Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Leeds' Crime and Justice Week
Post categories: Ö÷²¥´óÐã North,ÌýÖ÷²¥´óÐã local radio
| 12:59 UK time, Friday, 6 July 2012
Rozina Breen is the Managing Editor of Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Leeds. In this post, she writes about the station's Crime & Justice Week which begins this Monday.
The week of programmes includes interviews, documentaries and debates which ask the question "Is the criminal justice system in the UK working?"
As I write this, I am listening for the first time to a documentary about Death Row, made by one of Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Leeds' presenters, Liz Green. It's a beautiful piece of work. Death and Beauty: that must sound odd. But it's a powerful piece of storytelling. It is a story that saw her, with two others, travel to Death Row to take a look at the US justice system in Florida.
It's not just any journey, told through dispassionate eyes. It's a journey felt, as well as a journey told. A journey for one West Yorkshire MP who believes the death penalty should be resurrected in this country and for his travel companion, a man called Shane who, with a few of his friends, set up a charity to tackle gun crime after his mother (also a peace campaigner) was killed.
Crime and justice is an issue that touches most of us at one time or another. Whether it's our own experience, or the stories and images we read or see in the media. I wanted to find the real stories behind the headlines and to challenge perceptions. That may be through hearing a prisoner read a book to his child via a recording that's processed into a CD and sent to his family, or from the man who's been inside dozens and dozens of times because life on the inside is more comforting than life on the outside. Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Leeds talks to the mother of a convicted killer on her love for her son, and to the criminals who let us into a day in their lives, into their world behind bars.
In Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Leeds' Crime and Justice Week the women who write to prisoners tell us what motivates them, and we feature the men who make radio programmes for their fellow inmates. We also interview criminal justice lawyer Michael Mansfield QC. I hope the audience will be interested in and stimulated by the stories we've discovered.
To end the week we stage a debate with a panel made up of the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Sir Norman Bettison, Frances Crook CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform and Philip Davies MP. Family members of murder victims, representatives from NACRO and West Yorkshire Probation Trust will also be there.
I hope our listeners find these programmes as rewarding and inspiring to listen to, as the team have found making them. We offer a unique, human appraisal of other - different - approaches to justice. These are stunning and unique stories from West Yorkshire and the world, and I am very proud of them, and of our team who have made them."
Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Leeds' Crime and Justice Week broadcasts from 9-15 July 2012. Programme times are available via the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio Leeds website. Programmes will also be available for catch-up on iPlayer for seven days after broadcast.
Read more about the week of programmes on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Media Centre website.
Follow and presenter and journalist on Twitter.
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