Curious, Not Furious

In 2011 Jacob Dunne threw a single punch that resulted in a man's death. He went to prison for manslaughter, and has spent the decade since telling that story and the transformative power of restorative justice that followed - in schools and prisons, in the Radio 4 series The Punch, and in a memoir, Right From Wrong, that James Graham turned into the play Punch - in the hope of stopping somebody else making the same mistake.

Across five programmes Jacob meets the people who do the slow, largely invisible work of turning a young person around, and the people it worked on. The mentors, youth workers, teachers and parents who keep showing up long after everyone else has stopped. What does it actually take to make a young person change direction? Rather than just managing or containing them.

He begins with radicalisation. Sarah’s son John was fourteen when he was shown a meme at school that led to his radicalisation by the far right. What both mother and son point to is the Prevent intervention provider who took John's arguments seriously enough to test them. Sarah now sits with other families going through similar experiences, as a support worker for Exit Hate, a small charity that draws on lived experience to help individuals leaving extremism and their families.

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

Additional recordings by kind permission of Exit Hate

A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4