“Unlike my husband, who’s primarily concerned about getting out, I spend my life trying to get into prison,” says Josie Bevan from London in the remarkable new podcast Prison Bag from Falling Tree Productions. The series follows Bevan and her children, Tala and Okha, as they struggle with separation, financial insecurity, prejudice and prison visits. One of the main challenges for Bevan is just getting to see her partner, Rob, who was convicted of tax fraud in 2016. We first meet her while she is on the phone trying to organise a visit. “No one will speak to me,” she says, on hold yet again. “Prison doesn’t speak to prison families.”
Podcasting has long made a virtue of highlighting the lives of people and communities that are often overlooked, and Prison Bag is a perfect example. Here Rob’s experience takes a back seat to the ripple effect of his sentence on those closest to him. Bevan describes how her quiet existence was upended with the news of the guilty verdict and how, retching in the bathroom that evening, “I was vomiting up my old life, and gagging on my new one.”
Television dramas often feature scenes in which relatives sit across a table from loved ones in prison, but such depictions rarely acknowledge the bureaucratic hoops they jump through to get there, let alone the dress code (they are forbidden from wearing over-the-knee boots, ripped jeans or see-through leggings) or the humiliation of having your mouth searched before entering. Bevan recalls how, on one visit, 10-year-old Tala fell asleep sitting in her father’s lap. As she slept, he stroked her back which caused her cardigan to ride up, prompting an officer to order him to pull her clothes down. Now his prison file says he’s been observed “inappropriately touching” his daughter. Tala is no longer able to sit on his knee.
Prison Bag isn’t only about Bevan’s story: in each episode she talks to someone connected to the prison system, among them Alana, who got married just four months before her partner was sent down, and Jay, a former inmate who shared a cell with Rob. He recalls being initially suspicious — “he was sitting there reading a book. I’ve never read a book in my life” — but they soon bonded.
Particularly poignant is the episode featuring Bevan’s eldest daughter, Okha, who describes the pressure of having to pretend she’s fine. She is training to become a tattoo artist. “My mind goes blank when I’m tattooing,” she says, “which is nice because usually my mind is talking all the time.”
There is power here in the small details: Bevan moving her husband’s clothes out of their wardrobe; Tala wearing one of her dad’s T-shirts in place of pyjamas. It feels particularly apt that at the heart of Prison Bag is the theme of human connection and the damage that is done when it is broken.