The Escape Line

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.

In this episode, Jacob meets a young person who was ten when drug gangs first put him to work and eighteen when he got out. Jacob Dunne spends a day with him and the support worker from a small local charity, Escapeline, who has been there for him week after week. She has lived experience of her own and draws on this to connect with the young people she works with, plant seeds with those who aren't ready yet to get out, and offer an informal environment to open up, outside of police and social services. Between them they describe how the drug debts and grooming begins, why leaving means cutting everything off and why the fear does not stop when the dealing does. And the young person describes the turning point itself, which happened in a cell with a cup of tea, thinking about his daughter.

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

A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4