Eric McGraw, campaigner on penal reform who founded the prisoners’ newspaper Inside Time – obituary
Inside Time grew over 30 years to have 60,000 readers, 100,000 regular visitors to the website, and an app to connect families
McGraw, centre, in 2015, having just accepted the Longford Trust’s Lifetime Achievement Award
Credit: DAVID SANDISON
Eric McGraw, who has died aged 76, set up Inside Time in 1990 as a free newspaper that gave prisoners a voice; it is hard to think of another individual in recent times who has had more of an impact on the everyday life of prison inmates in this country.
Distributed in every UK jail, today Inside Time is an indispensable part of the criminal justice system – a truly independent channel that connects the prisoners, officers, governors, judges and ministers who are among its readers.
Jon Snow: “Prison is an area of great neglect”
Inside Time editor asks journalist and fellow patron Jon Snow about why he supports Death Rowletter writing voluntary organisation, Human Writes
Human Writes patron Jon Snow has one of the most respected and trusted voices in journalism today. He is best known as the longest-running presenter of Channel 4 News, which he has presented since 1989. (He is the cousin of retired BBC news presenter Peter Snow and uncle to TV historian Dan Snow).
Jon’s career spans all the major news events since the mid nineteen seventies, including the Uganda debacle, the Vietnamese Boatpeople tragedy – and the Iran-Iraq war. He famously declined an OBE because he believed working journalists should not take honours from those about whom they report. In May 2015, Jon accepted a BAFTA Fellowship at the BAFTA Awards Ceremony. He was also awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Liverpool in 2011, by Sussex University in