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In 2013, a young professional football player named Mike received an invitation from one of his senior teammates at Bristol Rovers to attend a meeting with some businessmen who promised a financial payment if he would agree to “match-fixing”. Mike, a twenty-one-year-old man from South London—known to his friends as “Boats”—did, indeed, speak with these people, completely unaware that the National Crime Agency had already launched an investigation into this group of unscrupulous individuals. In due course, the police arrested Mike on charges of conspiracy and sentenced him to sixteen months in prison. Upon his release, the Football Association banned Mike from playing in a professional context, and, in consequence, he became a drug dealer and, sometime thereafter, he returned to prison.
Another young man, Rob, who had grown up in a “middle-class” household, became involved in illegal activity regarding mobile telephone contracts. One day, several policemen dressed in riot gear arrested him, and he, too, would be sentenced on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud.
Mike and Rob met in prison. Thankfully, these convicted offenders developed a friendship and could, thus, provide one another with significant emotional support.
Since their release, Mike and Rob have agreed to speak publicly, with terrific honesty and transparency and generosity, about the challenges, the horrors, and, even the unexpected rewards of serving time in prison. And, in early 2020, these two men became the stars of a new and highly engaging podcast, Banged Up, created by the television production company Goalhanger Films. This podcast, widely available to anyone with a computer or mobile telephone, provides a unique, first-hand insight into the psychology of prison life, and, in my estimation, it deserves to be listened to, and studied with care, by every single mental health practitioner, especially those of us who work in the field of forensic psychotherapy.
I stumbled upon this podcast quite by ha