The Barlinnie Story

by Robert Jeffrey

  Eddie Simpson is concerned about the levels of methadone necessarily prescribed to the prison population. His comment on the drug is, ‘I hate it.’ But considering the abuse of drugs out of jail by the inmates, the temptation of smuggling the stuff into it and the on-going addiction problems, it is not a problem that is going to go away, nor one with an easy solution.

  Also of concern to Eddie is the notion of many not involved in prison work that the solution to violent crime, indeed any form of crime, is to lock ‘em up and throw away the key. He thinks the general public has got to learn that prison must be made to work for our society. A regime that does not have redemption at its heart, whether or not in the full religious sense, is bound to fail and fail at a huge cost to society. Unreformed prisoners on release simply go back into their old ways and society pays the cost of increased security, more policing, higher insurance premiums, fear of burglary or attack in the streets. It is in everyone’s interest to make the prison experience something that cuts down re-offending and it is not just the concern of those dismissed as do-gooders. Everyone benefits when prison works. The role of the prison chaplains may not be something that gets much media exposure. But there can be no more rewarding job than trying to give a sense of self worth back to men and boys who have reached a physical and emotional nadir. Prison governors down the decades owe a great debt to their chaplains. And so does society.

  6

  DOG BOXES, CHAMBER POTS AND COMPENSATION

  Barlinnie is a place of many adjectives. If ‘iconic’ is indeed the word most apt to describe the place in general terms and ‘sensational’ the natural way to describe the various attacks on staff, rooftop riots and assorted exercise yard rumbles down the year,s then ‘disgusting’ and ‘degrading’ are the only words for one prison practice now thankfully swept away: slopping out. But to remove this blot on the penal system took many years, much money paid to lawyers, much time in court and much hand wringing by politicians. For anyone who has been on holiday on Planet Zog for the past ten years or so and not aware what was going on, the practice of slopping out can be simply explained – lock away a couple of prisoners in a tiny cell for ten hours or so with no access to toilets, hand washing, clean towels or disinfectant and let them defecate and urinate in front of each other into what are essentially buckets. If that is not enough of a torture, let the vile smell from an individual prisoner’s cell mix with the stench from dozens of others during the long nights locked up.

  Before taking a look at this practice and how it was finally ended it is important to say that the prison staff, too, suffered from a regime that allowed slopping out to go on for so long. And that in the whole sorry story it seems that what the staff suffered in administering the slopping out routines has been largely ignored. The prisoners grabbed most of the headlines. But it was the prisoners who benefited financially – as well as in terms of hygiene – from the change in policy that eventually put toilets into every cell. The effect on staff – not exactly high earners for the most part – seems to have been swept under the figurative carpet.

  Even if most of the headline coverage of slopping out featured the effect on inmates, it should not be forgotten that it was the officers who had to supervise the emptying of buckets into foul smelling drains morning after morning. As one joked to me, a regular issue of clothes pegs, noses for the use of, would have been appropriate.

  The award of financial compensation for the damage caused by slopping out to one prisoner, Robert Napier, sparked claims galore from inmates, but it did also provoke the prison officers themselves to consider that their human rights had been breached by supervising and watching the slopping out process. It was worked out by the Prison Officers Association that since the European Court of Human Rights was embodied in the Scottish Constitution in 1999, at least 2,000 people had had to work in prisons, including Barlinnie, where slopping out took place. The POA said staff had to endure degrading working conditions including daily exposure to the stench of human waste. Interestingly, slopping out had been banned in England and Wales as long ago as 1996. The anger of the Scottish officers, and their thirst for compensation, was no doubt partly fuelled by reports that at one stage the Scottish Prison Service had admitted that it had increased a fund to pay a flood of slopping out compensation claims from prisoners from £26m to £44m, a whacking 70% rise. They also made the point that the campaign to end the practice had been going on for at least 15 years and successive Labour and Tory governments had done nothing about it.

  The anger of the officers was well represented by one spokesman of their union who said: ‘It is a vile, reprehensible thing to witness. Staff have to stand near the basins watching people slop out and you can imagine what it is like first thing in the morning.’ He went on: ‘There have been lots of occasions when inmates would deliberately throw the contents at the prison warders. It is a degrading, horrible thing to happen to you.’ It poses the thought that there are no comparable jobs where, in doing the bidding of society to protect it from criminals, you end up dodging buckets of faeces and urine thrown at you by violent criminals. Cash just doesn’t compensate for that.

  The whole issue had been under discussion for years. But a report in 2002 estimated that 1,900 prisoners in Scottish establishments were still slopping out. Peterhead was a particular problem because of the design of the prison and the materials used to build it. The next year the report on the inspection of Barlinnie painted a picture of conditions in the prison at that time. The report contained some plus points and highlighted the ‘good relationships between staff and prisoners, and a determination by staff to cope with very high numbers.’ But it pointed out that slopping out remained in two of the giant halls. It also underlined the fact that some prisoners were locked up for very long periods of time and many of the prisoners in the very bad conditions had not been convicted of a crime but were being held in Barlinnie on remand. The slopping out system is totally indefensible, but it seems almost beyond belief that just a handful of years ago men awaiting trial and therefore technically innocent should be subjected to such barbaric conditions.

  Scotland’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, Andrew McLellan, said that the prison had made progress since the last inspection, but despite significant investment, it had not yet changed enough.

  Dr McLellan continued: ‘Overcrowding and the issue of drugs, particularly the provision of medication, pervade much of the prison’s work. This report makes a very positive assessment of much good work being carried out to deal with addiction problems.

  ‘It also concludes that staff are determined to deal with the very high numbers, and not merely cope, but generally seek to develop relationships with prisoners which are relaxed and humane.

  ‘However, some prisoners are still locked up for very long periods of time (sometimes up to 23 hours a day) in very poor conditions. Slopping out exists in two Halls and most of the prisoners who have no integral sanitation are also the victims of the chronic overcrowding: so nearly all of these prisoners are sharing a cell. The “holding” cubicles in Reception are not acceptable.’ These are the cells the cons called dog boxes, though in reality no person with any decent instincts would even put a dog into them.

  He went on to praise the efforts to make useful work accessible to the convicted prisoners in addition to good work on education and other aspects of the regime. The halls that had already been refurbished were said to have provided conditions that were clean and decent. But the number of assaults in the prison was said to be high. However, there had been no escapes since the last inspection.

  But Dr McLellan was not finished with slopping out – he reported, ‘Overall, levels of overcrowding, movements of prisoners in and out of the prison, and the issue of drugs make the day to day running of the prison difficult and can lead to a reduction in regime. The practice of “slopping out” has been repeatedly condemned in Inspectorate reports; yet it still exists in two Halls in Barlinnie. That could affect up to a maximum of 425 prisoners.
The practice should be stopped.’

  Incidentally Scotland’s prisons are subject to regular inspection. A full inspection normally takes place every three years and examines all aspects of the establishment. Follow-up inspections are carried out in years where a full inspection does not take place and these examine points of note raised in previous inspections, significant changes since then, and explore issues arising from the establishment’s own self-assessment.

  The slopping out story, however, really began to grip popular interest when Glasgow’s legions of avid newspaper readers were informed over their cornflakes that the previously mentioned Robert Napier, in the Bar-L on remand in 2001, had raised a legal challenge to being made to slop out under the European Convention of Human Rights. ‘So what?’ some of the hard-nosed readers might have thought, but even if they weren’t in sympathy with the plight of jailbirds on humanitarian grounds, some readers were no doubt incensed on the fiscal front – Napier wanted five grand from the taxpayer. At the time of his claim he was in Barlinnie after failing to appear at the High Court on robbery, assault and abduction charges.

  He said he found the conditions in the jail’s C-Hall depressing and disgusting and they had resulted in a diminishment of his human dignity. He also said he suffered from eczema and that the slopping out had aggravated this medical condition. And in April 2004, three years after the initial complaint, Lord Bonomy, in a 100-page ruling, awarded him nearly half what he had claimed – £2,400. The noble lord found that slopping out violated articles three and eight of the European convention and the common law ‘duty of care’. On the violation of article three he said: ‘I am entirely satisfied that the petitioner was exposed to conditions of detention which taken together, were such as to damage his human rights, his human dignity and to arise in him feelings of anxiety, anguish, inferiority and humiliation.’ Lord Bonomy could not have been clearer.

  At this time the prison service was in the expensive process of phasing out the practice. Massive sums were involved – you do not simply wave a wand overnight and put toilets and wash hand basins in the hundreds of cells designed by the Victorians and built in solid blocks of stone. Providing basic facilities was enormously expensive and difficult. But it had to be done. At the time of the Napier judgement the Scottish National Party declared the decision of Lord Bonomy to be ‘inevitable’ and aimed to score a few political points by saying the Executive had been dragging its feet by not doing enough to end the practice earlier. Their then Justice Spokesperson Nicola Sturgeon said: ‘This case was only ever going to go one way and now the Executive face hundreds of claims for compensation from other prisoners. Because of a failure to invest in prison conditions, they now face having to make compensation payments to convicted prisoners. A public figure with some experience of jails, as a political protester, Tommy Sheridan, then of the Scottish Socialist Party, called for an immediate end to slopping out. In jail for failing to pay Poll Tax, he said he had experienced the utter humiliation of the practice.

  The long-awaited headline, ‘Slopping out ends at Barlinnie’ finally arrived on a million or so breakfast tables in August 2004, years after the ‘humiliation’ of Robert Napier. But the practice did continue for some months in other jails: Polmont, Perth, Saughton and Peterhead. However, Tony Cameron for the Prison Service said he was delighted that slopping out in Barlinnie had ended 122 years after its first block opened. ‘This achievement has been made possible by the record level of investment in the Scottish Prison Service by the Scottish Executive supplemented by savings which SPS has made by becoming more efficient.’ He added that, at the time in 2004, the total capital investment by SPS in the prison estate was running at almost £2m a week.

  For the Scottish government, the then Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson said the ending of slopping out in the Bar-L was an important one for the prison service: ‘This Executive is committed to improving the conditions in the prison estate we inherited.’ She went on to point out that there had been sustained investment and that steps were being taken to accelerate reforms to improve conditions and make better use of custody. Aware of the public antipathy to anything that looked like going soft on crime, she made a pre-emptive strike: ‘This is not about making life softer for offenders. Investment in fair prison conditions will also contribute to improved public safety. It’s about giving experienced, professional prison staff the environment they need to effectively tackle the offending behaviour that brings too many repeat offenders back into jail time and time again.’

  The decisions on how we run our jails and deal with lawbreakers are much influenced by politicians and they almost never agree on anything. So no surprise then that when Annabel Goldie for the Tories did acknowledge that she was glad slopping out was history she also added a few warning notes. She worried about ‘floodgates’ of potential claims opening in other prisons where the archaic practice still went on. She said: ‘Sadly a life of crime sometimes does pay under this government. If they are not letting you out of jail early under the ludicrous automatic early release scheme, they are letting you escape from court, and now they might pay you for slopping out.’ That’s politics.

  Fears about the knock-on effect of the Napier decision were well founded. In the spring of 2009 the financial cost was still rising. Where it will end is anyone’s guess. There was a spell when it looked as if the problem could be contained. As the cons queued to make claims, the Executive tried to cut its losses believing that it was protected, to some extent at least, by a one-year time bar on claims under the European Convention of Human Rights. With the papers full of stories on what was becoming a bit of a farce, albeit one that angered the taxpayer, the politicians tried to cut their losses and a settlement was reached with 190 prisoners, which cost less than half a million pounds – chicken feed compared with the fears that the cost would run into millions.

  But there was a shock to come in 2007 when the highest appeal court in the UK decided that the one-year time bar was not a runner in this case, raising the possibility that Scottish ministers could be sued for human rights breaches that occurred any time from 1999 onwards. It appears that though the Human Rights Convention had the one-year limit, nonetheless there is no time bar for cases brought under the Scotland Act and the Law Lords, in a 3-2 ruling, said the latter legislation should prevail. This ruling on a particular case was based not on slopping out directly, but on four men kept in segregation in prison – Andrew Somerville, Ricardo Blanco, Sammy Ralston – a man with a major place in Barlinnie history – and David Henderson. These men had claimed their human rights had been abused when they were forced to live in segregated conditions without recourse to representation. The overruling of the original 2006 belief that they were time barred seems to have changed the rules more than somewhat. Their case could now go ahead.

  At the time of writing, figures released showed that 3,737 slopping out claims had been settled at a cost of more than £11m and more than a thousand were currently being dealt with. Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill was frustrated and angry over Westminster’s lack of action to close what some thought was a legal loophole on the matter of slopping out compensation. The whole business was becoming a nasty soap opera. What a mess on mess. And it could have been avoided if slopping out had been abolished many many years ago, as it would have been in a truly civilised society.

  Also back in 2007 came a graphic report of an inspection by the authorities on the current state of affairs in the Bar-L. Barlinnie, it pointed out, is the largest prison in Scotland. The prisoners living there account for 20% of the total population in the system. One hall in Barlinnie can hold more prisoners than many other prisons. The report then moved on to the overcrowding situation, saying the prison has a design capacity of 1,018. In the period 1 April 2006 to 28 July 2006 the average daily population was 1,456: 43% above the design capacity. The Scottish Prison Service now contracts prisons to take a specified number of prisoners and for Barlinnie the figure is up to 1,222 prisoners. On top of this there
are an agreed additional 417 prisoner places: a total of 1,639. But the design capacity remains at 1,018! And all this more than 100 years after the place was built.

  The 2007 report stated bluntly: ‘The damage caused by overcrowding and high prisoner numbers has been well documented in previous Inspectorate reports. Barlinnie has tried to manage these problems, but there is no obvious respite in the short-term. Over and above the sheer volume of prisoners, two other points are worth mentioning. Barlinnie has a complex population of various sentence types including 450–500 prisoners on remand at any one time. It also has to cope with an extremely ‘needy’ population of prisoners; many of the prisoners have a combination of addiction, behavioural and physical and mental health problems. The prison is currently coping with these issues.’ That may be true, but the conditions are still horrendous. Ironically, the ending of slopping out has added to the problem in some aspects.

  In A-Hall for example the report said there are 187 cells on four floors. ‘261 prisoners were living in 181 of these cells at the time of inspection. The floor space in each cell has been reduced because they have all been fitted with a toilet inside a cubicle. There is also a sink in each cell as well as a power point, television and kettle.

  The reference to the television is interesting. The papers recently were getting themselves and their readers into a froth of anger about the ‘luxury’ of flat-screen TVs for prisoners. Is there any other kind now? And in any case the screens are small. Luxury is not a word to be used lightly in the context of Barlinnie.