Life as a corporate lawyer on the top floors of 101 Collins St is some distance from the daily concerns of Australia’s 40,000 incarcerated people.

But it was during a stint as a restructuring and insolvency lawyer at Allens that Melburnian Joseph Friedman and co-founder Rosie Heselev set in motion plans to begin the country’s first regular prison newspaper, the first edition of which was delivered to correctional facilities in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT this month.