The killer's counsel

Doctor Gwen Adshead is a forensic psychiatrist working with the UK’s most violent offenders, many of them serving life sentences at Broadmoor Prison for murder. Gwen believes that empathy starts with a recognition that there is a capacity for evil in all of us.

"My experience is that evil states of mind can be potentially found in everyone, and evil begins on the inside with a turning away from all that is healthy and beautiful in our lives," she says. She believes that for her patients, “no matter what their history”, therapeutic treatment works.

Gwen speaks with the writer and convicted murderer Erwin James who died shortly after recording this interview. Together they reflect on Erwin’s life story and how he came to commit the crime he did. Erwin describes his own relationship with therapy in prison and he asks Gwen about her relationship with Christianity and how it has supported her. ‘Faith and grace have kept me hopeful in my work with people who seem to have abandoned all hope’ she says.

Producer: Sarah Cuddon
A Falling Tree production for BBC World Service

(Photo: Dr Gwen Adshead. Credit: Andy Vox)