Theorising the many faces of prisoner radio: developing a holistic framework through process and product

Introduction

There is a nexus where radio and prisons meet that is yet to be explored to its full potential, both in practice and in academic research. Community radio stations worldwide, though few in number, are including prisoners’ radio programmes that work with prisoners, former prisoners, their family, friends and support networks to maintain personal connections and to broadcast alternative discourses on criminal justice issues. At the same time (and again internationally, albeit in small numbers), prison radio stations operate inside of correctional facilities to internally disseminate information, provide a creative outlet and deliver both informal training and, in certain cases, formalised educational outcomes to prisoners. On rare occasion, broadcasts from inside prison are heard across publicly accessible airwaves; ¹ however, for the most part these two models do not intersect.

The limited research that examines prisoner radio also treats these two models, public and internal stations, in isolation. It does, however, highlight a range of positive outcomes for prisoners and their communities of interest (see, for example, Anderson, 2012, 2013; Bedford, 2014, 2016; Doliwa, 2013; Grimes and Stevenson, 2012; McDermott, 2004; Minc et al., 2007), supported by anecdotal evidence from those working in the field. This article consolidates these two separate bodies of knowledge on ‘prisoners’ radio’ (community-based radio initiatives catering to prisoners) and ‘prison radio’ (prison-based radio initiatives) and draws on seminal alternative media theory to propose a dual lens of product and process through which prisoner radio ² can be theorised.

Theorising prisoner radio

As mentioned above, there are currently two main genres of media that incorporate radio and prisons, which, we propose, can collectively be referred to as prisoner radio. First, there is a loose international network of prisoners’ radio programmes that broadcast mostly on community radio, and also on occasion via Internet radio, referred to by Anderson (2012) as ‘prisoners’ radio’. These radio programmes broadcast physically from outside of prisons and tend to have no formal ties with the prison–industry complex itself. They mostly work with former prisoners, their family, friends and support networks, to maintain personal connections within these communities as well as broadcast alternative discourses on criminal justice issues. Second, there is prison radio – actual stations operated inside of correctional facilities – that can only be heard by those in prison and are usually broadcast via closed-circuit television or small-range radio transmitters. These stations tend to be unique to each prison (with the exception of the nationally distributed content of National Prison Radio (NPR) in the United Kingdom) and serve a variety of purposes, including, but not limited to, disseminating practical information, providing a creative outlet and delivering both informal and formalised educational outcomes.

There is limited published research on the topic of prisoner radio, and most of the literature concentrates on specific case studies with no connecting themes, a limitation the authors seek to address. Anderson (2012) is currently the only comprehensive work on prisoners’ radio internationally and includes an inventory of prisoners’ radio programmes, ³ as well as detailed case studies from Australia and Canada. A few articles have been published that deal with specific issues salient to the study of prisoners’ radio, all within an Australian context. Anderson (2013) uses the Beyond the Bars project to look at relationships between prisoners’ radio and Aboriginal communities. Minc et al. (2007) explore drug policies through a study of the radio programme Jailbreak, while Fisher (2009) examines how prisoners’ request shows, and other radio forms, can mediate kinship in Aboriginal communities in Northern Australia.

Prison radio (as distinct from prisoners’ radio) is also beginning to attract academic interest. For example, the Prison Radio Association (PRA) in the United Kingdom has been examined by Bedford (2014). Through an intensive focus on an early PRA partnership project with the BBC, the author argues that alternative media have a role to play in redefining and reimagining public service broadcasting values and practice within an increasingly commercialised and fragmented mediascape. Grimes and Stevenson (2012) also touch on the early years of the PRA activity to discuss radio as a tool for rehabilitation and social inclusion. Doliwa (2013) explores the characteristics and roles of prison radio in Poland, arguing that the genre is a form of community radio. In addition, both McDermott (2004) and Allan (2006) provide evidence of the positive impact of early prison radio initiative, Radio Wanno, from a criminal justice perspective.

Prisoner radio – in the collective sense in which we are using this term in this article – could easily be referred to as either alternative or citizens’ media. Such media are known for their ability to engage everyday people in their production, as well as for their non-profit nature; ‘media production that challenges, at least implicitly, actual concentrations of media power, whatever form those concentrations may take in different locations’ (Couldry and Curran, 2003: 7). Definitions of such media should not be treated as static – they can and do change. The richness of community-based media will be overlooked if their roles are analysed ‘as one dimensional static platforms aimed at unified goals’ (Rodriguez, 2001: 158). Bailey et al. (2008) emphasise that there is no one way to frame alternative media, and ‘different approaches enable a panoptic picture of the phenomenon that takes account of the multiplicity and diversity of alternative media initiatives’, acknowledging the concepts that structure and define their identity as well as their fluidity (Bailey et al., 2008: 150). Nevertheless, both the aforementioned terms – alternative media and citizens’ media – provide appropriate lenses through which prisoner radio can be viewed. These theoretical frameworks, established early in the turn of the latest century, have proven seminal for the analysis of grassroots, small-scale media. It is pertinent to review these concepts in light of how they intersect to provide a strong theoretical lens through which to analyse prisoner radio, as a media genre.

A citizens’ media framework focuses on the ‘new subject positions of citizens’ media producers and their communities’ (Rodriguez, 2001: 159) rather than on communication outputs or product. In other words, rather than focusing on what alternative media producers create, the emphasis is placed on the power produced through the process of creation. This power is generated from participation in the production of (usually small-scale) media. Couldry and Curran (2003) argue that ‘the media’s representational power is one of society’s main forces in its own right’, and, from this perspective, media power holds a central place in modern societies (p. 4).

In traditional definitions of power, being powerful or powerless is an essential trait, an innate characteristic that cannot be easily changed. Rodriguez (2001) proposes a radical democracy model to re-define issues of power, drawing on the work of Mouffe (1992) and McClure (1992), who both offer revolutionary perspectives on who produces power, how power is produced and how the making and remaking of power affects the democratic process. According to radical democratic theory, we all, as individuals, experience and exercise power; both power and power relationships exist as multiple streams (Rodriguez, 2001), and the prisoner population is no different.

It is important for research into prisoner radio to recognise the ever-changing power relationships that exist for prisoners, so as to avoid the pitfalls of prison research that tends to characterise power in prisons as one-dimensional (Jewkes, 2002), if we are to fully consider the transformative nature of media processes for prisoner communities. In addition, citizens’ media are defined in terms of citizenship that is actively constructed rather than that stemming from a given legal status. The issues surrounding media production and citizenship are doubly confounded when we consider prisoners, who can be categorised as facing ‘civil death’ (Ridley-Smith and Redman, 2002: 284) or treated as ‘partial’ or ‘conditional’ citizens (Brown, 2002: 322; Vaughan, 2000: 26).

While citizens’ media theory focuses on the transformative effects of process, Atton (2001) proposes an ‘alternative media’ framework that includes content, or product, explicitly. However, rather than defining alternative media by content alone, Atton (2001) outlines a methodological and theoretical framework that ‘incorporates content as one element in an alternative media culture that is equally interested in the processes and relations that form around alternative media production’ (p. 3).

Atton (2001) emphasises alternative media’s capacity to construct news and information in ways that reflect alternative values and frameworks of the newsgathering process – that is, to construct alternative product. He recognises the tendency for mass media to marginalise specific social groups (as demonstrated by, for example, the Glasgow University Media Group, 2013) and the potential for alternative media outlets to present interpretations of stories that differ to mainstream representations. While one aspect of this re-interpretation is providing access for marginalised groups to tell their own stories (that is, through alternative process), Atton (2001) equally focuses on benefits resulting from actual alternative content, or product.

The issues and concerns of prisoners need to be included as part of the public sphere for a number of key reasons. Prisoners have minimal opportunities to voice their own ideas and opinions within a public forum and this is exacerbated by a considerable lack of awareness of – and interest in – prison issues within the general population. The general public knows less about imprisonment than about any other stage of the justice system, and fictional sources greatly influence people’s understandings or assumptions about prisoners and prison life. Increased public dialogue about the prison system therefore benefits the overall quality of law and order discourse in society. It enables a dialogue that has the potential, at least, to counter ignorance.

Incorporating the primary elements of citizens’ and alternative media theory, it is proposed here that both product and process need to be considered in the analysis of prisoner radio. Viewing prisoner media through the lens of process allows a focus on the transformations that occur in the lives of prisoners (and their communities) via the actual production of radio. At the same time, examining content through the lens of product (the actual broadcast content itself), and how it affects listeners, highlights the value of presenting multiple and variant discourses of criminal justice to the public (whatever that public may be). It is through a blend of these two alternative media frameworks – citizens’ media and alternative media – that prisoner radio should be analysed to fully understand the benefits of the genre. In the following sections, this article uses two case studies to demonstrate the benefits of employing a dual lens of product and process to analyse prisoner radio.

Methods

The authors have, independently, worked, researched and published in the area of prisoner radio for more than 10 years (see Anderson, 2012, 2013; Bedford, 2014, 2016). This article marks the first stage of a collaboration between the authors to develop a model of prisoner radio that utilises the strengths of the community radio sector alongside the demonstrated benefits of a permanent prison radio station, drawing on international and local examples and engaging in action research projects that involve the production of radio content for community radio and the establishment of radio broadcasting within prison. It is intended that this new model will address a current disconnect between prisoners’ radio and prison radio, identified by the authors during their longstanding involvement in both genres. The purpose of this particular article is to highlight a theoretical approach appropriate to the analysis of a new hybrid prisoner radio model, within which future research can be situated.

This article presents two case studies, one of prison radio and the other of prisoners’ radio programming, to demonstrate the importance of considering both product and process in their analysis. These case studies were selected on the basis of the expertise of the authors grounded in their previous research into prisoner radio. More importantly, both case studies were approached from the perspective of the ‘insider-researcher’ (to use Costley, Elliot and Gibbs’ (2010) phrase). As practice-based researchers, both authors have previously been directly involved with the case study examples, as volunteers, staff and/or founders for significant periods of time which has given the authors insights, perspectives and access to information and to people involved that might not be afforded to an outsider-researcher. To this end, this research could also be considered as partial organisational ethnography, with the researchers ‘embedded’, for a given amount of time, in the case study organisation. Organisational ethnography, in this light, ‘can be seen as the art of exploring the complexities of everyday organizational life through immersion’ (Ybema and Kamsteeg, 2009: 103).

The case studies were compiled through a multi-method qualitative approach that incorporated content analysis of audio materials, interviews with radio producers (of prisoner and non-prisoner experience) and ethnographic observation and participation. A more detailed description of methods for each case study can be found in Anderson (2012) and Bedford (2016). According to Wilkinson (2015), drawing on examples from different countries acknowledges that while each host country will have its own embedded regulatory paradigms, there are similarities across media genres that allow for the development of overarching frameworks to be developed based on a holistic overview. From a methodological perspective, this means that while there are distinct differences in the ways that both community radio (as a legislated sector) and prison services are managed in the United Kingdom and in Australia, it is possible to incorporate international case studies to highlight new ways of thinking about prisoner radio. In the following section, we introduce two such examples: one representing an NPR network in the United Kingdom and the other an Australian prisoners’ radio programme broadcast on a community station in Brisbane, Queensland.

Case study discussion

Analysing through a dual lens of process and product

A citizens’ media framework focuses on media producers and their communities, rather than the communication product, and allows prisoner radio to be understood with regard to the power produced through the act of creation. The processes of creation at Locked In and NPR could hardly be more different. While NPR directly involves prisoners to produce in-house radio programming, Locked In relies on people with prison experience, and supporters of prisoner rights, to produce the actual broadcast content, while prisoners are engaged indirectly through the act of letter-writing. Evidence from prior research on both case studies demonstrates the benefits of participation. NPR has a proven track record in helping offenders tackle the barriers they face on release, demonstrated in the annual impact reports made available through the PRA (Bedford, 2016). Listener/participants of Locked In self-report the positive impacts they experience from having the opportunity to write to the radio show, and hear their voices legitimated through the act of having their letters read aloud, on-air (Anderson, 2012).

When considering Locked In in terms of process, prisoners’ access is almost exclusively through letter-writing. When compared to NPR, this may not indicate substantial participation, although if we examine some of the comments made by prisoners, the significance of the programme is evident. Prisoners’ comments about Locked In suggest they are using the programme in ways that improve and benefit their lives even when they are not writing about explicitly political topics in their letters:

I know this may sound somewhat odd but (writing to the show) gives me a sense of importance and responsibility, which is a rarity inside! (Anderson, 2012)

I think it’s fair to say I’m institutionalised and sadly with that comes a certain coldness with emotions etc. And it also carries with it a build up of hate and self centeredness that’s just a build up of frustration. What I’ve found this program has created in me is a high level of respect and thankfulness for others who take the time out of their lives for my/others benefit, without judgement, and share enough of themselves to make those who participate and listen feel like someone. (Anderson, 2012)

It is important to note that in the quote above, the writer describes the audience as both participating and listening.

NPR has a more explicit and proven track record in helping offenders tackle the barriers they face on release (Bedford, 2016). Through their involvement with radio (as process), they are equipped with the confidence, skills and qualifications they need to more easily access education, training and employment. In a prison system where more than half of the population has literacy levels below that expected of an 11-year old (Home Office, 2004: 17), radio has been shown to be an effective and innovative method, both of disseminating information and of engaging people back into education, particularly those with previously negative experiences of schooling. Radio production training develops computer skills through the use of audio editing software, literacy through research and interview planning, numeracy through editing and producing audio to time and the softer skills of teamwork, communication and conflict resolution through working in a production team.

NPR demonstrates the empowering and transformative nature of prisoner radio as process. Media power – ‘direct control over the means of media production’ (Couldry and Curran, 2003: 4) – is being actively contested when people produce their own media. However, there are many other elements that need to be considered when analysing prisoner radio, and ignoring the products of such practice runs the risk of excluding valuable outcomes (Anderson, 2013). The product is often considered a vital element of a media venture and can be incorporated into an analysis without resorting to oppositional relations to commercial counterparts. An ‘alternative media’ framework complements that of citizens’ media theory, and also provides a lens through which the product can be fully recognised. While the content of NPR is produced for a very specific audience and created primarily to be heard within prison boundaries, programming is designed to broadcast information and educational materials which support the reducing reoffending agenda and to help prisoners face the unique challenges of prison life.

However, even though this content does not, for the most part, foster alternative discourses within the wider public sphere, it should not be discounted as valuable. An important aspect of maintaining community culture is the provision of information that is immediately relevant to the everyday lives of listeners (Forde et al., 2002). A community can often provide the context in which the rights and responsibilities of citizenship can be given practical expression, and its defining characteristic is often simply that ‘its members care about and want to support whatever it is that brings them together’ (Faulkner, 2003: 290). According to the NPR 2016 survey, just more than three-quarters of the prisoner population listen regularly, demonstrating the importance of such a service for improving communication within individual prisons as well as across the prison system as a whole.

While prisoner participation is somewhat limited with the Locked In model, the product is received by a wider audience than that of NPR, as it is broadcast to the general public via a community radio station with an estimated weekly listenership of 102,000 people. The Locked In audience is made up of prisoners, their friends and families, those involved in activism or support work surrounding prisoner issues, and members of the wider audience who have an interest in the area. Although prisoners’ radio shows may be specifically designed to appeal to these communities of interest, they are available to anyone who chooses to listen.

Prisoner radio broadcasts that can be heard in the wider public sphere contribute to alternative discourses on law and order, which can benefit those inside and outside of incarceration. The anecdotal comments of Locked In listeners suggest that the personalisation of prisoners’ concerns does influence a wider audience’s deliberation on issues of law and order. Research reflections taken during the case study period noted various occasions where Locked In has impacted upon the 4ZZZ radio community. On a broader scale, there is also evidence that prisoners’ programming is reaching the wider public sphere. During the Community Media Matters audience study of the Australian community broadcasting sector, focus groups were held with community radio audiences around the country. As was mentioned previously, Indigenous listeners use and appreciate prisoners’ programmes as a means of maintaining contact. With regard to a more mainstream audience that listens to, rather than participates in, such programming, evidence was also available. Three stations that participated in the research (4ZZZ, 3CR and 2SER) host a prisoners’ radio show and this programming was mentioned positively, and without direct prompting, at each of the station’s corresponding focus groups.

Through Locked In, alternative constructions of criminal justice issues come not only from information but also from the perspectives that are generated through the personalisation fostered when people tell their own stories, in their own voices. Prisoners’ programmes can certainly be very humanising in this sense. Prisoners, their families and their friends discuss exceptionally private topics through a completely public medium. As a news value, human interest can be a ‘united force in reminding people of their shared humanity’ (Conley, 1997: 71), and there are many examples within prisoners’ radio where abstract issues, such as being a parent in prison or waiting for parole, become directly related to individuals. This was encapsulated by a first-time listener to Locked In who emailed the programme:

In essence, Locked In humanises people in jail. (It’s) no easy task to remind the greater community that prisoners are Mothers, Fathers, Sons, Daughters, Brothers and Sisters to people everywhere, in all walks of life, when many people would prefer to think of them as persona non grata. (Trembath, 2007)

On rare occasion, NPR productions are also broadcast to a wider listening audience. For example, in 2011, Victim Support commissioned the PRA to produce a documentary that gave three victims of violent crime the opportunity to explain the impact of these crimes to a group of prisoners. Face to Face was first broadcast on NPR on 23 March 2012, and such was the impact that BBC Radio 4 made the rare move of re-broadcasting the programme. As a ground-breaking example of restorative justice in action, the hour-long documentary won the prestigious Gold Sony Radio Academy Award and won the PRA and Victim Support the award for Best Charity Partnership at the Third Sector Awards 2012. In this case, through bringing the victim’s voice into the equation, prison radio no longer risked being perceived as focused solely on the rights of ‘undeserving’ prisoners but also became a platform for victims’ expression:

True ‘stop what you’re doing’ radio. It was a programme that had made a difference to all who had participated in it … and the judges felt privileged to have heard it. (Sony Radio Academy Awards 2012 Judges, cited in PRA, 2017)

Even when not broadcasting to the wider public sphere, the positive media coverage NPR has received can also directly contribute to alternative understandings of life behind bars. The PRA was awarded the UK 2016 Charity of the Year, and specific NPR programmes have won categories in the prestigious Sony Radio Awards, of which the above example is but one. The PRA runs a successful strategic media campaign to manage mainstream coverage of NPR successes (such as the Sony Awards) that ensure prison radio remains a story about radio rather than a story about prison. PRA control of the public relations process helps make sure that media coverage is focused on the radio activity and content, to highlight the project’s potential, rather than a discourse embedded within political wrangling around the perceived successes and failures of the prison system.

Finally, there is one prominent aspect of product that is common to both Locked In and NPR, and that is the song requests component. The importance of music to prisoners cannot be underestimated. Prison radio DJ Rockin’ Robin Polk, who has spent more than half of his life in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola, USA), says, ‘when you hear a song from your childhood, it kind of frees you from the atmosphere that you’re in’ (Polk in Von Zielbauer, 2006: 1). In both case studies, music was a vital component of the programmes:

I know in my case the songs I request take me back to the time when I first heard them, and whether the feeling and events were bad or good depends on what I was doing. (J.F. at Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, Brisbane, 2005)

Conclusion

Prisoner radio offers a level of respect to prisoners by recognising their worth, encouraging active citizenship through media production and disseminating information about prison issues to encourage accountability and to educate, be this to a prison community or to a wider audience. Prisoner radio should provide access specifically to the disempowered, either as news producers directly or by appearing in the media as significant actors. The case studies above demonstrate that there are different means through which prisoners, and prisoner communities, are able to access the processes of media representation that would otherwise be denied to them. NPR provides a highly organised model by which prisoners are trained (and even paid) to produce radio based on a wide range of themes. Locked In reveals that even without direct access to the radio station, prisoners can control the narratives of the programme by participating via letter-writing, or by volunteering post-incarceration. Likewise, there are a number of public spheres within which prisoner radio may disseminate content, including those pertaining to the wider (mainstream) public, activist movements, individual prisons and, even, wings or units. Prisoner radio operates within, and facilitates, these spheres to varying degrees at different times, often intersecting along the way.

As such, any analysis of the media activities of prisoners, prisons and their communities should take into account both citizens’ and alternative media frameworks, to produce a holistic and accurate account. This can be best achieved through a simultaneous analysis, or a dual lens that focuses on both process and product, which allows prisoner radio to be considered in two different yet equally valuable ways. There are benefits in both directly involving prisoners in radio production and in promoting alternative dialogue about law and order issues, and neither should be considered a priority over the other. This approach highlights more ‘obvious’ strengths, and also teases out the more subtle benefits that could be overlooked by considering different types of prisoner radio through one model alone.

By consolidating the existing knowledge regarding ‘prison radio’ and ‘prisoners’ programming on community radio’ through these dual lenses, this article suggests that media production by prisoners plays an important empowering and transformative role, regardless of how the production is facilitated. Likewise, it recognises the power of the product itself, whether broadcast to the general public or within a limited prison environment. This suggests value in developing a new, hybrid model of prisoner radio that incorporates the strengths of the two current approaches. The success of any framework of prisoner radio broadcasting will require the support of both prisoners (and their community of interest) and representatives of the government departments responsible for managing incarceration. Incorporating the language of both process and product into discussions with these, and other, important stakeholder groups will be invaluable to the development of future prisoner radio initiatives.