Peterhead (20 page)

Some years after his release a senior officer thought it might be an idea for him to return and discuss with his captors his life in the jail. It was a controversial and brave move on the part of the prison officer who organised it. The meeting was hardly a sell-out. Many officers, senior and junior, chose not to attend. Bitter memories of the bad old days were too strong. I was told Boyle was listened to in virtual silence and there was no flood of questions when he ended. Did he apologise, I asked the man who organised the event. “Well, yes,” was the answer . . . “though not in as many words.” That is the complexity of Boyle. But at least he turned up. And at least he was asked to return to the prison.

His book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in crime, its causes and prevention. And it gives an interesting view of the prison and life in it from a man who, no matter your opinion of him as a human being, is a good communicator. As a kid he was in and out of all sorts of supposedly reforming institutions for the would-be hard man. But reform was not on his agenda though it has to be acknowledged he was badly mistreated in some of these institutions in the tough old days before social work became a decently caring profession. Boyle was born into a criminal family, not uncommon in Glasgow. Indeed one Glasgow governor told me of guys who ended there doing time in cells occupied in the past by their fathers and grandfathers and maybe in one of the other halls in the Big Hoose in the east end where an uncle or two stayed awhile. Indeed Boyle was sent north to Peterhead largely to put distance between him and a brother who was facing a murder charge in Glasgow. Apart from his own murder charge, Boyle had been involved in shebeens and money lending and all sorts of gangsterism.

On arrival “up north” in 1967 he was straight into the punishment block described earlier. He was a Rule 36 con from day one, though he claimed he did not know the reason why. In these cells, smaller than normal, he claimed you could barely spread your hands wide. In the book he moans about the hostile attitude of warders, the constant tension between prisoners and staff. A regime that discouraged any unnecessary conversation.

He did, of course, find himself in the company of old friends from the Gorbals. But that was not a wholly welcome state of affairs, as at that time staff seemed to him to be prejudiced against prisoners from Scotland’s toughest city. Not too surprising, since the Glaswegians could be described as the cream of the troublemakers, and they had a tendency to form into rival “teams” just like they did out on the streets. These mini gangs were constantly looking for fights. This sort of behind bars gangland was, of course, a major problem for the officers to deal with.

Boyle’s first memories of Peterhead were of the noise of chamber pots bashing on doors. The warders’ first memories of him would be defecating on the floor, urinating everywhere and anywhere and throwing away meals. He was, in his own words, a walking time bomb. And that bomb would go off with some regularity.

Boyle’s hatred of his captors could be fearsome, and he was ready at every opportunity to use his fists. Thumping a prison warder brought out a heavy mob in coloured overalls and a beating, he says. It was a bit of a pattern in his life behind bars and he says he received many a beating in Inverness and Peterhead. But punishment for his violence seemed to have little effect. Punishment by the ordinary prison regime did nothing to alter his ways. He was beyond that. His stay behind bars was a catalogue of fighting the enemy – society in general and prison officers in particular.

The founding of the Barlinnie Special Unit which was the salvation of him and others was sparked by the astonishingly high level of attacks on officers and dirty protests in Peterhead. The press reported sporadically on the most extreme events, like hostage taking, attacks on warders and claims of “batter squads,” but underneath these headline-making events there was a sort of daily war going on. The cons serving the longest terms, the lifers and no hopers, were gathered together on the edge of the cold North Sea and largely left to fester. The key was not actually thrown away (as many of the public would like it to have been) but it might as well have been. Relationships between captor and the caged were so far gone as to be seemingly irreparable. In a normal jail a wee kindness like a warder getting a prisoner an extra book or a wee treat of a chocolate biscuit or whatever was unremarkable. In Peterhead there were two sides in a war dug into psychological trenches staring at each other in mutual hatred and fear. Something had to give. And for a while the solution to the problem was the Special Unit down in Glasgow.

Psychologists and deep thinkers at the head of the prison service, and top civil servants in Edinburgh, realised that the missing ingredient in the whole mess up north was hope. They took the innovative step of doing something about it. The idea that a talent for art, be it sculpture or painting or writing, would solve any of Peterhead’s problems had not been given any real thought up to this time. Indeed in the history of the Special Unit it is often remarked that educational facilities and such things as art classes were notably missing in the Peterhead prison regime. Requests for the provision of such facilities were refused.

If in many of Britain’s prisons there was a new sense of growing humanitarianism and the belief a new way to treat offenders was needed, it was taking a long time to spread to the far North-East of Scotland. But eventually here, too, change was afoot. One of the main men behind the change of thinking was the late Ken Murray, a man from the north who was an experienced prison officer and who knew at first hand what the removal of hope could mean to a man in jail. Reports were written and seminars held. Good brains in the field of psychology were consulted. And eventually the decision to form a groundbreaking unit in Glasgow for a small number of the worst of the Peterhead troublemakers was taken. Until then these men had faced a future with no future. Now they were to be held in a group in a place where there was much more freedom than in a normal prison and where the hand-picked staff worked with the thinkers behind a much more liberal prison regime. Here the accent was on education and humanity rather than simply banging cell doors shut. In one touching story an ex-Peterhead con told of his surprise when a Special Unit warder handed him a pair of scissors to use in the completion of a task. Someone was trusting him with a potential weapon – amazing.

The Glasgow unit opened in 1973 and was a remarkable success till it withered slowly over the years and was closed in 1995 amid accusations of drug taking and cosy visits by females that went a lot further than chats across a table overseen by officers. But some of the more humane ideas that fuelled the Unit transferred successfully to other prisons on its closure. Whatever the controversies that still whirl around this world-famous penal experiment it is undeniable that in Hugh Collins and Jimmy Boyle, in particular, it uncovered men of real artistic talent who had spent years dismissed and condemned by society. The transformation of Jimmy Boyle from caged and dangerous animal into a favourite of the white-wine-sipping galleries of Edinburgh art circles is truly astounding. Told as a work of fiction you would have shaken your head in disbelief.

Some of the new thinking could be seen in the final days at Peterhead, where you could visit the education room – which has now an art teacher – and stroll the corridors admiring the work of the cons hanging from the cream-coloured walls that give the place the look and feel of a hospital in the areas away from the cell blocks. The standard is exceptionally high and anyone who gets a look at the paintings in particular is prompted to ponder the strange connection between crime and artistic ability. How is it that the man who can chib a criminal rival without a twinge of conscience can produce works of art that can be accurate, tender, eye-catching, and thought provoking? The “why” may be a mystery but the “how” is easy to explain. That comes from teachers with a love of art and the ability to see that under the skin of a hard man there can be something of value. Such people will be in demand in the glossy new classrooms of HMP Grampian.

The Peterhead sex offenders unit has made lots of headlines down the years, some in places far from Scotland’s North-East. There has been both criticism and spectacular success for this remarkable specialised part of the Scottish prison system. The pioneering treatment of rapists and paedophiles made waves in many other penal systems. Particularly in regard to the work of Alec Spencer, who retired from the Scottish Prison Service in 2006 after an impressive career in which he was responsible for programmes involving, among other areas: addictions, mental health, social inclusion and resettlement and treatment work with sex offenders. He then became Honorary Professor in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Stirling University. A glittering career for the man who had a spell as governor of Peterhead from 1992–96.

A look at the backstory of the sex offenders unit is interesting. It took until 1954 before the gigantic breakwaters creating the harbour were fully completed. All the work down the years on this project was hugely worthwhile. Maritime engineering experts point out that not only did it fulfil its original task of saving lives of fishermen and whalers but when the oil boom came in the 1970s it was a huge advantage to the town. One expert wrote in 1984 that the breakwaters created an excellent entry to the lagoon that is Peterhead Bay and that “at no time has a fishing boat failed to make this harbour of refuge under storm conditions, and it is hoped that no one will change this situation by altering the breakwaters at the entrance.”

The best way to view the massive works is from the air, where you see clearly how the long fingers of rock march out from the shore to create the huge deep-water harbour of today. Those who toiled in the Admiralty yard and in the quarries could take back to their homes in the Central Belt, if they survived to taste freedom, the knowledge that they had contributed to a great humanitarian and engineering project. Mind you, human nature being what it is, I doubt if the villains who worked on the breakwaters and broke stone in the quarries ever thought very much on its value to society. They just wanted to get out.

The final completing of the breakwaters meant big changes at the prison as the work in the quarry and the Admiralty yard was phased out. In 1959 around twenty acres were added to the original area of the prison. The big idea was to use this land as an “industrial area” to provide work for prisoners who now no longer laboured in primitive fashion breaking stone in Stirling Hill quarry. The prisoners were not the only folk put out of work by the completion of the harbour. The divers in their old-fashioned brass helmets, tethered to a pump supplying oxygen, who laboured underwater for years helping to align the granite blocks of the breakwater were also out of a job, at least in Peterhead. These guys, when dressed for a day underwater, looked as if they would be more at home as pearl fishers rather than descending into the cold North Sea. Though they are now part of nautical history as sub aqua divers, the act of carrying air in cylinders on their backs now rules the undersea working world – especially round the rigs out in the North Sea just over the horizon from the harbour. In the Peterhead archives there is a fine picture of the final group of divers who worked on the breakwater. Sad to think that those iconic old helmets are a thing of the past, the brass polished and shiny as they gaze out at you from antique shops or museum cases.

The completion of the Harbour of Refuge meant that Peterhead took on the role of an ordinary prison. It became home to prisoners serving more than eighteen months who were deemed inappropriate to be sent to a training prison. This meant that in the 1970s and ’80s the jail was filled with difficult and recalcitrant prisoners. The good boys just intent on a quiet life, keeping their heads down and doing their time were sent elsewhere. The seeds of the major riots and hostage taking chronicled earlier in this book had been well and truly sown. Already there were intermittent calls for the closure of the prison – though it lasted around another thirty years. Prisoners took every chance they could to complain that the regime was violent and bruising. This was the heyday of The Hate Factory.

In 1979 a researcher at Stirling University, Russell Dobash, visited and in his report he said, “I was shocked by the austere environment. I have been in every other Scottish prison and the conditions in Peterhead are exceptional in the negative sense, far beyond what one would have expected. There is an urgent need for a change at Peterhead, in fact it should be considered whether it should still operate as a prison in this day and age . . . I don’t know if it can be improved without knocking the place down.”

Part of the problem was poor cells and generally accommodation that was not fit for purpose. Some of the cells were so small they were known as “iron lungs.” These were the ones that had been designed originally to hold a hammock rather than a bed. The remoteness of the prison from the Central Belt, which is where most of the inmates came from, was another disadvantage. This, of course, removed many prisoners from the civilising influence of regular family visits. Or at least made them more infrequent than would otherwise have been the case. It was a major drawback which in time was to contribute to the closing of the sex offenders unit. A list of the complaints about the place was drawn up around this time. It makes disturbing reading:

• Facilities for visits were poor.

• Education facilities were limited.

• Hygiene was considered deplorable: “Only two wash hand basins and two showers for forty men.”

• Prisoners did not receive regular and frequent changes of clothing, particularly underwear and bedding.

• Prisoners were still slopping out.

• Heating, ventilation and lighting in cells was considered poor.

Though the prison housed difficult prisoners there were also a number of prisoners who required protection. This was because they had fallen foul of one group of prisoners or another – the feuding “teams” of prisoners. Or because of the nature of their crimes such as paedophilia, rape, etc. The annexe of B Hall, which was separated from the main B Hall by a partition, was used to house up to twenty-one such prisoners.