for them, they're on drugs, you detox them, you give them mental health issue, mental health issue support, then they're out and then they come back in and they're back on drugs, and they've still got the mental health issues, and they've committed another violent crime. We need to break the cycle of crime. And one of the ways we can do that is through literature.
Olwen Brown 24:21
Because prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation, isn't it? As well as as well as punishment.
Dr Shahed Yousaf 24:25
But who does the rehabilitation? Prison officers and if we haven't got the prison officers, we have very little rehabilitation, if you've got if you have got so few officers that you can't even unlock the prisoners because it's not safe on your wing, and they're going to have to spend their entire day locked behind that door. What rehabilitation is that?
Wendy Joseph KC 24:45
Of course, it's a major problem. Not so much at the end of the scale, where people are going to prison for 12 months because frankly, the amount of rehab you can do in 12 months is pretty limited but where people are being sent to prison for years and years and years. So like most of the cases I was doing in the Old Bailey were homicide cases. And most of the murders were they were convictions, the sentence inevitably was life in prison with a minimum of, big gasp, but this is where the law is 18, 25, 30 years before they can apply for parole. But if they can't do the courses, they're never gonna get out. Of course there's actually an argument that says, well, the person they killed is never going to get out, either. They're never going to get out of the coffin. So there's arguments always round, but we send people to prison for these massively long sentences. And then what? The day comes when eventually they get released. So I send a 16 year old prison and choose the sentences, I find them according to the rules that I have to apply. If he's killed someone with a knife, and it's been a brutal attack, and it's got aggravating features, he goes to prison for 17 years today, before he can apply for parole. He comes out in his mid 30s, he may have had a limited amount of work done, he will have been in an environment through his formative years now, which is completely abnormal, completely unnatural, it'll be almost male dominated. Almost all men older than he was at the very beginning, he would have been forced into whatever the regime was in the place where he was staying. He'll have no normal relationships. Because how do you do that in a prison? What do we think is going to happen? Do we think he's going to walk out and seamlessly slip back into society? Because if we do, we're kidding ourselves.
Olwen Brown 27:10
On the amount of health care? I mean, this is about a sort of all encompassing care, isn't it? Where health care is, is a part a very important part of that, but just a part of that.
Dr Shahed Yousaf 27:21
Yeah so I think we need to look at who we're sentencing and what it actually achieves. So I completely agree with what Wendy is saying about the fact that most the vast, vast majority of people will be released, they will be your neighbors, they will be part of society. And we need to make sure that when these people are released, they are better people than they were when they went into prison. And if we can't confidently say that that's what's happening, then it's not working, and prisons aren't working. But then I think also we have a situation. So you know, a hypothetical situation where you've got someone who's 80 years old, they're bed bound, they're in a nursing home. They're, they're completely immobile. They, they require a full care, which means someone's helped them eat and wash, and they are convicted of doing something historical crime, and then they're sentenced to prison. We don't have the hoists. We can't look after them, but they have been sent to prison. So that's a really difficult situation where you think is a custodial sentence necessarily always the best thing to do in every situation? Or could we consider non custodial sentences or other ways of managing it? Because we are not a hospital, we don't have hospitals and prisons, that there isn't 24 hour care, we don't have hospital beds, they are cells, which are locked up at night and then unlocked in the morning, unless there's an emergency. So it's not like hospital, we don't have you know, we can't give drips, for instance, we don't always have access to all the
Olwen Brown 28:56
I remember in your book, you know, you have some of your medical equipment taken away from you. Because because they the prison officers felt it was it was dangerous. So no watches is that?
Dr Shahed Yousaf 29:06
Yes so no watches, nothing that's got any smart technology. So, you know, none of your apple. Yeah, nothing like that. Nothing with batteries. And then obviously, we do have some equipment like ECG machines and things that have been vetted. But it's not a fully equipped hospital. It's like a GP practice in the sense we have low level type things, but it's not like you know, we have the full needs to look after someone who is as vulnerable as the example I've given.
Wendy Joseph KC 29:35
But that shouldn't happen, Shahed. It obviously does, because you are dealing with it. But it shouldn't because if someone is in a state where there's questions as to whether you can cope with them, I should have been getting a report saying he is or isn't fit to be detained because sometimes people just aren't. People are going to be wondering how it can be that someone who is bed-bound and in the state you're describing can be committing a crime of a nature so bad that they're being sent to prison. The classic way in which it happens is historic sex cases. So sexual offences are committed when a man is in his 20s 30s 40s and years and years later the complaint comes forward, there is a trial he's convicted in his 80s that that's how that situation. Hopefully, it doesn't happen that often. But it is a problem.
Dr Shahed Yousaf 30:35
And then we as prison GPS were like, What are we going to do? It's really difficult. It's really tricky. And then we also have people who, again, often it's historical sex crimes, but you know, they've got diagnosis, a palliative diagnosis, and we know that they're about to die. And then transferring them to a hospice can be really challenging, or allowing someone to doubt with dignity in a prison can be really difficult, because at the end of the day, it's not a ward with beds, they ourselves that we lock up at night. So these are the challenges that I think I as a GP didn't understand before I became a prison GP. And if we raise awareness, it's really low down on the political agenda. I think that's something that we all recognize if we talk about the NHS, you know, people say, Oh, yes, the NHS, but if you talk about these sorts of environment, so if you talk about prisoners, Penal Reform, prison reform, it's pretty I can't think of anything that will be lower on the political agenda. And what we need to do to counteract this and to affect change is what we're doing here, which is you guys have turned up here. You're, you know, you're talking to us about our experiences, and then we raise awareness. And we don't have to have all of the answers but we start a conversation.
Olwen Brown 31:56
And no, I absolutely agree. And I think it's very important that we do have these conversations, which is, you know, one reason why I'm so delighted that we're having this event today. But how much effect do you think, and it's a question for both of you, about about family support, and how much family support can assist, or the lack of family support can detract from somebody's, I suppose both their offense but also their recovery? I mean, when did you see that? And did you see that when you were a judge?
Wendy Joseph KC 32:31
I would see people in the dark and their families in the public gallery. And clearly, they would be utterly bemused as the evidence was coming out as to what their family members, their loved one had done. But you know, Olwen, we've spoken a lot about the defendants, and that's where you are, where I was sitting on the bench, as well as looking at the defendants and their family in the public gallery, I would be looking at the victims. I be looking into the eyes of the bereaved parents, or where someone had not died and was giving evidence as to what had happened to them the absolute trauma of going through again, what has happened to them. Whilst we are saying, and we know this is right, that it's the circumstances that breed crime. Not all people who live in bad circumstances end up committing crimes. If someone goes out and robs someone at knifepoint, they've chosen to do that. There may be all sorts of pressures that have led them to do it. And it may explain why they've done it. But it doesn't excuse the motive.
Olwen Brown 33:51
They've still chosen to cross that line, haven't they?
Wendy Joseph KC 33:54
And so to come back, they have. I mean, what I tried to say in the book, and this is all sounding so heavy, neither of our books are actually heavy to read. I've actually just written some stories about how it actually pans out in a court. But it's very difficult to see how you can just ignore the fact that someone has chosen to do that. Even if you can understand why they've done it. And their parents may be heartbroken. It's usually the mum and the grandma. Maybe heartbroken that that child has behaved in that way. But somehow it has happened and they haven't found a way of dealing with it. Now, maybe they couldn't and they couldn't access the help that they needed. But very often you get parents of young defendants who just won't accept what their child's done just won't accept it.
Olwen Brown 34:59
Do they accept the child or do they just not accept the behavior?
Wendy Joseph KC 35:02
They accept their child, they don't accept their child did, the thing that they have been convicted of. I, one of the last cases I did was young man who deliberately drove at another person. Using your cars a weapon had become rather flavor of the month at one time. And he knocked down this other young man, and trapped him underneath the car, not deliberately deliberately knocked him down. But the result of being the victim became trapped under the car, this defendant drove for two miles with that young man underneath the car, by which time there wasn't a lot left of the young man. And when he was convicted, and I impose the sentence I have to impose, which was life imprisonment with a long tariff. The parents in the public gallery, were beside themselves with anger at me, the system, the jury, because they would not accept that their son had done what it was perfectly obvious to everyone else in the courtroom he had done. And if that family maintain that attitude, whilst their son was in prison, well, they weren't going to be helping him get a lot better.
Olwen Brown 36:30
No, that's that's that's very, that's very obvious, isn't it? Because people do, I think, by in large, although it's a generalization, the people that they love and respect, their opinions are so important to them. How about how about you Shahed?
Dr Shahed Yousaf 36:49
So I think one of the one of the questions I get asked a lot, and it's and it's the opening line to the book is, why would anyone want to work with thieves, murderers, and rapists. And it's a really, it's a really important question. And if I know what my patient has done, it can be really difficult to have unconditional positive regard. And to see them in the best light. So to protect myself from that, I try not to know what they've done, which is relatively easy in a prison, because we have access to the healthcare records, but all of their prison records and their crime is on a different computer system called Anonymous. But I I take your point that we are all humans, and when you hear that the person in front of you who might be really charming and pleasant and friendly, when you know what they've done, and it's something that you personally find hideous, and, you know, it makes you want to be sick, it's really difficult to be their doctor. But then if you are going to punish them, and give them substandard care, you shouldn't be there, you shouldn't be doing the job. It's not your role is that's not you're not there to I'm not there to judge, you know, and I'm there in my capacity as a doctor to provide health care. And if I can't do it to the best of my ability, that's not the right environment. That's not to say that after consultation, there aren't times you walk out and you feel very confused, ethically and morally, about being nice to someone who hasn't been nice to someone else, that that's what makes us all humans. If I was a robot doing my job, then it would be different and I wouldn't be giving off myself. But that said those cases are few and far between the vast majority of people that I deal with haven't committed things that I would find as morally repugnant. That's not to say that I like what they've done, or you know, I think, oh, yeah, I could have done that. No, you know, they have crossed the line, as we've said, they've crossed the line and it is wrong. But some of the things that you hear are really, you can't you can't forget them.
Olwen Brown 39:04
No, I understand that. And I just want to to ask one more question. And then we're going to questions from the audience. This is to give you a chance to prepare your questions audience, okay. Because it's something that you touched on, Wendy, which I think is really important, which is the victim. Because all crimes have a victim. Sometimes the victim is sadly dead. Sometimes it's a it's a it's a different sort of sort of crime, but all crimes have a victim and I suppose what I'm going to ask you is about what sort of role you feel that the victim and the effect on the victim has in terms of the role that you have Wendy, that you that you have Shahed around around dealing and you've touched on it just before really in terms of what people have done in terms of how you feel. Do you think the victim has enough voice suppose is what I'm is what I'm saying here because I know exactly what you mean about the the ashen faces of the victims family.
Wendy Joseph KC 40:04
So there are all different sorts of victims. I think what you mean by victim is someone who has been directly, yes, the person who has been hurt by the crime. So almost everything that I did at the Old Bailey had either a dead body or a nearly dead body in it. So by in large, I was looking at not the person who had been the victim, but the family. And they were undoubtedly the victims, undoubtedly the victims. But you know, also witnesses are victims, too. You're walking along, minding your own business, you happen to be passing a chicken shop. I have no idea why chicken shops feature so largely in China, but they do. And you look down an alleyway and you see something happening. You were really unlucky to see it. But you saw it, you go in help, or do you go on. And if you're brave enough to go in and help, and you then end up as a witness in a courtroom, you'd be amazed how people are affected a year later, two years later, by the experience they've had. I did a case not long before I retired, where a guy had come down from his third floor flat because he could hear someone screaming down on the pavement. And he said, I knew I knew he'd been stabbed. I can just tell when he was challenged by the defense barrister as to how he could possibly tell he said, three weeks before the same thing had happened, that sort of area in London. And he said, I said to myself, that's just a fox screening. And it wasn't and a man died. And he said, he looked at the jury, and he said, I wasn't going to make that mistake again. So he went down, and he sat with this man who was dying. And he listened to what the man said about who done it. And he remembered the details. And he was able to repeat them to police, which led to this defendant being arrested. And the defense barrister was saying he was wrong, and he made mistakes, and he was lying. And, and this man was really upset, because his neighbors had told him not to get involved. He called up and said, Bring some water, bring a blanket, and they'd all cooled down saying, Don't get involved, come back upstairs, and he haven't. He'd sat with that man, till he died. And then he comes to court. And then he'd been called a liar. And you could see he was completely bemused by this. I can't do anything about that in front of the jury. But when the jury had gone, I said to him, don't worry about what you've been called, and what you've said, the jury will sort that out. And I said to him, what you've got to remember is, every one of us wishes we have been brave enough to do what you did. And I have the power. The judges have many powers, but they give them this, to make a little award for him. He gets his name, he gets a certificate. And I gave him I think it's a 1000 pounds. But something just to say we recognizing you're a victim here too.
Olwen Brown 43:44
That's a really powerful story, Wendy. Yeah. And absolutely right, in terms of that person did what he felt was the right was the right thing to do. And Shahed do you see the impact of victims sometimes on the people that you're that you're treating?
Dr Shahed Yousaf 44:00
So no, not really not as much. Because obviously, what you're seeing is, you know, the actual crux of it, and I'm dealing with the aftermath of it. I think sometimes when you have a process where the victim can come in, and speak to people and say, This is what happened to me, and it's not necessarily to the people who have been involved in the crime that affected them, but if they give a testimonial or a witness testimonial, you do sometimes see prisoners afterwards who say that really affected me and I hadn't really thought about it. And again, that thing that we keep going back to, that empathy, which I think is really important and which is why we wrote our books. It's to show you what our worlds are like so that you don't so when we're walking through our days you walk beside us, but I think empathy is something that we really, in these difficult times, we really need to concentrate on.
Olwen Brown 44:52
Okay, right now questions. The lady there in the in the middle. Okay, thank you. Hello. Hi.
Audience member 45:00
First of all, thank you for really fascinating discussion. I just wondered, because recently, we've had quite a few books that have been very acclaimed that have focused on imprisonment, incarceration, I'm thinking, the nickel boys by Whitehead and A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. So I think I was just interested in your books. And if you were influenced by any fictional representations of imprisonment court systems? Because obviously, is something that is quite prominent at the moment. So I was just interested in that relationship between that side and the writing and your experiences in these books.
Dr Shahed Yousaf 45:38
So I think crime and crime podcasts and true crime are really having a moment. And they have been for a little while, I think, when you look at something that, to answer your question, something that I quite enjoyed was Serial, which is the podcast from America. And there's been developments with Adnan having been released as a consequence of the evidence that was brought up in Serial. So that was one that I really enjoyed. And and I've done a few podcasts myself related to crime, things like that. So yeah, it is something that I'm interested in, I think. But as I was saying, earlier, I never thought I was going to write this book, I write gothic, horror, sci fi, which could not be you know, it's diagrame diet. So I'm getting tongue tied, just thinking about how different is it's almost like a split personality. So I wasn't going to write this book. And, yeah, it's really fascinating how it's having a moment and how, hopefully, what this means is that it will go up the political agenda a little bit more when people are more people are showing an interest in crime and punishment, it could lead to positive changes, which was what we need as a society.
Wendy Joseph KC 46:50
Yeah, what I did, because it just wouldn't be right to take actual cases and tell tell people's names, that would be a cruelty that I couldn't justify. So what I did was I took lots of different things I've seen happen in court, over the years, and everything in each of the stories in the book is something that has really happened. But I've put them together in a totally different way. And I'd love to be able to say that I was influenced by reading other books. But in fact, what what was influencing me was, every one of you could easily end up in a court, I mean, easily. And I don't mean necessarily in the dock, I'm sure you won't be in the dock. Some of you may work in the system, and then up there, some of you may be witnesses. But any one of you if you're on the electoral register, could end up as a juror. And so the point about a courtroom is it's there to serve. It's that serve the public. And so few people really understand what happens, why we pass the sentences we do, what happens in a court room. And so all I was trying to do was to say, come and sit beside me on the bench, come and sit here and see what it looks like, from this point of view. Watch the things that are happening as they're happening in front of me and tell me if you think I got it, right. So I wasn't really looking at it from that point of view. But I do have to say that what it has triggered me into doing is to reading a lot more of these sorts of books, and I'm loving.
Olwen Brown 48:40
Okay. All right. Next question. Over there. Yeah.
Audience member 48:46
So I think I was curious, really, in terms of obviously, it's very, I work in social work. So I think to give a bit of a context, it's very easy to sit and say, This is wrong about the system that's wrong about the system. But I was curious, there's bits where I look, and I think, Oh, I wish we had a system that was more similar to so and so or that involved more of this more restorative practice. I wondered if that was something you'd experienced in your roles?
Dr Shahed Yousaf 49:09
Yeah, definitely. So if we want reform, if you want to follow success stories, which is what we all want, we can follow what they're doing in Scandinavia. So for instance, in Norway, so our budget, the way it works now is that prison budget is approximately 5 billion and recidivism or reoffending, the price of that is approximately 20 billion. So we've got something wrong if we're spending more than four times the amount of money on the effects of the crime rather than the crime itself. And what Norway did is that they switched it around. So they spend a lot more money on rehabilitation rehabilitating people, educating them, getting them a trade, and making sure that when, you'll know this as a social worker, we release one or a one in six people to homelessness. What are they going to do? They're going to commit crimes. So this is what the Norway system sort of addressed. And that's what we need. And what they've done in Denmark, Sweden, Norway is that they've ended up closing prisons. And so it's a lot more money in the short term, but long term, it saves us a lot of money. And it cuts down on the violent crime rate. And our violent crime rate in the UK has gone up every year since 2013, despite sending more people to prison than we ever have before, and we send more people to prison than any other country in Western Europe. So it's, it's clearly not working and it's so expensive.
Wendy Joseph KC 50:39
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And it makes me realize what a tiny little narrow bit of the market I've been functioning in, because you're working with people, one individual, and you're working with people at the other end of it all, and I'm just in this little place in the middle. And not only that, you're dealing with whole, both of you, with whole tranches of people who will commit all sorts of crimes, whereas I was only really dealing with very, very serious crime. But what's interesting is, if you look at the sentencing guidelines, they don't say, it's all about rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is one of about five things they list, but the principle one they list is punishment. Now, you can understand that when you're dealing with murderers, but you do wonder that when you're dealing with shoplifting and it's because we are good, I say we the system, our system is geared right across the board, to looking at punishment. And yes, we do look for non custodial sentences, lower down the range. So before I went to the Old Bailey, I was sitting with another court, when I was a baby Judge, I was sitting with another court called Snaresbrook. Very, very busy court. And I used to deal with much lower levels of crime. And one of the things I could do is to give someone a deferred sentence and ask him to come back every month for six months, and tell me how he was getting on with his life, what he was doing. And it was fascinating, because I get to know them. And they get to know me, and it was sort of wasn't exactly like a tea party. They had to come into court, they had to explain themselves. But they'd come along really proud. You know, one of them came along with a photograph of his new baby. And it was a whole different thing that emerged from it. One of them, one young man, who was on drugs died, and his dad came to court. I knew he would died. I was told he died and she wouldn't be coming. And I wasn't expecting anyone to come. His dad came and got into the witness box and told me about how hard he tried. But he didn't want me to think I had that his son hadn't tried. It should just been too difficult. And I saw if I'd sent him to prison, he might still have been alive. So you know, you do the best you can.
Olwen Brown 53:33
Yeah, that's right. And I think there's a there's a theme about early intervention and the amount of money that's spent on. I've remember, hearing some statistics say to be child protection, or about if you spend a pound on early intervention, you reap that 100 times over and of course, there's there's that expense.
Wendy Joseph KC 53:52
And forgive me Olwen, you reap it, not just in maths, you reap it in the saving of grace.
Olwen Brown 53:58
You do you do. Sorry. One more question. And then and then I think we probably. Hello.
Audience member 54:04
Hi, I'm Steve. Two questions. One voluntary volunteers. I've been witnessed Service volunteer for. Sorry, is that better? Volunteers. I've been a witness Service volunteer for 15 years, I've also been chair of governors of a primary school in a notorious area of Birmingham. So the conditions and issues that I've experienced are to do with education, and very much finding solutions to people saying I didn't know about that. And I was lucky enough to actually shadow a judge for a day and I've done some writing about that as well. So the question really is, could we encourage more people, primary school pupils aren't allowed in court I think until they're 12, except if they're a witness or in their own special measures, but the the questions I want to ask is, do we tap the experience and expertise of volunteers enough in the law, and also have we got that balance of encouraging those in education to literally go and visit, find out? Thank you
Olwen Brown 55:18
Wendy, you have to stand.
Wendy Joseph KC 55:20
So this stuff about Diversity and Community Relations, judges work, the very beginning of my book is about what it's like, for me at the end of the day, when I've been dealing with a murderer all day, and I'm sitting in the courtroom when everyone else is gone, waiting for a group of schoolchildren to come in. And what I do with them is, explain to them how it all works, and then give them roles to play. And you know, one of them will be the judge, and one of them will be a prosecuting barrister. And a few of them will be defense barristers, and there'll be witnesses Now, a couple of them, the couple who are causing difficulty I'll put in the dark, and the others will be jurors, and let them act out a little scenario that I give them. And you'd be amazed, actually, Steve, you probably wouldn't be amazed. But I think some people would be amazed at how cute these children are, and how sharp their sense of justice is, how they really get what justice is about. But I totally agree that we ought to be getting out from the courts into the classrooms. And one of the things that bothers me is how difficult juries confined to sit in a group of 12 and discuss things. Why don't we teach our kids? Why don't we teach our children to sit down in groups of 10 or 12, and discuss something, how to express a view, how to listen to somebody else's view, how to adjust your own views. We don't teach children, things like that. Maybe they do up here, they don't down in London, and I still think the courtroom is a microcosm of life. There's an awful lot everyone can learn. And I would love to tap your word. I'd love to tap those who are willing to help inform and work with those outside the court, who would really benefit from understanding what it's like inside.
Dr Shahed Yousaf 57:31
Yeah, I agree. I think I agree with Steve, I think what we have got amazing volunteers who work within the prison service. So within what work in prison. So for instance, we have samaritans, we have listeners, we have insiders, we have the Shannon trust, lots of charities, and if anybody is even vaguely interested in going to a prison and volunteering, I would say 100% of it, because however difficult it is, and it can be however challenging it is, and it can be you do learn so much about it demystifies the process, first of all, but also you learn so much about yourself, you find untapped reserves of resilience and empathy and compassion. And it's an enriching experience for us as people who aren't prisoners. For prisoners, possibly not so much.
Olwen Brown 58:19
Okay, well, thank you very much. I think we are now before my watch stops, yell at me again. I think that we are now at the end of our of our session. So thank you very much for for being here. And thank you very, very much to Wendy and Shahed for an absolutely fascinating discussion about what you're facing.Can
Jonathan Davidson 58:49
Can I just echo Olwen's thanks and to you for your questions. I've read both books and they are life changing in terms of empathy and understanding. And I do commend to you and by strange coincidence, we have a bookstore outside with it lobbying some bookshop. We'll be very happy to sell you copies and I know our two guest writers will be very happy to sign them. But let us give one final round of applause for our wonderful guests.
Shantel Edwards 59:16
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Birmingham lit fest presents podcast. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at V Hamlet first. All information about the festival and upcoming events can be found on our website www dot Birmingham literature festival.org. The Birmingham lit fest presents podcast is produced by 11 C and Birmingham podcast studios for Writing West Midlands