What is it actually like in a Scottish prison? In the previous two articles in The Firm’s prison series we spoke to Clive Fairweather, the longest-serving Inspector of Scottish Prisons. Here In this concluding article Ian Mitchell reports on a visit to Shotts Prison on what life behind bars is really like.

I should perhaps declare an interest: I have been in prison myself. Admittedly it was only for an afternoon and I was on a political rather than a criminal rap, but John Vorster Square in the 1970s, when Steve Biko was killed there, had, shall we say, an atmosphere of its own. The moaning of the injured black prisoners and the rattling of the tin, dog- dish-like plates on the concrete floors of the cells brings back one of the less happy memories of my youth.
Since then the nearest I have come to prison is listening to the howls of black prisoners being beaten up in the cells of Hammersmith police station in London, in the early hours of a Sunday morning in the late 1970s, when I was being charged with a road traffic offence. The food was probably a little better in Hammersmith than in John Vorster Square, but the nasty cocktail of racism and thuggery seemed little different. Since returning to Scotland 20-years ago my life has been mercifully free of prison experience. But I have heard a great deal about it. My father, representing his home village of Dollar on the Clackmannanshire Council in retirement, had occasion to be shown round Glenochil Prison in the early 1990s. He said it was the most depressing experience of his life.
A friend who wrote a book about serving a long sentence in many of the better known prisons in Scotland around the same time – the book is Easy Money? by Boyd Keen – painted a similar picture. The food was awful, the inmates violent, the prisoner officers sadistic, the regime mind-numbingly boring and the efforts at rehabilitation laughable. My friend contracted cancer of the spine while in prison and, because of inadequate medical care, his condition became terminal and he died in pain within two years of being released.
More recently I have spoken to judges who have told me that prisons are universities of crime to which they are reluctant to send first-time convicts, especially if they are young. Other judges have asked me whether I can imagine the smell of a prison: “It is something that you will never forget. It stays with you for days, like the odour of burnt flesh.”
In the course of his recent interviews with The Firm, Clive Fairweather described that smell. “It is like a pet shop,” he said. “It smells like caged animals, damp socks, sweat, tobacco – you could still smoke in jail – fat, fear and cleaning fluids.”
So what is it actually like, descending into what sounds like the Inferno?
Colin Boyd – that is not the prisoner’s real name – was lying on his bed in his cell in Shotts Prison’s B Hall reading a Len Deighton novel when I walked past. His door was open and the Deputy Governor, Malcolm McLennan, who was showing me round, asked him if I might have a “wee keek” inside.
“Nae bother!” Colin said, smiling.
I noticed he did not get up off his bed and snap to attention as would have been mandatory in John Vorster Square and probably advisable in Hammersmith, especially if you were black.
I also noticed that he and the Deputy Governor chatted amiably while I looked round at the television, which was showing Sky, and the expensive-looking sound system and CD stack. Colin had a conventional-looking lavatory and wash-hand basin, plus a range of toiletries on a shelf. He had a writing desk, and a large, though opaque and thickly barred, window above his bed. He was reading by natural light, even though it was a misty, dull afternoon.
Colin uses the gym a lot and likes to supplement the prison diet with the mineral water and non-canteen food which he had stacked up underneath his desk. The Scottish Executive allows a catering budget of £1.67 per prisoner per day, which has to include fresh fruit and vegetables. Consequently, money is tight, so the prison bakes its own bread, makes its own pies and generally improvises. Many of the inmates work in the kitchens and so understand the constraints.
Colin was dressed in running shorts and sandals and looked fit and cheerful. He attends an anger management course and drug rehabilitation and has an agreed plan for serving his six-year sentence. That plan, devised by the prison staff, seemed to me to have two basic purposes.
The first is to keep the prison quiet by ensuring the prisoners are reasonably contended. The technique is to give them something to look forward to, even if it is only an unusual meal on Burns Night or a visit and talk from a public-spirited celebrity like Ian Rankin.
The second purpose of the plan is to educate the prisoners. Though there are many opportunities for book learning and the acquisition of manual skills in the jail, that is not what is meant by education in this context. The prison authorities seek to help a prisoner finish his sentence quickly and also to provide ways of living outside which will not tempt the prisoner into acts that might return him to jail. It is education for life, in the true sense of the word.
To my mind, the only aspect of the prison which was as unpleasant when it need not have been was the exercise area. This was a tarmac square surrounded by buildings. It had no view and no opportunity for connecting with nature, surely one of the best ways of soothing the troubled soul?
Shotts Prison has a reputation for violence, having had three serious ‘incidents’ in the last seven years, the most recent of which, four years ago, involved 80 long-term prisoners rioting and seizing control of two halls of the prison for 19 hours. It is true that conditions in Shotts have improved in recent years, and certainly they are nothing like they were in the days when prisons were staffed by ex-army men, not a few of whom sound as if they had discipline fixations. The reality is, so far as I can see, that you could hardly have an easier atmosphere in prison than prevails in Shotts today without abandoning the basic concept of prison, which is deprivation of liberty.
The further reality is that deprivation of liberty, in however ‘cushy’ a situation, is hard to bear, especially if you know it is going to last for years, without any hope of respite. Freedom-minded men would riot in paradise if they were forced to endure years of ‘luxury’ but without any prospect of control over their lives. In a sense we should be glad that prisoners riot: at least they are still human.
But it is the rioting, and like disturbances, that give ammunition to the tabloid press which wants to make prison conditions harsh again, as they were in the brutal 1980s and before. This is a profound paradox. In the name of ‘British’ values, one of which is a love of freedom, the right-wing tabloid press expects its own convicts to submit like oriental slaves to discipline of the sort favoured by the sadists of John Vorster Square and Hammersmith.
Perhaps there is a practical reason for this, though it is one which does no credit to the media’s reputation for social responsibility. Malcolm McLennan told me about one reporter whom he showed round the prison while researching a feature piece for one of the tabloids. That reporter said, on leaving, what an unexpectedly civilised place he found Shotts to be.
“I hope you’ll say that in your article,” McLennan said.
“There won’t be an article,” the reporter said.
“Why not?”
“Everything’s fine. There’s no story.”