Judit Hajdu – Speak Out Association
“… because a prisoner is human being and we would like to make programs that help him remain a human being…” Ábi, one of the prison radio presenters.
The good example of the British Prison Radio, our love of stories, the power of radio and the challenge to work with people most of society rejects. These were the main building blocks we started to build our project on: a radio made by prisoners for prisoners. Now, four years after we first set foot in Vác Penitentiary, a prison housing almost a thousand male inmates, we can see how strong it is we have built and what purpose it can fulfill.
During a friendly gathering as the conversation turned into the usual topic of how to save the world from itself my dear friend, Nick Thorpe, the BBC correspondent to Hungary mentioned the success of the British Prison Radio. It seemed such a simple and wonderful idea that we decided on the spot to give it a go and set up a radio in a Hungarian prison. Both my radio journalist friend and myself believe in the healing power of stories. At that point in his life he was doing all he could to turn his profession from being part of the problem to being part of the solution – practicing a kind of healing journalism – whereas I had moved more and more towards narrative therapy, a non-blaming, non-pathologizing, respectful approach to counseling and especially community work. So, it didn’t seem to matter that we had had no experience in working with prisoners. After all we were not interested in the dominant stories rather we were after the alternative stories of value based strength and skills that can lead people out of difficult situations.
Setting up the radio proved to be easier than we expected with the generous help of know-how from the British Prison Radio Association and the surprising openness of the Hungarian prison authorities. In 2013, we were given permission to start work at Vác Penitentiary, a prison with 850 inmates not far from Budapest, and after 6 months of preliminary work and training, Bars Fm – a station name given by the prisoners – started broadcasting on 1st December. Soon a Norwegian fund made it possible for us to start two more radios, one in Győr, mainly for remand prisoners and one in Budapest, where the radio programs are produced by incarcerated women. Broadcasting is pre-recorded and is limited to the prison cells via the closed-circuit video channel on their TV sets. Some of the radio programs are shared by all three radios and we have recently obtained permission from the prison authorities to broadcast the best radio pieces to the wider public in the form of podcasts.
Radio work is voluntary in all three prisons. After an official security check volunteers receive a training in cutting, editing, journalism and take part in regular team building and other activities done by members of our organization, the Speak Out Association. Programs are decided by the radio teams which have 5 to 12 members each in varying numbers as prisoners get released and new applicants start their training. In the oldest working radio the team has become so well-functioning and autonomous that training is also done by them. Us, the mentors provide background materials, arrange interviewees from the outside and provide general maintenance.
The idea was to create a platform – the radio – where prisoners can discuss issues that concern them and are not talked about. It would benefit the radio presenters through teamwork, the interviewees through telling their own stories probably for the first time in a way that makes them stronger and the listeners would have programs that were specially made for them and have a sense of worthiness by having their own radio.
And the beauty of the endeavor is that people could travel between these groups. Anybody – or almost anybody can become a radio presenter, anybody can be interviewed and they are all listeners.
The first thing we noticed how very quickly prisoners started using this opportunity at the radio team to work in teams. To re-learn the skills of arguing, reasoning and listening to each other. Skills the prison morale did not encourage. The prison credo says, “mind your own business” and” never trust anybody”– they even have an acronym (NTA) for that to warn each other if they happen to deviate from it. Watch out! You gonna get into trouble!
Decision making and creativity were other skills they seemed to enjoy again in an environment where those are systematically extinguished in a large scale. Tamás, our first chief editor, told me that when he first went out again he just stood in front of any door, waiting to be let out or in as for years he was not allowed to open or close a door.
Over the years, the radios have evolved into creative workshops where the unwritten prison rules of hierarchy and mistrust only marginally apply.
Programs include talk shows, prison news and interviews interspersed with lots of music the main attraction to start listening to the radio. To give you a flavor of the radios, here are some of our most important programs.
Morning Cool is a chatty talk show to start the day on high spirit.
Black-Nes is also a talk show covering important issues, such as new rules and regulations and rights of prisoners but in a light and easily understandable manner. The name refers to the importance of coffee in prison. As the saying goes, ‘if there’s coffee there’s everything’. People and Their Stories have in-depth interviews with fellow prisoners about their lives in and out of prison, sometimes about their crimes as well. It is important to note here that one of our principal guidelines is that radio producers should always bear in mind the feelings of the victims and be respectful of their pain even though they cannot hear the programs.
Bell of your Soul is a religious program of several faith and denominations.
Direct Contact explores the rights and wrongs of keeping contact with loved ones.
Free will, the Request Show is of course the most popular program.
Help in Hungarian is a program designed to help foreign prisoners get by in a Hungarian prison where hardly anyone speaks English.
The Apple of our Eyes is about children and how to keep in touch with them in a meaningful way, produced by women prisoners.
Way of life, also by women, deals with gastronomy and beauty tips in prison.
Feedback is possible via the ‘radio boxes’ put out on corridors. According to our survey 77% of the prisoners switch on prison radio once a day.
Our work is informed by two main ideas. Narrative and restorative practices. The two approaches have many in common: the focus on community rather than the individual, the importance of the dialogue, an awareness of power relations in all interactions and the value of traditional community practices.
The narrative concept provides the basis for the radio as programs act as ‘definitional ceremonies’ of the prisoners to construct narratives that are less painful and more fulfilling to live by. Barbara Myerhoff, the American social anthropologist, coined the word while working with an elderly Jewish community who felt isolated (Myerhoff, 1982):
Definitional ceremonies deal with the problems of invisibility and marginality; they are strategies that provide opportunities for being seen and in one’s own terms, garnering witnesses to one’s worth, vitality, and being.
(1982, p.267)
We live in our stories. If we cannot tell them, we hardly exist. But natural audiences are sometimes hard to find and so they must be artificially created. Prisoners feel the only stories they have about themselves are laden with crime and sin. But if we know how to ask the right questions we can find the alternative stories of compassion, care, love or empathy. By thickening these stories, we strengthen the prisoners and make it possible for them to face their crimes. And what better way to show your worth and values than in a radio program.
Restorative work is present in our everyday lives as well as in our programs and projects.
The circle. We start our sessions with a circle and try to solve our many conflicts using it. Our talking piece is a toy-microphone which has the lightheartedness of a toy and does not threaten with your words being recorded but connects our community to its task and reminds us to be restorative when holding the mic, the real one.
Victims. Every time they have a program on a crime, the victims point of view is always present in one way or other. We use recordings to connect offenders and victims over the prison walls. One such project was when we interviewed prisoners who committed crimes against the elderly and took these recordings to retirement homes and recorded old people’s reactions to them and took them back to prison. These chains of recording then were taken to young offenders and vulnerable youth homes. We prepared short snippets of the recordings for teachers to use as starting points for debate. We hope they serve as prevention.
Prevention is targeted in other ways as well. One of the radio presenters, a young man convicted for drug trafficking noticed that many of his peers from very different backgrounds went through very similar stages to get to the same place, prison due to drugs. So, they put their heads together, defined the stages, told their stories – first to each other – and convinced the prison authorities to invite teenagers to hear a performance made up of these stories. It has been a very successful program that has been seen by hundreds of teenagers. The performance naturally was also made into a radio piece that has resulted in our first professional recognition, a national journalist prize for under 30s.
Teaching. We have plans to record family group decision making (FGDM) sessions and turn them into radio programs. They could serve two purposes, they would inform inmates of a possibility or even just the idea of reconciliation while they could serve as resource material for teaching restorative practice techniques. Unfortunately, hardly any FGDM happen in Hungary but we have not given up hope on this plan.
Podcasts – Setting Prison Radio Free. As it might be apparent from the above, we are working on bridging the gap between prison and the outside world. We strongly believe that there could be no change without first understanding each other, and understanding can only happen if we listen to each other’s stories. The Association provide a safety net for the radio presenters after their release and several of them are happy to volunteer for us. Some of them have also started their own shows at small community radios in prison related topics. We appear at festivals, universities and secondary schools and always have ex-prisoners with us to convey authentic stories. It was most moving for the two prisoners who were allowed to attend the IIRP Europe Conference in Budapest to receive such appreciation from Ted Wachtel for an account of their personal quest.
Our most recent endeavor is starting a podcast. Programs will come both from the inside – we have just received permission from the prison authorities to broadcast the best pieces of prison radio – and the outside. Released prisoners work with us to record prison related stories. We would like to capture the interest of the audience by letting them glimpse into a very secretive an isolated world and show them that is it by far more varied and familiar than what the popular prison feature films might let us believe. Being on the outside will also enable us to have more direct contact to victims or the loved ones of prisoners, themselves also victims of crime in a way. Thus, we will be able to fully engage prisoners, victims and the wider community.