Eric Allison, who grew to become the Guardian’s jail correspondent aged 60 after spending a lot of his life in jail, has died. He had been just lately identified with secondary bone most cancers and was 79.
Allison, who claimed to be the one man to ever escape from Strangeways jail in Manchester, joined the Guardian in 2003 after serving a number of jail phrases for fraud, theft and housebreaking.
He received the job after answering an advert within the paper, which mentioned a prison report was no bar to utility.
He impressed the then-editor, Alan Rusbridger, together with his ardour for combating injustice and his trendy method with phrases. At his interview he promised that he would go straight if given the job – a vow he stored all through his 19-year Guardian tenure, regardless of frequent grumblings that his first job was significantly better paid.
In what he known as his second profession, Allison wrote broadly throughout the Guardian, exposing cruelty within the jail system and notably in younger offenders’ establishments.
He fashioned a protracted working partnership and agency friendship with characteristic author Simon Hattenstone, a fellow Mancunian (although a Manchester Metropolis fan, when Allison was at all times United). Earlier this yr the 2 investigated the variety of prisoners dying on remand, and in 2016 they uncovered how the federal government had accepted brutal restraint methods which might kill youngsters in jail.
Their work on the abuse of kids in Medway safe coaching centre contributed to the safety big G4S being stripped of its contract to run the kids’s jail.
In 2011 the pair’s investigation into sexual abuse at Medomsley detention centre led to Operation Seabrook, one of many largest single abuse inquiries within the UK, with greater than 1,600 former inmates coming ahead to report allegations of abuse. Allison and Hattensone gained an Amnesty media award for his or her work on the story.
A lot beloved within the Guardian’s Manchester workplace, the place he was primarily based all through his journalistic profession, Allison loved reminiscing concerning the outdated days when not raging towards the system. He was notably pleased with escaping from Strangeways – now HMP Manchester – utilizing a solid bail warrant. Nobody else had ever managed such a feat, he at all times claimed.
He was out of jail when the Strangeways riots happened in 1990 however egged on the prisoners from the road utilizing a megaphone. He went on to co-author a ebook on the protest, which gave him the arrogance to consider that he could sooner or later receives a commission for writing.
His first conviction got here when he was a heavy-smoking 11-year-old, although he insisted that was merely the primary time the police caught him. By 14, he was in jail, serving 4 months for stealing a chewing gum machine.
He realized early that jail in England doesn’t work – a indisputable fact that nagged at him all through his life as he used his journalism to struggle for a system that doesn’t simply punish but additionally rehabilitates.
The youth detention centre he went to had no bettering impact on him, he recalled in an interview to mark the beginning of his Guardian job in 2003: “It was alleged to be a brief sharp shock. By no means labored. All it did was make you fitter. Just about all people I noticed in that detention centre in ‘57 I’ve seen on my travels via the system. Each single one.”
Allison arrived on the Guardian unable to make use of a pc, having bypassed the technological advances of the 90s as a result of he was serving his longest stretch – seven years – for breaking right into a financial institution in Manchester and stealing cheques value one million kilos.
That ultimate job additionally concerned the forgery of Giro cheques. He would say that the counterfeits have been so convincing that the federal government was compelled to withdraw the actual ones from circulation, as a result of put up workplace employees couldn’t inform the distinction between “ours” and “theirs”.
He had an atlas-like reminiscence of England’s geography, and would typically declare to have visited each village large enough for 2 put up workplaces (it solely made them value a go to if he might commit cheque fraud in at the least two). He adored strolling within the Peak District and was soppy about his canine – latterly two Romanian avenue mutts, Nellie, named after his mum, and Prince.
He got here from what he at all times known as a “very straight household”. His father, after leaving the military, was a jack of all trades and his mom introduced Allison and his three older brothers up of their house in Gorton, east Manchester.
Launched from jail for the ultimate time a couple of days earlier than the brand new millennium dawned, Allison initially considered his freedom as a sabbatical from crime. However as his writing profession progressed he felt responsibility certain to remain on the fitting facet of the regulation. Often outdated friends would attempt to tempt him again to his outdated methods however he was decided to stay a life with out crime.
Rusbridger mentioned he determined the Guardian wanted a jail correspondent as a result of so little was identified about what goes on behind the jail partitions.
“It was a wild concept to rent an ex-con to be the Guardian’s jail correspondent however Eric was the proper alternative. He had immaculate credentials (16 years inside quite a lot of establishments) and a protracted observe report of inflicting hassle. He promised to go straight if he received the Guardian function – although he complained that journalism paid poorly in contrast with crime (with extra stress),” mentioned Rusbridger.
“Through the years he campaigned, reported, advocated and investigated on behalf of the underdogs he knew so effectively. He solid a gentle mild on a world successive governments would fairly have been stored at midnight. Prisoners knew that they had a dependable witness on their case.
“My suspicion is that Eric was in all probability not a world-class financial institution robber. However he was a category act as a late-life journalist and it’s so unhappy that his unflinching focus on an under-reported world has been misplaced.”
Allison grew to become a well-respected authority on prisons and a passionate campaigner towards miscarriages of justice. He believed fervently within the innocence of these whose circumstances he took up, together with that of Jeremy Bamber, who’s serving a life sentence for killing his adoptive mother and father, sister and her twin boys in 1985.
Hattenstone mentioned of him: “Regardless of a lifetime of prison exercise, possibly due to it, he was probably the most ethical man I knew. When he noticed a miscarriage of justice, no one fought like Eric to have it overturned. His work grew to become his life. He would spend months and typically years engaged on circumstances that by no means noticed the sunshine of day in print – often as a result of they have been legally too difficult, often as a result of editors didn’t share our religion. There have been occasions lately when he grew to become so obsessive about the Jeremy Bamber case that he might speak of little else. Eric was any individual you wished in your facet, as a pal, colleague or a sufferer of a miscarriage of justice.”
After leaving jail Allison managed to lease a council home in Gorton, the place the Channel 4 present Shameless was quickly to be filmed. In a bit for the Guardian in 2005 he wrote of his love of the much-maligned space. Regardless of describing it as a “dump” whose inhabitants racked up extra asbos than anyplace else in Manchester, he launched a passionate defence of his neighbours.
All the time combating for the underdog, Allison wrote: “Maybe perversely, the place retains me healthily offended about injustice and the way in which society demonises younger individuals in disadvantaged areas. There may be additionally little hazard, I fancy, of feeling above my station in Gorton.”
He’s survived by two of his brothers, Walter and Tommy, alongside together with his daughters, Kerry and Caroline, and quite a few grandchildren.