A criminology podcast amplifying the voices shaping justice. Each episode features in-depth conversations with people doing the work—whether through academic research, NGO projects, or frontline practice. Together, we not only shine a spotlight on the ideas and innovations transforming criminal justice across the world, but also challenge traditional ways of thinking about justice and explore what lies beyond them.
Justice Focus
Claim This Podcastby Dr Omar Phoenix Khan
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37 episodes
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Podcast Overview
A criminology podcast amplifying the voices shaping justice. Each episode features in-depth conversations with people doing the work—whether through academic research, NGO projects, or frontline practice. Together, we not only shine a spotlight on the ideas and innovations transforming criminal justice across the world, but also challenge traditional ways of thinking about justice and explore what lies beyond them.
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Publishing Since
4/6/2020
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Recent Episodes
June 17, 2026
35: Prison Violence, Ethnography & Moral Dualism with Prof Kate Gooch
<p>In this episode, Dr Omar Phoenix Khan speakswith Professor Kate Gooch, Professor in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Bath, about her ethnographic research in young offender institutions and her recently published book Prison Violence: In Search of Recognition and Respect (Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology).</p><p>Kate is one of the leading scholars of youth custody and prison violence in England and Wales. Her research explores the causes, forms and dynamics of harmful activity within custody, including violence, homicide, self-harm and organised crime, with a particular focus on the moral, social and cultural contexts in which harm is produced. She regularly presents her findings to HMPPS, the Youth Justice Board, the Ministry of Justice and HM Inspectorate of Prisons, and trains prison senior management teams.</p><p>The conversation covers Kate's concept of <strong>carceral capital</strong> as a richer alternative to hegemonic masculinity for understanding why young men in custody are violent. Moving beyond gender performance, carceral capital encompasses material display, custodial experience, physical presence and the survival strategies young people carry in from youth custody and the street. Kate's account of what the stockpiling of Jaffa cakes actually signals, or the significance of a handshake, is a small illustration of the analytical work only serious ethnographic fieldwork makes possible.</p><p>Kate reflects on what that fieldwork actually involves: embedded over many months across landings, adjudications, segregation, carol services and away days, doing what the officers called "loitering with intent." She is candid about the gender politics of conducting research in men's prisons as a woman, the concept of moral dualism that shapes her positionality, and why she is not, as she puts it, a totalabolitionist, while making a clear case that the conditions in which young people are held are themselves an injustice.</p><p>The episode also examines the relationship between trauma and violence. Kate recounts a searing adjudication hearing inwhich a young man disclosed at the close of proceedings that a family member had just died in a crash. There was simply nothing in the infrastructure to meet that moment. This, she argues, is how distress becomes violence: not because these young men are defined by the worst thing they have done, but because custody forecloses every other form of discharge. </p><p>This episode will interest anyone working inor thinking about youth custody, prison violence, ethnographic methods and the politics of what counts as justice inside a sentence.</p><p><strong>Read Kate's work:</strong><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Prison_Violence/qI9qEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=info:EjFjZwaYUEQJ:scholar.google.com&pg=PR9&printsec=frontcover">Gooch, K. (2026). Prison Violence</a>: In Search of Recognition and Respect. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan.</p><p> <a href="https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/preventing-prison-staff-assaults/">Doolan, C. & Gooch, K. (2021) Preventing prison staff assaults</a>. </p><p><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/prison-stories-9781978757073/">Gooch, K. (2020). “You’ve got a Hard Edge</a>”: The Gender Politics, Complexities and Intimacies Undertaking Prison Research at the Edge. In Prison Stories: Women Scholars’ Experiences Doing Research Behind Bars.</p><p>Also mentioned:</p><p><a href="https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Male-Failed-Jailed-by-David-Maguire/9783030610616?srsltid=AfmBOor4MheoVm60h-Yfi1xTvQZ4xTT9Q8oFMCZc-prwMm8KTUZ--_Pg">Maguire, D. (2021) Male, Failed, Jailed</a> : Masculinities and"Revolving-Door" Imprisonment in the UK - Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology (Referenced in episode) See<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yv8vOXhZAHUl4yHLlQZeG?si=2a500121be114c45">Episodes 9-10 with Dr David Maguire</a><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/5hP3mhZgocbyU1gVaMexJ1">21: Prof. Alison Liebling</a> - Appreciative Inquiry and the moral performance of prisons<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/7eHB70kc3qSWfonSgnSBJx?si=140a616132c34723">25: Prof. Ben Crewe</a> - Understanding Life Imprisonment</p><p><strong>Prof Kate Gooch</strong> | University of Bath</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> youth custody, young offender institutions, prison violence, self-harm, carceral capital, hegemonic masculinity, ethnography, HMIP inspections, trauma, youth justice, moral dualism, custodial conditions, austerity, positionality, women in prison research.</p><p>Podcast researched & hosted by <a href="https://www.justicefocus.org/omar">Dr Omar Phoenix Khan</a>, University of Bath. Theme music by <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/3q8Gg6UErCDwopoXFWQwb4">SHEZ</a>.</p>
May 13, 2026
34: Creating the Demand for Better Crime Policy with Dr Janeille Zorina Matthews
<p>Can changing the story we tell about crime actually change the policies that follow? In this episode, Dr Omar Phoenix Khan speaks with Dr Janeille Zorina Matthews, multidisciplinary criminal justice scholar, Deputy Dean, and Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, about her work at the intersections of criminology, law, storytelling, and social justice in the Anglophone Caribbean.</p><p>Dr. Matthews has written extensively on sexual violence in Antigua and Barbuda, examining how a cluster of high-profile cases in the early 2000s shaped public consciousness, behavioural patterns, and media representations of crime for years that followed. She reflects on what that moment revealed about how crime narratives form — and how reframing the discourse around sexual violence can open space for more constructive, survivor-centred conversations.</p><p>The conversation turns to Dr. Matthews' work on narrative change and crime policy, drawing on her article 'Creating the Demand for Better Crime Policy', in which she argues that Qualitative Frame Analysis (QFA) can be used as a methodological tool to interrogate "tough on crime" rhetoric — exposing how politicians, media, and other actors manufacture public consent for punitive approaches that often misrepresent the true nature of crime. Shifting those frames, she argues, is essential to creating the conditions for more effective and humane policies.</p><p>The episode also explores the persistence of colonial legacies in penal practices across the Anglophone Caribbean, the growing importance of Southern and decolonial criminologies in reimagining the discipline, and how Dr. Matthews' contribution to the UNDP's first Caribbean Human Development Report and her leadership of the UWI Rights Advocacy Project connect research to real struggles for human rights and decarceration.</p><p>This episode is for anyone interested in criminology, crime policy reform, the politics of narrative, and how the Caribbean is contributing vital new perspectives to global debates about crime and punishment.</p><p><strong>Read Dr. Matthews' work:</strong></p><ul><li>Matthews, J. Z. (2020). 'Creating the demand for better crime policy: Qualitative Frame Analysis as a vehicle for social transformation.' The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 59(3), 325–342. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12386">https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12386</a></li><li>Matthews, J. Z. & Robinson, T. (2019). 'Modern Vagrancy in the Anglophone Caribbean.' Caribbean Journal of Criminology, 1(4), 123–154.</li><li>Matthews, J. Z. (2017). 'Social Constructions of Crime in Antigua and Barbuda.' In Joosen & Bailey (eds), Caribbean Crime & Criminal Justice: Impacts of Post-Colonialism and Gender on Crime. Routledge. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Caribbean-Crime-and-Criminal-Justice-Impacts-of-Post-Colonialism-and-Gender-on-Crime/Joosen-Bailey/p/book/9780367888534">https://www.routledge.com/Caribbean-Crime-and-Criminal-Justice-Impacts-of-Post-Colonialism-and-Gender-on-Crime/Joosen-Bailey/p/book/9780367888534</a></li><li>UWI Rights Advocacy Project: <a href="https://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/law/staff-profile/dr-janeille-zorina-matthews/">https://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/law/staff-profile/dr-janeille-zorina-matthews/</a></li></ul><p><strong>Dr. Janeille Zorina Matthews</strong> | University of the West Indies, Cave Hill</p><p><strong>Dr. Omar Phoenix Khan</strong> | @OmarPKhan | @Justice_Focus | <a href="https://www.justicefocus.org/">https://www.justicefocus.org/</a></p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Caribbean criminology, crime policy, narrative change, Qualitative Frame Analysis, colonial legacies, rape, sexual violence, decarceration, Southern criminology, Anglophone Caribbean, penal reform, storytelling for social justice, tough on crime, UWI Rights Advocacy Project, UNDP</p>
April 30, 2026
Parole, Probation & The Pains of Hope with Prof Harry Annison
<p><strong>What does it mean to hope when thesystem has already decided your fate?</strong> </p><p>In this episode, Dr Omar Phoenix Khan speaks with Professor Harry Annison from Southampton Law School, about penal politics, the families of indeterminate-sentenced prisoners, and why storytelling is at the heart of how criminal justice systems change, or fail to.</p><p>Harry is one of the leading scholars of penal policy in England and Wales. His work sits at the intersection of criminology, law and political science, and draws on hundreds of interviewswith senior policymakers, practitioners, families, and people in the justice system. He has collaborated with the Prison Reform Trust and the Howard League for Penal Reform, and has completed multiple ESRC-funded projects including Rehabilitating Probation, a major longitudinal study of the re-nationalisation of probation services in England and Wales. His OUP monograph, Dangerous Politics, remains the definitive account of the politics of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence.</p><p>In this conversation, Harry reflects on what drew him to parole and probation, the differences and unexpected similarities between interviewing elite policymakers and researching the families of those they govern. The episode focuses on his co-authored paper with Prof Rachel Condry, '<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azac039">The Pains of Hope</a>' (British Journal of Criminology, 2022), which examines the experiences of families of IPP-sentenced prisoners and their often extraordinary campaigns for justice.Harry explains how a sentence officially abolished in 2012 continues to imprison thousands, and what it costs the people who love them. The conversation also explores a thread running through much of Harry's work: the power of narrative and storyline in shaping, and sometimes distorting, criminaljustice policy. Harry also reflects candidly on his approach to writing and his experience as an editor across several leading journals.</p><p>This episode will interest anyone working in or thinking about penal reform, indeterminate sentencing, probation, policymaking, or the human costs of criminal justice.</p><p><strong>Professor Harry Annison</strong> | <a href="https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5xbfjg/professor-harry-annison">SouthamptonLaw School</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Key works discussed: </strong>Annison, H. & Condry, R. (2022). The painsof hope: families of indeterminate sentenced prisoners and political campaigning by lay citizens. British Journal of Criminology, 62(5), 1252–1269. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azac039">doi:10.1093/bjc/azac039</a> Annison, H. (2015). <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dangerous-politics-9780198728603?cc=gb&lang=en&#:~:text=Dangerous%20Politics%3A%20Risk%2C%20Political%20Vulnerability,'public%20voice'%2C%20and%20penal">Dangerous Politics</a>: Risk, Political Vulnerability, and Penal Policy. Oxford University Press.</p><p>Annison, H., Burke, L., Carr, N., Millings, M., Robinson, G. & Surridge, E. (2023). Making good? A study of how seniorpolicy makers narrate policy reversal. British Journal of Criminology. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azad054">doi:10.1093/bjc/azad054</a></p><p>Annison, H. (2022). The role of storylines in penal policy change. Punishment & Society. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474521989533">https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474521989533</a></p><p>Podcast researched & hosted by <a href="https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/omar-phoenix-khan/">Dr Omar Phoenix Khan</a>,University of Bath.</p><p>Theme music by <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/3q8Gg6UErCDwopoXFWQwb4">SHEZ</a>.</p><p><br></p>
37 total episodes available
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