Graham Carter has spent almost half of his 32 years in prison. Until the last year his longest taste of freedom was four days and his shortest three hours.

"I was an animal, always out of control," he admits.

But today the violent offender is a changed man. Graham has been out of jail for the longest stretch ever – more than a year – since spotting a poster advertising football as part of the Second Chance Sports Programme at the Raich Carter Centre. It's where he met Matty Lyons, community head coach.

The former gang leader who, drunk or sober, beat his victims senseless with baseball bats, bare knuckles, bottles and planks of wood, says he feels nothing but regret and shame for his violent past.

Respect, trust and discipline have been his saving grace since meeting Matty – values Graham had never known inside or outside of jail until now.

He says he is a reformed character: "Every day I look in the mirror and I like myself. All that time I was miserable and depressed and hitting the drink and looking for a reason to be happy.

"But now every day I wake up and it's just amazing to think that life lifted off me.

"I have been given another chance. It's my last chance. If I ever do anything again the judge said I wouldn't be getting back out. I would be given an indeterminate sentence."

Graham, who has four sons by three different mothers, talks candidly of his catalogue of crime, starting when he was 15, stealing cars, playing the hardman and viciously beating up any youths he didn't like the look of.

He blinded one for life in one eye and left him with no feeling down one side of his body after a merciless beating, fracturing his eye sockets, breaking his nose and cheek bones.

And so began the cycle of jail.

Graham says: "I am the only one in my family with a record. I come from a good family. My sister is a psychologist."

He says today he is unrecognisable from that violent person who terrorised his community. "If I was the same way I wouldn't be allowed in society," he said. "They would take me straight off the street because I was a danger to the public."

He says he owes everything to Matty showing him how he could change: "Even though I have spent most of my life in prison there isn't discipline. You can do what you want from day one. With Matty it was 'If you fall out of line I will kick you up the backside.'

"I only went to the centre for the football and after a couple of weeks I crossed the line and Matty came down on me like a ton of bricks. From that day I had total respect for him and I knew if I was wrong he would put me right which is what I have not had ever before in my life.

"Matty has got me all the way. I haven't been arrested for two years, whereas before I was getting arrested all the time."

Matty is a modest mentor and says it's all down to Graham having the willpower to change his life.

He said: "When we are working with these lads we are asking them to change their lifestyle completely. We are working with 17 to 45-year-olds. Life is a series of choices and this is a programme that works."

Graham is now doing an NVQ in health and social care and wants to help other offenders break the cycle and turn their lives around.

He has settled down in a flat in South Shields with his girlfriend and has a good bond with his children.

He has recently addressed a conference of probation professionals, speaking from the heart, telling them how somebody like him, with 75 convictions, one for grievous bodily harm, scores of assaults, dangerous driving and car crime, has found a new vision and is living a new life thanks to Second Chance.

Graham says: "Matty used to tell me what I could do with my life and
what opportunities he could offer me if I played my cards right and I took the bull by the horns.

"He has helped get me through and now I am doing mentoring work with other young people. I am still known in South Tyneside and people meet me and can't believe who I am."

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