Earlier this week, Dr Serena Wright’s recently published book, "Life Imprisonment from Young Adulthood: Adaptation, Identity and Time" was discussed by co-author Professor Ben Crewe on BBC Radio 4’s "Thinking Allowed" programme.

Since April 2020, Dr Serena Wright has been Co-Investigator on a new ESRC-funded study entitled Long-term Imprisonment from Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Follow-up Study. A large mixed-method longitudinal study, this project aims to re-interview almost 150 men and women serving very large sentences (15+ years minimum in custody) from a young age (25 years or younger) who were participants in Dr Wright’s original study (led by Professor Ben Crewe and Dr Susie Hulley, both from the University of Cambridge). This research was subsequently written up in the recent publication, Life Imprisonment from Young Adulthood: Adaptation, Identity and Time (pub. 2020, Palgrave MacMillan).

The book, as well as the context underpinning the origins of that initial study (2012-2016), were the topic of discussion between Dr Wright’s co-author, Prof. Ben Crewe, and former sociologist Laurie Taylor. Taylor, himself a co-author of the highly influential Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long-Term Imprisonment, is also the long-established presenter of Radio 4’s popular Thinking Allowed programme, which brings academic research into the public domain. The programme also features Professor Elaine Player (Kings College, London), who discusses the different needs and experiences of the much smaller number of life-sentenced prisoners in the women’s estate.

You can listen to the podcast of the episode via the BBC Radio website here. 

Further details can be found in the blurb for the programme, taken from the BBC Radio 4 website:

‘Life imprisonment - Laurie Taylor explores the impact of long sentences on those convicted of murder and asks why these sentences have increased so dramatically.

Life imprisonment - Why is it that such sentences were almost unheard of a generation ago and what is their impact on prisoners, as well as society? Ben Crewe, Deputy Director of the Prison Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, talks to Laurie Taylor about the largest ever sociological study of long term imprisonment conducted in Europe. Focusing on prisoners convicted of murder & serving life sentences of 15 years or more from young adulthood, it asks how they manage time, think about the future, and deal with existential issues of identity and the meaning of their lives. They’re joined by Elaine Player, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Kings College, London, who discusses the different needs and experiences of the much smaller number of female ‘lifers’, many of whom are victims of multiple trauma & male violence, drawing on research conducted in a democratic therapeutic community in a women’s prison’.