Achi news desk-
More than a million criminals have been imprisoned within the grim gray walls of Barlinnie over the decades, either to serve a sentence or to await trial.
Located in Riddrie, in the east end of Glasgow, Scotland’s largest prison has not changed much since it first opened its doors in August, 1882.
The prison mainly houses men who have been convicted at the High Court in Glasgow and the city’s Sheriff Court including those who have been sentenced to life for murder. However, most serve four years or less for less serious offences.
Concerns have long been expressed about the state of Barlinnie Prison, with the Victorian jail due to be replaced in the next three years.
Last month appearing before the Public Scrutiny Committee at Holyrood, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, Wendy Sinclair-Gieben said the prison was overcrowded and at risk of catastrophic failure. The governor of the prison, Michael Stoney, made a similar warning in August last year.
Read more: Days of rage: Inside the Barlinnie prison siege in January 1987
After years of neglect, Barlinnie is set to finally close its doors by 2027, once a new £400 million scheme is complete.
Over the years the prison has had as many nicknames as prisoners. It is known variously as BarL, Bar Hell, the Big Hoose, or simply CEM Barlinnie.
One thing that could never be said about the prison is that it serves “soft touch” justice.
However, that was the charge thrown when Barlinnie first opened its doors.
Then Queen Victoria was on the throne and Britain with her empire spanning a quarter of the world ruled the airwaves. However, the prison was making waves of its own.
It was called a revolution in prisoner rehabilitation and penal reform when prisoners first moved into their newly built ‘A’ Hall. Prisoners were given their own cells for the first time and offered classes in baking, blacksmithing, plumbing, carpentry and shoemaking.
At one point in the early 19th century the city had been home to eight prisons, each serving the local areas where they were located. But by the time the “super jail” was proposed there were only two left, namely Heol y Dug prison and South Prison on Glasgow Green.
At that time the city’s population was on the rise, with a consequent increase in crime. The authorities identified a 33 acre farm site in Riddrie which they bought for the princely sum of £9750 – around £1 million today. At the time it seemed ideal for the purpose.
Today the prison is in the middle of a busy built up residential area surrounded by a large number of flats, houses, shops and other buildings. Riddrie was then considered a rural location, far from the busy tenements in the city center where crime was on the rise. The Monklands Canal which ran through the area – near where the M8 is now – provided a cheap and easy source of goods and services.
Barlinnie Farm, from which the prison took its name, was situated next to a quarry. There prisoners would work to move the stone used to complete the other four halls.
His futuristic plan at the time was Major General Thomas Bernard Collinson, an architect and engineer for the Scottish Prisons Department. When it was finally completed it became an imposing building in the east end of the city – a grim reminder of what lay ahead for those who broke the law.
Read more: Barlinnie prison escape: ‘You’re always looking for a way out’:
The first prisoners arrived at the prison in August 1882, which was big news at the time. One paper, The Evening Citizen, reported how the initial plan was to house 800 criminals in four blocks. The reporter was impressed by what he saw and wrote: “It is built of light colored sandstone and surrounded by a high white boundary wall, it has a huge imposing aspect and can be seen from all directions for quite distance.”
Barlinnie was then seen as a new ‘superjail’ eventually replacing all the others. The concept of prisoners having their own cells and being rehabilitated at the same time was new.
Things went well with the new prison getting a good inspection report in its first year. The prisoners were said to be in gainful employment and in good health. Barlinnie even had its own hospital where there was a surgeon and matron on duty. The food was described as “good quality”.
Of the 62 prison officers 19 were women for the first time ever. The idea was that the introduction of female officers would create more calm in what was then, as now, a hostile macho environment. There were also three full-time teachers to help improve the literacy of prisoners, many of whom could not read or write.
The new prison had a number of other innovations, including married quarters for 39 prison officers to encourage good quality recruits, a gymnasium and its own church. There were also early concessions to health and safety with the men working in the quarry being given gauze goggles to protect their eyes.
By the time it was completed in 1897 Barlinnie was seen as a shining example of modern penal reform, showing that society could create prisons where the public could be kept safe but also treat its criminals with compassion and concern.
However, even in the early days Barlinnie began to encounter problems.
The additional fifth block had to be built because the number of cells required exceeded expectations even then. Most of the male prisoners had been moved from the overcrowded Duke Street, while Glasgow Green prison had already closed. Over the years Barlinnie’s shiny new image began to fade as she struggled to cope with the demands made on her by the justice system.
The first public signs of trouble came in December 1934 when the prison was hit by a weekend riot which resulted in 20 court appearances. Things will never be the same again.
The closure of Duke Street in the mid-1950s put more pressure on what was now the city’s remaining prison. Since 1947 the prison had been used for all capital punishment cases in the city.
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Between 1947 and 1960 ten died in the infamous hanging shed in “D” Hall including a teenager, further adding to the hail’s notoriety and the hard evil. Tensions again reached a boiling point in the late 1980s due to allegations of brutality by prison officers, overcrowding, and poor food. It was only 20 years ago that the notorious practice of overcrowding, which caused much resentment among prisoners and prison officers alike, was stopped.
In 2017 it featured in a serious documentary by former EastEnders star Ross Kemp, who said after spending ten days there: “It’s a difficult place. It’s a violent place. People have been killed there.
In March 2019 the toilets in Hall B stopped flushing after the plumbing system came in due to overcrowding. Prisoners were given buckets of water to flush their waste by hand – almost a return to the old days of being overwhelmed.
In May 2020, Wendy Sinclair-Gieben first raised concerns, stating that the prison was “no longer fit for purpose” after rats were discovered in the grounds and cells that were condemned 25 years ago. back.
Equally staggering were the 1,489 men found in the prison, almost 50 percent more than Barlinnie was designed to hold. In 2018, it was announced that the prison would close – once a new one was completed. With an average of 8,000 new prisoners a year it was clearly taking many more prisoners than originally intended.
Permission was granted by Glasgow City Council in 2000 for a brand new facility near the famous Provan Gas Works in nearby Blackhill. It will hold up to 1,200 of the country’s most dangerous criminals and will be a far cry from the current Victorian jail.
The future of the existing Victorian building is still in doubt.
The likelihood is that the prison or land could be developed for a mix of private and social housing. However, Barlinnie historian and former Herald managing editor Bob Jeffrey has an alternative and believes the prison should be turned into a museum and could become a money-spinning tourist attraction.
Bob wrote a bestseller on Barlinnie and believes the majestic structure still has a future: “I’ve been to Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay and it attracts 1.4 million visitors a year.
“There’s no reason why Barlinnie couldn’t be just as successful. People would love to see the cells where all the famous prisoners were kept as they can at Alcatraz.
Read the full series here: Barlinnie: Scotland’s Super Prison Story
“In many ways, Barlinnie is as famous in Glasgow as Edinburgh Castle is in the capital with the same fascinating history. You could also use ex-prisoners to show visitors around as they do Alcatraz.”
Bob says the prison could have an educational role, including trips for school pupils, which could prevent them from a life of crime in the future. He added: “It’s hard to find someone in Glasgow who doesn’t know someone who has spent time in Barlinnie. I’m sure there will be great interest in seeing what a real life prison was like.”
Bob also believes that visitors to a museum in Barlinnie would boost the local economy and reposition the builders of the prison as visionaries, at a time when the public’s attitude towards prisoners was very negative.
“Those in charge of our prisons at the time came to the conclusion that, due to overcrowding in existing prisons, a new and massive prison was needed. It was progressive at a time when the public largely couldn’t care less about prison inmates credit the reformers that the plan for a new building went through.”
Bob believes that the new prison must prioritize rehabilitation, concluding: “It is truly sad to recognize in 2024 that at no time in its more than 140 years of existence has Barlinnie retained the numbers it was designed to handle consistently.
“What chance has rehabilitation really had in all these years?
“Any dreams the early prison reformers had of Barlinnie as a place where offenders could be steered back onto a productive and legal life path were dashed by overcrowding. The fact is that the prison was overcrowded by a factor of at least 50 age.percent year on year.
“The dreams of the 1880s, of a stable and manageable prison population, have never been realized. That is something that is as surprising as it is depressing.”
