Keeping up the debate on prisons
We want to provide the widest possible access for our Longford Lectures because we believe what is said in them is important, remains important and could help make our prisons and criminal justice system operate better. That commitment to access is why we don’t charge for tickets to attend them in person (though we do encourage those who can to make a donation). And we broadcast the lecture to all prisoners on National Prison Radio, which is listened to by 84% of the 88,000 people in UK jails. In recent years, we have also attracted over 1,000 people to our Livestream of the lectures.
And since 2013 we have provided a film of each annual lecture lecture here on the website, as well as in previous years a full text. So please, please do watch and read all the way back to 2002. Some lectures appear in full in the films, others only include the lecturer speaking, and with some we tried an experiment of editing them into a shorter 20-minute format – which we called Frank Talks (cribbing from the popular Ted Talks) in the hope they would attract a bigger audience. They didn’t, so more recent ones are back in the full format. Enjoy!