Pia Sinha
The Reformer
Changing the system from inside it, principle turned into change.
Pia Sinha is The Reformer whose authority comes from correcting a system she knows from the inside. Her path from prison psychologist to governor to CEO of the Prison Reform Trust gives her critique unusual weight, and she deploys it by prioritising evidence over political expediency, confronting institutional inertia at places like HMP Liverpool.
“Well, no, I think that's part of the kind of challenge, isn't it? So all of these services, which are free and post custody, and we're talking about post-custody now, are very dependent on a highly, a well-functioning and a well-resourced probation system. And it's a sort of interplay between probation and the third and voluntary sector.”
“That the right interventions for them or they're not eligible for them or they, you know, they're not sensitive enough to the needs of women. So what you need to do in prison is that you need to design interventions that really address the bespoke needs of women.”
“With people who've committed offences, you've got two types of risk. One is the risk that they will reoffend and the other is their need. So when you have people who've got low risks but they've got high levels of need, they need a different kind of support package to those who are high risk of offending.”
“They've all been really pivotal, I think, in shaping who I am as a person and who I am as a professional. So I was, you know, I started my journey into prisons when I was quite young, relatively long. Young, I was in my late 20s, and that's quite a sort of formative time in your life.”
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy: “Why our prisons are broken - and how to fix them | expert explains”
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