Dame Anne Owers

Kirsty Young's castaway is the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dame Anne Owers. A long-time human rights campaigner, she's spent years immersing herself in the problems of people on the margins of society. During the time she was Chief Inspector, the prison population expanded hugely. "The thing that saddened me greatly is that our prisons became better places but they also became places that soaked up a lot of money and into which we put a lot of people. My view is a lot of that money could have been better spent doing things that stopped people getting there in the first place and therefore prevented there being victims of crime." Record: Handel's Messiah Book: An Anthology of British poetry Luxury: A solar powered word processor Producer: Isabel Sargent.