INCARCERATION and liberation dominated this week’s radio. “The next question is from D Wing,” combined with the edge in the voice of the unflappable chair, Anita Anand, signalled that the third Reith Lecture was not in a venue with panelling and portraits, but a prison (The Reith Lectures: Does Trauma Cause Violence?, Radio 4, Tuesday of last week).

At HM Prison Grendon, in front of an audience doing group therapy to become “softer” men, capable of “compassion, consideration, and empathy”, the forensic psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead (Interview, 5 March 2021) examined the question “Does trauma cause violence?” Statistics say yes. Four or more childhood traumas marked the lives of 50 per cent of the prisoners. Parental addiction, violence to one another, abuse, and neglect left the deepest scars.

Emotional neglect is the stealthiest abuse, as it is hard to recall and can be overlooked. “If you don’t feel real to yourself, others don’t feel real, either,” Dr Adshead explained. Relating their violent crimes, the psychiatrist’s clients say: “It felt like I was in a movie.” Coming to terms, in therapy, with historical neglect, a prisoner declared that he now challenged the statement “It was just how people were brought up in the ’60s.”

While Grendon’s therapeutic regime is not a crime cure-all, this location presented hope.

Jitterbugging GIs, nylons, and the Glenn Miller Orchestra have long been the image of Second World War American forces, but the time-travelling drama series Purple Heart Warriors (World Service, Wednesday of last week) uncovers military segregation. Opening in Ken’s Go Nuts doughnut shop, on the site of his grandpa Allan’s mochi bakery, the action switches between today’s Los Angeles, and Camp Shelby, Mississippi, in 1943, where the 442nd Regimental Combat Team of nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans, are battle training.

Inhabiting his grandfather’s body, Ken experiences the hardships of the recruits, who volunteered to serve the country that was incarcerating their parents as “enemy aliens”. The 442nd won more than 4000 Purple Hearts. But that is all in the future. Soundscape signposting is perfect: traffic is LA, birdsong is Allan’s grave, bugles and drill songs mean Camp Shelby.

Heart and Soul (World Service, last Friday) explored the effect of exclusionary iconography. The director of Theos, Chine McDonald, outlined the significance of the 450-plus Black Madonnas in existence, many of them in France. Seeing the centrality of the Madonna at the conventual church of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, in Paris, and at Notre-Dame-des-Miracles, in Orléans, McDonald drew a contrast with being “raised in conservative Protestant tradition. . . we definitely don’t do Mary.”

Concluding that the Black Madonnas could represent pre-Christian traditions, the mother of Jesus, and “all black women”, the presenter said that they signified: “I, too, am made in the image of God.”