This is the Guardian.

Today, the career criminal who became the Guardian's prison correspondent.

Just a quick warning before we start.

Some of the stories discussed in this episode do focus on suicide and sexual abuse.

In 2003, the Guardian hired a rookie reporter who had an unusual CV.

Eric Hallison was 60 years old and his old job had come to quite an abrupt finish.

My career, I suppose, ended in 1996 when I got 7 years for stealing a million pounds from Barclays Bank in St. Anne Square.

And to cut along story short, we then counterfeited 2 checks, a half a million pounds each to a bank account in Gibraltar and the other one in Geneva.

But you know, you win some, you lose someone about 80 months later, we were nick for it.

As he said, in a lecture he delivered to charity workers, Eric spent decades working as a forger.

He was fully committed to his life of crime.

In fact, after coming out of prison, he had his eyes on one more big job.

That is, until an advert in the paper caught his attention.

The Guardian advertised for a prison correspondent and they said that applications from ex-offenders would be welcome.

The CV was all about my prison protests, you know, and my prison sentences.

And they said, well, if you want it, the job's yours.

Luckily for the Guardian, he had things he wanted to say.

With a lifetime of contacts in the law-breaking world, in the prison system,

and firsthand experience of what it was like to be banged up.

Eric Hannison was like no other journalist in British media.

When he died last month, he was still the only prison's correspondent in the national press.

My passion at the moment is to tell people about prison and why it doesn't work.

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