today I’m gonna need a little bit more
energy how is everyone this afternoon
there we go
have you been enjoying yourself alright
brilliant so my name is Whitney Isles I
run an organization called Project 507
and we work around violence and we do a
lot of different types of violence
reduction in the community and also in
the prison setting and it’s something
that I’ve grown to really love and
really want some more systemic change
and a couple months ago when Toby gave
me a call well he gave me a tweet first
and he said hey I’ve seen your first
TEDx really want you to come and do TEDx
Brighton and I was like wow didn’t even
know you could do – so hey wicked
brilliant I’m there and he said well
what would you want to speak about and I
was like well prisons prisons yes
prisons and the greater good and in my
head I had this really amazing idea of
how I was going to impress you all with
all this you know brilliant theory I was
gonna go into the history of it and I
was gonna look at the greater good and
where the greater good came from and
look at moral law and it was gonna be
amazing it really was and then I
remembered that I run a company that
deals with violence and that I rarely
get a moment to myself so Plan B was I’m
gonna go onto YouTube and I’m gonna look
at all the different TED talks around
prison on page six of the search engine
I realize that wanting to watch all the
other prison all the other TED Talks
around prison was not the greatest idea
first of all I probably wouldn’t have
got through it or in the at the time
allocated and second of all I became
very kind of insecure about what I was
gonna speak about because guess what
every single thing that I wanted to talk
about had already been spoken about but
then this interested me some more
because then I was thinking hang on a
minute is 2016 we kind of know the
prison system isn’t really working the
way that we need it to we know this we
have all the information that tells us
this and not only that
we also have a lot of really amazing
solutions from all over the world I
think it was the Netherlands I was
looking at the other day that are
actually closing down prisons because
they don’t have enough criminals Wow
wicked brilliant so then I came across
this quote and it might be a little bit
wrong because I am from the Instagram
kind of generation where the courts just
go up and you don’t really check them
you just say sounds good works for me
but it really hit a nerve with me
because I do a lot of work in the
prisons and I also do a lot of work in
Parliament and with the MOJ in norms and
there’s some really fantastic people
behind the scenes doing some work to see
if we can really make some real systemic
changes to make our whole lives better
and it says we cannot solve our problems
with the same thinking we used when we
created them and it made so much sense
to me something just clicked because
everything about prison is punishment
and security so a lot of other changes
that are being made still have to go in
line with punishment and security and
yes security is a big deal I’m not
saying that we don’t need it I’m not
saying there there aren’t people that do
need to be kept away for a little bit
but then I thought what if we changed
our thinking around this because it
cannot just come from the prison system
it has to come from all of us all of us
needs to start thinking a little bit
different and I tell you why about a
month ago I was sitting down with one of
the heads of the parole board and I was
talking about sentencing and I said I’ve
got so many amazing young men that have
been completely rehabilitated and that
should be out in the community they
actually have jobs waiting for them but
they still have another year year and a
half two years left of their sentence
and that’s 40,000 pounds a year for them
to sit and wait to get back out into the
community and he said wait this is a
really great idea and there’s a lot of
people having these really good ideas
the problem
is the current political climate the way
that the public perceives offending and
prisons and what needs to be done will
not accept these changes quickly and
that hurt because this is my world this
is where I spend most of my days with my
team and we work with those young men
and young women normally under the age
of 25 in various different prisons
across the UK and every single one of
these young people have a story and we
work with the more what would be
considered the more high-risk the more
violent the ones that are in prison
being violent but when we break down
those stories these are young people
that are dealing with trauma they’re
dealing with pain they’re dealing with
flashbacks they’re dealing with
nightmares they’re dealing with the fact
that they watch their mother get beaten
up when they were four they’re dealing
with the fact that they’ve been sexually
abused and never told us all they’re
dealing with the fact that they’ve got
multiple multiple family members dying
of cancer and they’re not allowed to go
to funerals because it’s considered too
high-risk
and they’re sitting in these cells and
sometimes they’re sitting in sales for
twenty three and a half hours a day with
no TV no radio and just all their
thoughts in their head and it’s Hertz
and year sometimes prison can be a bit
like a youth center here there’s pool
tables there’s play stations and yes
sometimes it can be really really
violent and people get killed and people
kill themselves and those are the two
extremes that we’re shown in the
newspapers and the media and I think we
do need to be aware of that but we also
need to be aware of all the journeys
that are happening in between and all
the things that these people are dealing
with on a day to day basis the fact that
phone credit is still so high in prison
and you’re looking at having to spend 15
pound a week just to have around 30 40
minutes
can see loved ones went out on the roads
you can spend twenty twenty pound a
month and get unlimited calls so once
these young people are in the system
they’re pretty much stuck in the system
to fend for themselves and yes there was
there was so much progress being made
but there is still so much more to be
done so one of the things that I want
everyone to start thinking about
different imagine if we really thought
about violence as a public health issue
imagine if we took the punishment
element away from prisons and we started
thinking what if we did physiotherapy
for the mind and we had individualized
plans that were looking at healing
because these people in prisons need
healing they don’t need more punishment
but for these young people and for
everyone in general to get their healing
we need to be more concerned about them
because once you sit there and you speak
and you listen and I spend all my days
listening to stories you understand that
actually a lot of these people are the
ones we let down the ones that slip
through the different services if you’re
in care you’re more likely to end up in
prison that doesn’t make sense to me so
today I wanted to use this platform as a
way to get the general public thinking a
little bit more about prisons and about
the people in prisons because they are
people and yes there will always be the
small minority that have some real
complex hard issues and they might need
to be sent away for a very long time but
the majority of the people that I come
in contact with on a day-to-day basis
are people that are searching for
healing they’re searching for a space to
grow and to be better and they are
scared they are terrified to come back
out and face you and face the world and
face the judgments and there’s a few
things we’ve been working on recently
which I just want to show and give some
attention
– because I feel that they’re still
really valid issues in 2016 in fact I
can’t believe in 2016 we have these
issues the first one is the young review
and there’s so many different reviews
coming out now there’s a Charlie Taylor
review there’s a David Lammy review
which is coming out next month and they
all highlight issues which we feel like
we should have been dealing with already
we feel like they should not be an issue
anymore the fact that there’s over 43%
of young people so under 18 in the
prison system right now of black and
ethnic minorities that is a huge
disproportionality compared to how many
there are young people in the
communities right now of BMI backgrounds
there’s still so much more that we need
to need to be doing in regards of race
and putting race back on the agenda in
giant Enterprise you might have seen
giant enterprise on the news so it’s a
big topic and there was changes earlier
on in this year and if anyone gets a
chance I’d highly recommend that you go
and have a look at the charity Jenga
because they are some amazing moms that
are really put in their life and well
they’re really putting their life on
hold to save their children now joint
enterprise means that if we’re all out
together and we’re in a club or we’re
out with our friends
and I do something wrong if you didn’t
stop me you can go down for the same
crime I did we have 15 year olds there
at the time of an offense were legally
blind doing a life sentence for murder
because one of their friends decided to
hit another man and murder is wrong on
all cases I’m not saying that we need to
be any more leading on that but if
there’s children that are present or not
even around and they can still get 20 25
30 year sentences I don’t understand why
we’re not doing more about that I have
young men that I’m working with doing 34
years that means they have to do their
34 years before they can come home for
murders that they didn’t even commit and
once you start understanding trauma and
behavioral change you understand that
today it’s easy for someone who’s
suffering from post-traumatic stress to
stand there and watch when something’s
happening because they were in
fight-or-flight and there’s a lot of
these injustice is still happening
within our system IPP imprisonment for
public protection this was abolished in
2012 you cannot be sent to prison on an
IPP anymore yet we still have 4,000
prisoners in our system that can’t come
home and they started prison prison
sentence during one year two years and
now we’re doing 10 years 15 years and
for me one of the worst things that we
could do to a person is to take away all
their hope and it’s very very small
things that are preventing these things
from moving forward the IPPS and I’ll
probably get myself in trouble next week
when I go with a head office but the
IPPS and the joint enterprises they are
down to public perceptions we’re only
gonna get changes in the system when the
public actually stands I’m gonna go all
this is a bit wrong this doesn’t feel
right and we it’s not necessarily we’re
saying let everyone out but let’s think
about things slightly differently
because why are 4,000 people still in
prison or over I think a lot of them are
five times over their tariffs and most
times it’s because they haven’t done a
program I saw one guy that was supposed
to do a program around healthy
relationships he couldn’t do it he was
refused to do it because he was gay and
the program was for heterosexual
relationships so he got his parole
pushed back due to the fact that he
could not do a program which doesn’t
even exist for him and it’s deep and if
we want real change in the system if we
want real change for these people and we
want a safer society for ourselves we
have to start thinking about prison and
thinking about finding from a place of
love rather than a place of hate because
whenever I write an article for the
Guardian or the –
for whatever else I do and whenever I
see things like this in the newspaper I
see these kind of comments and these
kind of comments hurt my heart more than
anything else in the world because
they’re not helping us and I’m not
saying that we need to be completely
lenient and we need to forget about the
victims of crime because there’s nothing
I want to do there’s nothing more that I
don’t want to do in regards of working
with children that have killed children
my heart can’t take that no more I
understand that I feel that and I don’t
want that to happen anymore I want us to
end this circle of pain and we’re only
gonna do that when we start looking at
our systems from a loving compassionate
perspective and we all start saying this
doesn’t feel right
we need some change we all need to stand
up and start fighting for a better
society that is more loving and more
compassionate because when it’s our most
vulnerable children and young people
that the system has failed sitting in
our prison systems being ignored by the
majority of the world something is wrong
so if you leave here with one feeling
today feel empowered because you can do
something we can all get involved we can
all be more curious to what is going on
and we can all be a part of the movement
for change thank you [Applause]