The choir creating harmony in prisons Paul Webster

Hans – all names and nationalities have been changed – is distressed, angry, and itching badly.

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He violently scratches his bleeding legs, rubs his head, examines his fingernails. He says he has a terminal illness and fears he will not leave prison alive. Then he starts singing a song in his own language that meanders, rising and falling erratically. It calms him and wins praise from his fellow choir members. He smiles, his first moment of calm.

Linley is smart, funny and a fine singer. He has celebrity qualities, but what he describes as a trifling incident while he was on license from his prison term cost him his freedom. He admits that he deserves his sentence, but swears he has turned a corner, and pledges to join his new friends in Liberty Choir when they gather to sing together on the outside, a key part of the charity's mission. He warmly hugs everyone in the room and makes a short speech effusively thanking them for coming every week, before heading back to his cell.

They are among the thousands of prisoners from across London and the southeast who have joined Liberty Choir groups since the charity was formed in 2014 by the journalist Ginny Dougary and the musical director MJ Paranzino. This week, as Liberty Choir negotiated to take its volunteers into new prisons in the southwest, it won the prestigious Longford Prize, which celebrates organisations working in prison reform.