For the issue of 17 August 1969, Observer Magazine talked to people for whom prison was a second, or even their main, home. The gaunt face on the cover is Ron Paterson’s, shaped by more than 20 convictions for petty offences plus ‘eight years’ preventive detention as an incorrigible rogue’. A year later, Paterson put himself back inside. ‘He picked up the handbag and stood holding it until he was noticed.’
