Tell you about it? Look here, I was a man once

Tell you about it? Look here, I was a man once. I’m a beast now, and they made me what I am.
(a) What is ‘it’ in the above lines?
(b) What has been done to the convict?
© Which word in this extract means the same as ‘regarding’?

(a) ‘It’ here means the duration of the imprisonment of the convict which the Bishop wants to know more about.
(b) The prison authorities made the convict a wild animal by their inhuman treatment of him.
© The word is ‘about’.