WHEN a group of prisoners are told that a former magistrate is coming to talk to them, they might be expecting a very serious, older white man.

So Bernadette MacDonald-Raggett might come as a shock.

This black former beauty queen has apparently boundless energy and never seems to go for very long without making a joke.

When she visits prisons as an inspirational speaker, she says she notices the “tomato syndrome” – that the inmates have imaginary tomatoes ready to throw if they notice any phoniness.

“When you tell them the truth they say ‘All right, we won’t take the tomatoes out yet’. They hear you out,” she says.

Bernadette, a former air hostess, was a beauty queen for Grand Metropolitan Hotels and has also been Miss British Airways and Miss Jamaica UK.

When her husband was given a diplomatic posting in India, she was appalled by the poverty she saw there and threw herself into charity fundraising.

After becoming a magistrate, she enrolled in the community work the government of the day was encouraging JPs to do.

“I’d always been a community magistrate. In 2007 or 2008, the last government decided that magistrates were out of touch – which we were,” says Bernadette, from Talbot Woods.

“We didn’t know what was going on.

“They said we needed community engagement.”

She was one of only five magistrates in Dorset who ended up doing the outreach work. Budget cuts put an end to that scheme in February this year, but Bernadette continued working under the Prison Dialogue scheme funded by Bournemouth council.

“Bournemouth are brilliant,” she says of the council.

Ironically, she was then forced to choose between her prison work and life on the bench because the judiciary decided it presented a conflict of interest.

She continued her work in prisons, usually working for free.

“It’s been an eye-opener for me,” she says.

She tends to visit prisoners who are preparing for release and particularly likes to visit Dorset’s Guys Marsh Prison.

“If you go to Guys Marsh, they’re in there from three months to infinity. That’s the good prison to go to.

“You can help them turn their lives around,” she says, adding this kind of work is essential.

“They’re part of the community, because they’re going to have to come out,” she says.

The Prince’s Trust is “brilliant” at helping prisoners to make something of their lives after release, she says. So was the Connexions careers service, which has been axed by the government.

“That was one of the best. That’s where young offenders would have gone to learn to read, to write, to fill out forms,” she says.

Dealing with prisoners means requiring them to face up to their offences, she added.

“When they saw a magistrate, they couldn’t lie any more,” she says of her first experiences. “They owned up to it; they couldn’t deny it.”

Her blunt approach sometimes ruffled feathers in the magistracy, she says, but she remains true to her convictions.

“As a policeman said to me, ‘All those who care are always in trouble’.”

l Bernadette will feature on Katie Martin’s Show on BBC Radio Solent on Monday, November 22 at 1.30pm when the programme will focus on the theme A New Leaf.