A Band of Brothers

A room in south Manchester on a Saturday morning. Chairs pushed back, men standing in a circle, and Jacob Dunne is in the centre of it being asked what important agreement he broke in life. A Band of Brothers mentors men who have faced adversity, and particularly men who have been through the criminal justice system and are looking to turn their lives around. Thirteen circles around the country, entirely voluntary, and a rites of passage weekend which stays secret. You can talk about the fruit, they say, but not the tree.

We eavesdrop on the men of the south Manchester group who've invited Jacob to join a circle meeting: there's the check-ins, the confessional talking and listening activities based on Jungian psychology. We hear a man anxious about his son starting high school; another who has had three deaths this year and says that being trained in how to handle grief is the reason he is not, in his own words, doing something really stupid. In London, Jacob meets Callum, referred at seventeen out of care, who has been coming to A Band of Brothers for eight years and says he is more truthful in that room than anywhere else. And a man who has served a life sentence says that the thing that weighs the most is the pressure to be the poster boy for rehabilitation.

Presenter: Jacob Dunne
Producer: Victoria Ferran
Executive producer: Susan Marling
Sound engineer: Mike Woolley

A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4