Love is on the air: DJ brings joy to the cell block

In the jails of South Australia, on the dot of 6pm every Sunday, the cells are alive with the sound of music.

Michelle Goulding in the record library at Adelaide community station Three D Radio, where she presents The Prison Show. Picture: James Elsby

In the jails of South Australia, on the dot of 6pm every Sunday, the cells are alive with the sound of music.

For the past 35 years, gunmen and killers, bikies and burglars have tuned their transistor radios to 93.7 on the FM dial for a unique love song dedication program that for many prisoners is their only point of contact with their partners outside.

Radios crackle to life inside Yatala, the brutal maximum-­security jail that is the permanent home to some of our sickest serial killers; at the Adelaide Remand Centre, known by those in the slammer as “The Arc”; at the Adelaide­ Women’s Prison, in the outer suburb of Northfield where women who have stolen, stabbed and maimed are scratching off the days on their walls.

For two hours, community statio­n Three D Radio’s The Prison Show connects these prisoners to the ones they love — or more forlornly, and frequently, the ones who used to love them, with many songs dedicated out of desperation by inmates to the wife or girlfriend who has left them, unable­ to cope with standing by someone on the inside.

The dedications flow in all direc­tions — from prisoners to their partners or ex-partners, from partners and relatives on the outside for their loved ones in the clink, between partners with a shared enthusiasm for breaking the law who are locked up in differen­t jails around the state.

For those in a relationship, the songs serve as a countdown to the day they will be together again.

“To JD in Yatala, be strong my love, only eight months now, keep walking the line, you are my world,” a typical dedication will read, ahead of Right Here Waiting for You by Richard Marx.

The host of The Prison Show is Michelle Goulding, a bright, effusive 48-year-old whose day jobs have included being a receptionist and a forklift driver, and whose great passion is bringing these songs to people who have little else. Goulding sees her job as simple. She wants to bring respect and warmth to people who are universally disregarded and despised.

“A lot of these people have done terrible things and have only got themselves to blame for the choic­es they have made,” she says. “But they are still people. These people have already been judged. I see myself as providing a service. If it helps make them calmer and happier­ … feel positive about the future … that’s a positive.”

Goulding has hosted The Prison Show for seven years. The program was launched in 1984 by broadcaster and prisoners rights advocate George Gauci, when his own son was in jail.

Goulding started listening to the show about 15 years ago, when her brother fell in with bikies and was convicted of manslaughter, for which he has now served his time. She won’t name him as he is now on the straight and narrow. Through her brother, Goulding met another prisoner, who she also won’t name as he’s still inside, when he was at the end of a five-year sentence for armed robbery.

Right at the end of that sentence­, while attending a hearing for a parole breach, the man decided­ to make a run for it and escaped from a prison van, with South Australia Police deploying its special operatio­ns group to hunt him down and using stun grenades to blast him out of a tree.

Goulding fell in love with him. They have been together for eight years. “He would have got six months for breaching parole but instead he got 18 years for escaping,” she says, shaking her head.

“He kicks himself every single day. He would have been out ages ago but he has been in Yatala for nine years with 5½ to go. I can see him twice a week for half an hour. We sit in the visit room with about 25 other prisoners. You are allowed to kiss and hug at the start of the visit, but that’s it. There’s seven guards watching.

“Amid all this, I was asked to fill in on the show seven years ago when the former hosts went overseas. I’ve been doing it ever since. It was a dramatic way to get my own radio show.”

The program is a wholly ­analog operation, as the prisoners don’t have email access and write requests via letters to Goulding. She receives about 50 a week. Becaus­e Three D has a limited signal­, inmates in regional jails cannot hear the show as they don’t have internet access, but they still use it anyway to dedicate songs to their partners.

Goulding reckons half the songs are love songs. Common request­s include Jimmy Barnes’s I’d Die To Be With You Tonight, Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy, and Whitney Houston’s cover of I Will Always Love You, but she also gets repeated requests for AC/DC’s Jailbreak, and a lot of gangster rap, which she finds unpleasant­ but plays anyway.

“I call it rap crap and I will write back to the inmates and tell them it’s no wonder they’re in jail if they listen to rubbish like that about guns and murder,” she says.