For many years now, self-criticism sessions have been par for the course as the guilty ones wait to meet the executioner. Now Beijing prison officials have a broadcasting arrangement to spread this regretful word further.

With a makeshift studio set up in a prison cell, the sorrowful inmate is wheeled in and interviewed by another prisoner. The message to his fellow jailbirds is always the same: Don't do what I did. Mend your ways before it's too late.

'Before my death, I want to tell my friends in prison and other prisoners to be self-disciplined after you leave prison, and think about your family before committing any crime,' said a murderer, recently, who was about to be put to death by lethal injection.

Regardless of whether inmates heed the lesson, they lap up the footage. And the way the condemned prisoners handle themselves as they sit in the shadow of death keeps the gossip in the cells flowing for days.

'The words of a man who is about to die are the most honest he has ever uttered,' explained a prison official.

The prison experiment started two years ago in Beijing's Tianhe prison when a group of eight inmates put together 500 yuan and were allowed to set up a mini studio.

The media world being rife with corruption, the prison was never lacking professional talent to film, edit and present the shows. A former B-grade actress by the name of An Hua was selected to be the glamorous star in front of the camera, and it seems she can give a long-term commitment to the project - after being sent down for 14 years for embezzlement.

The Beijing Prison Administrative Bureau liked what it saw in Tianhe and recently expanded the broadcasts to 13 prisons in the city, with an audience of 17,000 viewers.

Apart from the 'dying words' section, they send prisoners-turned-reporters around the cells, under careful watch by guards, to hunt for snippets of jailhouse news.

There's a segment that shows interviews with new kids on the prison block, and a nostalgic part where lifers speak about what they miss about home. Titbits of prison news are also covered in detail, from new rules and regulations for the inmates to changes in the canteen menu.

Another feature is On The Outside, which tells inmates what's going on in the society beyond their walls.

'We have to keep them informed about the real world. Otherwise, it would be too much of a shock when they leave,' the prison official said.

'China is changing so quickly. If we don't keep them up to date they will have no idea of where they are or how to behave in the modern society when their sentence is served.'

An official with the prison's media programme recently told Xinhua that the project was an important tool in the system's efforts to re-educate the inmates.

Officials are thinking about bringing these broadcasts to all prisons around the country. And why not? It's surely material the prison community must find truly captivating.

Peter Goff is a Beijing-based journalist