The short film ‘Coping with Covid: the impact of the prisoner lockdown’ has been nominated for a Smiley Charity Film Award. The film is an output of the ESRC-funded project Coping with Covid in Prisons, a partnership between School of SSESW colleagues Shadd Maruna, Gillian McNaull and Nina O’Neill and the organisation User Voice. Using an innovative peer-led methodology, 100 serving prisoners were trained in research methods and surveyed over 1400 of their peers. The landmark study found that prolonged solitary confinement and the simultaneous reduction in support services resulted in a mental health crisis in prisons and erosion of the rehabilitative function of imprisonment. The film highlights one of the darkest and most hidden results of the pandemic, the impact on the prisoner population, and amplifies in their own words the voices of those who were locked up during lockdown.  

You can access the film at COPING WITH COVID IN PRISON: The Impact of the Prisoner Lockdown - YouTube. 

To support the film’s nomination for the award, please VOTE before 25 January at Smiley Charity Film Awards.