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BBC Radio 4

News-making original journalism documentary series, investigating stories at home and abroad.

File on 4

A van selling coffee and sandwiches from an office car park doesn’t sound like anything special, but there’s one in Swindon helping to keep young offenders out of custody. It’s part of an approach being deployed across the country trying to prevent young people from reoffending by encouraging a shift in their identity. 

The idea is to get to know the young offender, figure out what makes them tick. And then, instead of locking them up, find ways of getting them involved in whatever interests them. Selling tea and coffee from the burger van is where those with a culinary eye can learn new skills and start to feel valued for being part of legitimate endeavours. Similar interventions include social enterprises working in bicycle maintenance, hair and beauty and podcasting. 

As the adult prison population has soared in England and Wales, the number of under-18s behind bars has dropped markedly in the past 20 years, from around 3000 to 400. File on 4 Investigates spends time with the Youth Justice Service in Swindon to find out how it rehabilitates young offenders in the local community, and asks if the success of the youth system could hold lessons to address chronic overcrowding problems in adult prisons. 

Chris Marston, who presents shows on National Prison Radio and spent 10 months in prison discovers that what’s going on in Swindon is very different from his own experiences of the adult criminal justice system.

Reporter: Chris Marston
Producer: Beth McLeod
Technical Producer: Craig Boardman
Production Co-ordinator: Tim Fernley
Editor: Nick Holland

Main Image: Presenter Chris Marston in front of the Solid Ground coffee van in Swindon.

Youth Justice: The project keeping young offenders out of custody

Up to 80,000 phones were stolen in London’s streets and transport network in 2024, according to the Metropolitan Police. As File on 4 Investigates discovers, gangs are targeting unlocked phones. 

We discover that if a phone is unlocked, criminals may be able to access online banking and cryptocurrency accounts within minutes. We hear from one victim who lost £15,000 from a phone stolen from his pocket, another who lost £40,000 in cryptocurrency and about the financial and emotional cost of trying to recover lost assets.

Adrian Goldberg joins City of London Police as they carry out a series of raids as part of Operation Swipe. They have recovered more than three thousand handsets in the last three months alone.

Reporter: Adrian Goldberg
Producer: Paul Grant
Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards
Production Co-ordinator: Tim Fernley
Editor: Tara McDermott

Have you had your phone snatched? Tell us your story via Your Voice, Your BBC News.
Email: bbcyourvoice@bbc.co.uk 
WhatsApp: 07756 165 803
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist and have your comments included online or appear on TV/radio.

Image credit: PA\City of London Police

Swiped. Inside London's phone theft epidemic

It's a familiar story from the outside. Around 32,000 people are housed in migrant hotels around the UK and protests outside them have been violent and vocal.

Sue Mitchell has spent the summer getting to know a different side of the story - what life is like Inside the migrant hotels - and she's seen and heard some striking things:

Families who have been seeking asylum for nearly a decade;, a stream of prepaid taxis taking migrants to medical appointments and transporting them across the UK, families cooking meals in secret in hotel bathrooms and a system that appears to be broken, according to the people within it.
 
These are the first recordings that have been made of this kind. It's a story that has dominated the news, but hasn't been heard from the inside until now.

All names have been changed to protect the identities of hotel residents and staff

Reporter: Sue Mitchell
Producer: Joel Moors
Executive producer: Joe Kent
 
Inside the Migrant Hotel is a BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4

Inside the Migrant Hotel

In a broadcasting first, the BBC has followed a team from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons as it investigates conditions in a prison near Rugby in Warwickshire. 
The result is a unique insight into the problems faced by the prison system. 

This portrait of a prison on trial reveals how under-resourced prison staff are failing to stop copious amounts of drugs being brought in, and are struggling to provide a safe and productive environment in which prisoners can be prepared for release back into society.

His Majesty’s Prison Onley is a category C, medium security prison, housing 740 inmates. Its governor, Mark Allen, says Onley is among the top ten prisons for incursion of drugs via drones and admits many of his staff are too inexperienced to handle the inmates, resulting in frustration among prisoners, and violence. 

In its last inspection three years ago, Onley was found to be struggling in various areas, and it doesn’t take the inspection team long to find out that things are, if anything, getting worse. 

Inspectors meet prisoners who complain about everything from lack of laundry facilities to failure to provide meaningful work opportunities, or help with their offender behaviour. 

One inspector has to intervene when she finds a prisoner ‘spiced up’ and in need of immediate help. Another prisoner is refusing to leave the relative safety of the segregation wing, because he’s being threatened with violence over his debts to drug dealers within the prison. Inspectors discover evidence that officers are too ready to resort to force to deal with difficult prisoners and failing to keep accurate records of their restraining methods.

Prison officers talk about the challenges of trying to deal with violence within the prison and of trying to prevent drugs coming in.

In a lighter moment, lead inspector Angus Jones visits the prison library and discovers a surprising inclusion among books the prisoners are not allowed to read.

The inspection ends with the team meeting to agree how to score Onley against their key criteria for a ‘healthy prison’ and then presenting their conclusions to the Governor. 

Presenter: Rex Bloomstein
Producers: Brian King and Rex Bloomstein

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

A Prison Inspector Calls

Alison Holt, BBC social affairs editor, has been given exceptional access to the clients of a Nottingham charity that works to reintegrate men who have been convicted of sexual offences. 

'John, Matt, Dan and Liam', not their real names, are determined to turn their lives around after prison sentences. We hear how they work towards this with the help of the staff and volunteers at the Safer Living Foundation, the only charity of its sort in the country. Always mindful of the victims of sexual crime, the principal aim is to prevent further offending and the creation of further harm. 

There are hurdles to overcome - public abhorrence, plus grave difficulties with accommodation and work among them . 

The Foundation also runs Aurora, an online advice scheme for people who have not offended but who are worried about their sexual thoughts. 

Presenter: Alison Holt
Producer: Susan Marling
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Sex Offenders:The Long Way Back

Leila Nathoo investigates the risk assessment system for domestic abuse, and asks whether it is any longer fit for purpose.

The DASH form is the gateway for victims and survivors of domestic abuse - used by the police, charities and social workers to assess people who may be at risk of domestic abuse. It is deeply embedded in the whole system and plays a central role in deciding what further support victims receive. But Leila reveals troubling evidence that DASH too often incorrectly identifies those at the highest risk, meaning they do not get the support they need. And people across the system tell her that the form has not kept pace with the latest research about domestic abuse. Leila asks those who use the form, those who have studied its use, and those who developed it, what improvements need to be made, and why it has taken so long.

Producer: Daniel Kraemer.

Domestic Abuse: Beyond the Checklist

There are over 6,000 abandoned lead mines across the UK leaking hundreds of tons of metals into our rivers each year. With climate change causing an increase in flooding, contamination is likely to get worse. Is this lead ending up in our food chain, water system and blood?

Presented by Lucy Taylor and Dan Ashby
Producers: Pūlama Kaufman and Kelly Windsor Burgin
Researcher: Charlie West

A Bite Your Tongue production for BBC Radio 4

Rivers of Lead

File on 4 Investigates reveals how surgeons had raised concerns about a faulty replacement knee eight years before its US manufacturer finally decided to withdraw it from use.

Knee replacement surgery is one of the most common operations carried out by the NHS, with over 100,000 procedures carried out each year. It’s a surgical success story - but things can go wrong. 

Around 10,000 problematic 'NexGen' knee implants, made by the US medical tech giant Zimmer Biomet, were fitted into UK patients over the past decade or so, until they were withdrawn in 2022. 

But File on 4 Investigates exclusively reveals that warnings were given to both the company and the government regulator eight years before the product was recalled. 

Reporter Adrian Goldberg talks to patients who had to endure the agony of new corrective surgery and orthopaedic surgeons whose reputations were thrown into doubt.

Reporter: Adrian Goldberg
Producer: Jim Booth
Story and Development Producer: Nazrin Wilkinson 
Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards
Production Coordinator: Tim Fernley
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Image: Deborah Booker following her knee replacement operation in 2016

My Faulty Knee Replacement

Psychedelics are having a moment — hailed as miracle cures for depression, PTSD and addiction. But what happens when the trip doesn’t end?

In Trip Shocked, writer and researcher Ed Prideaux takes a hard look at the risks lurking in the psychedelic renaissance. Drawing on his own long-term side effects from LSD, Ed explores a hidden history of harms: from persistent hallucinations and underground support groups to therapy sessions that crossed the line.

As billionaires, biotech firms and media stars race to mainstream psychedelics, are we ignoring inconvenient truths about safety, science and consent?

Producer: Nadia Mehdi
A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4

Trip Shocked

In We Are Not A Conspiracy School, Darryl Morris sets out to meet the people behind HOPE Sussex, a community of home educators founded during the pandemic. 

On a sprawling site in the East Sussex countryside, a number of families gather to learn together, away from the mainstream. What’s taught there is contested. The media has called it a “conspiracy school", but the founders say it’s a community centre that encourages critical thinking. 

What are people actually doing there? And in a world where shared beliefs have fractured, and more are turning away from the mainstream, why do they feel a community like theirs is needed? 

Producer: Louisa Adams
Sound Design: Craig Edmondson
Executive Producer: Ailsa Rochester
An Audio Always production for BBC Radio 4

We Are Not a Conspiracy School

File on 4 reveals how hundreds of vulnerable women and children are being trafficked to the UK by organised crime gangs to work as shoplifters. The victims are forced to live in squalor in overcrowded houses in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Investigators have discovered there are 154 known members of one gang which is making millions for the gangmasters from Eastern Europe. High street stores have reported a 25 per cent increase in the number of shoplifting incidents over the last year. 

Reporter: Datshiane Navanayagam 
Producers: Holly Clemens and Kate West 
Editor: Carl Johnston

Shoplifting and organised crime

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