At 19, Lee Wakeham was staring down the barrel of his second prison sentence, with a three year stint in Strangeways in front of him. Determined to turn his life around, he spent the day of his release ringing recruitment agencies until he found a job fitting screws into floodlights and knuckled down. Lee, 42, is now heading up the organisation’s HMPasties project, a social enterprise aiming to transform former prisoners’ lives - through baking. Producing quality, handcrafted pastries using ingredients sourced from prison farms, HMPasties will employ ex-offenders fresh out of custody, giving them the skills and support to build a life and career on the outside.Its first full time member of staff is 23-year-old Nathan Modlinsky, who has recently served time for GBH. Like Lee, he saw the sentence as a wake-up call and used his time inside wisely. Together he and Lee make traditional Cornish-style pasties, cheese and onion bakes and veggie samosas, selling them at markets including Didsbury and Chorlton Makers Markets and Wigan Artisan Market, as well as at FC United’s home games.
