Question: how is it like working with prisoners and what type of questions do you ask them to help them?

Sally Tilt answered on 2 Mar 2019:

Thanks for your question – I see that you’re interested in forensic science, so you may have thought a bit about the answer to this question already.

So, I guess, I find it helpful to try to picture 90000 people when I think about this question – I find it hard to think of a number of that size – but it is about the same as the capacity of Wembley stadium, which makes it easier to imagine. So having pictured that, I’d say that working with prisoners is really varied, because any group of 90000 people is going to have a massive mix of personalities, ages, backgrounds etc.

There are some quirks of working in a prison however which make it a little different to working outside prison – one big difference is that mobile phones are not allowed in prison (for staff or prisoners). So it isn’t possible to quickly google a question or text someone if you’re running late.

In terms of the type of questions I might ask – sometimes my job involves writing about that person’s ‘story’ – in order to work out the chances that they might reoffend. In these cases I aim for questions that tell me more about the person. So these would include straightforward questions about what they were doing, where they were, who they were with and questions about their family. But then I might also want to know about someone’s attitudes or values – and so these questions might ask about what they think about a particular idea, or how they think they might react in a particular situation in the future.

Other times I might use questions to check that someone has understood what we have been talking about (I’m guessing that teachers probably use questions in the same way as this sometimes too!).

Best of luck with your interest in forensic science – it’s a great and useful area of science.