Criminal

When Caspar Walsh was four years old his mother rejected him in favour of a boyfriend. His father became his primary carer. But Caspar's father wasn't classic dad material. He robbed banks. His currency was drugs and violence. Yet despite his unconventional, illegal lifestyle, he loved his son. That love couldn't protect Caspar from the harsh realities of the criminal world he inhabited; but it meant Caspar loved him back, looked up to him and emulated him.

CRIMINAL is the story of a wild childhood marked by violence and abuse and the absence of a father who was no stranger to prison. It's the story of how Caspar became part of his father's world: dealing drugs, doing drugs, doing time. It tells of his sexual abuse at the hands of a surrogate father, of his own father's eventual suicide and how he tried to take his own life, too. Ultimately, it's the story of how, as a young man, Caspar made the decision not to be a victim of his upbringing but to take control of his life, to rehabilitate himself and, by coming full circle to work with offenders, help to rehabilitate others.

Caspar Walsh is a regular writer for Radio 4, with broadcasts including the sixties gangster story Vincent Vices Rainbow and the acclaimed feature-length docudrama The Prison Father, which was based on his own experience of prison life. He regularly runs writing workshops both in and out of prisons that help offending fathers and their families in the rehabilitation process.