Authors: Robert Jeffrey
This was perhaps the start of the sex offenders unit. In the late 1980s when the prison service, with some help from the SAS, had got some semblance of real control of the place, it was decided to disperse many of the prisoners who had not been involved in the riots to other prisons such as Shotts, Perth and Glenochil. The hardcore were left behind and kept in their own cells on a “lock-down” basis. This was the era of officers in body armour managing the violent cons. The moving of some of the less nasty specimens in Peterhead to other jails meant that space had to be found for them and this meant sending some cons who were not vicious chip-on-their-shoulder hard men north. This changed the balance of life in The Hate Factory, diluting the aggro between groups. One effect was that vulnerable prisoners were able to move around the prison more freely as the cons who would most likely attack them were safely locked up. This allowed these prisoners to get involved in such tasks as cleaning and cooking.
But soon new arrangements meant that the prisoners who needed special protection were transferred to C Hall and there they were joined by forty prisoners who had been under protection in other prisons. Some short-term low-risk prisoners were also transferred from Aberdeen prison. This resulted in the difficult prisoners being held in four different locations in the prison. The most dangerous and difficult – the men judged by the prison authorities to be the most serious threat to staff – were held on the ground flat of B Hall. These were the men held under Rule 36, the hardest haters in The Hate Factory, the men out for revenge on society in general and prison staff in particular.
The daily strain of contact with men who were considered caged and dangerous “animals” cannot be underestimated and was no doubt a factor in the suicide of some prison officers who broke under the stress of working in such a jail.
A remaining group of problem prisoners was held on the two bottom flats of D Hall. They, unlike the Rule 36 men, were allowed to associate in pairs. The remaining two groups were held in the bottom flats of A and E Halls. At the same time as these constrictive and confrontational regimes were running the normal prison regime was available to vulnerable prisoners.
The last twenty-five years or so were a nightmare of uncertainty for the staff. There was abroad the feeling that the establishment had outstayed its usefulness and that it should close. Everyone who worked in the prison from the most humble new start officer to the top brass was concerned about the future. And the local community which had learned to live with a tough jail almost in the centre of town was also worried. The jail brought many financial benefits to the area, benefits that some estimates put as valuable as ten million pounds. There was a lot to play for.
As early as November 1991 senior staff appealed for an end to the uncertainty that surrounded the future of the prison since “the Troubles,” as the riots and unrest of the 1970s and ’80s were now called. There was no clear answer to the uncertainty of the long-term future, but a decision was taken to concentrate sex offenders in Peterhead. This was formally announced by the Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service in January 1992. In June of the same year the Chief Inspector of Prisons delivered a measure of criticism of the regimes faced by what was called the “difficult prisoner” group. However, he remarked favourably on the changes to the regime for vulnerable prisoners and remarked that it was superior to anything found elsewhere in the system.
But it was early days in the work of the sex offenders unit and the Chief Inspector noted that the management of the prisoners in it had hardly advanced beyond the embryonic stage in Scotland in terms of penal policy. He gave his support to the work envisaged for the development of the treatment of sex offenders in the prison and before the year was out classes and discussion groups for staff had started. An impressive array of experts in social work were at the prison helping get the unit off the ground. Among the experts was Canadian Professor Bill Marshall and the unit gradually evolved into something of a world leader in the field and attracted attention worldwide.
In 1992 Alec Spencer, at the time Director of Rehabilitation and Care for the Scottish Prison Service, chaired a group examining the whole area of treatment for sexual offenders. Among the other experts involved was Stuart Campbell. Stuart was Peterhead’s Prisoner Programme Manager and was to go on to become Deputy Governor and one of the senior staff in charge in 2013 as the jail ran down towards final closure.
Mike Hebden, the governor himself, had a major job on his hands as the replacement prison HMP Grampian was being planned and built and he would be working there after its opening. To free him up for his new role, Audrey Mooney was appointed governor for the last few months in the old jail.
The group produced an impressive document: The Spencer Report. The big argument was one that had bedevilled prison services in many countries. Should sex offenders be held and attempts to rehabilitate them made in a large “monoculture” establishment or in smaller units in mainstream prisons? Many of the same arguments surfaced in the case of the Barlinnie Special Unit. It is interesting that The Spencer Report came down strongly on one side: “Having examined the range of options we have concluded that the best environment for the delivery of programmes to address sexual offending is that to be found in a ‘single-purpose’ prison for Adult Male Sex Offenders. As well as optimising resources and treatment efficiency, it has a culture which is supportive of staff, prisoners and visitors.”
The Spencer Report had much to say as well about the conditions in such a single-purpose unit – naturally, decent sanitation (no slopping out) was high on the agenda but also the provision of adequate rooms for group work, interviews, case conferences, etc. Attention was also to be paid to good visiting areas, seminar facilities and a resource library. Most of this was notably absent from Peterhead, which despite its physical disadvantage was to continue for around another twenty years and achieve much success and admiration from other people working in the field. That says a lot about the dedication and ability of the folk who took on the largely thankless double task of protecting the public from a most dangerous type of criminal and attempting some degree of rehabilitation.
It is interesting that though the Spencer Report did advocate a “single-use” prison for sex offenders it also noted some alternative arguments. It advocated the importance of Throughcare, of which contacts with communities and families are a crucial part. On this issue it said, “Thus the optimal location is one which is as close to home areas of offenders as can be organised within the requirement to provide a ‘single-purpose’ prison.”
The one-time Chief Inspector of Prisons, Clive Fairweather, was another to want the unit retained in full in Peterhead. As was the North-East MP Alex Salmond, Scotland’s current First Minster, though to be fair to him his major concern was probably to maintain a large “ordinary” prison in the area for economic reasons. The prison was a major employer in the area and there were all sorts of spin-off benefits to the community: the provision of fresh food, etc. One student of the penal system told me that “the First Minister’s designation of Peterhead as ‘the jewel in the crown of the Scottish prison service’ overstated the case somewhat!” Cynics using social media filled large areas of cyber space commenting on the value of the prison in jobs and cash to the folk of Banff and Buchan. No harm in fighting hard for your constituents, I would say, and there is no doubt that Alex Salmond did that.
As it happens, a new single-use prison for sex offenders was never built, largely because it could not be visitor-friendly and suitable for Throughcare. So with the closure of Peterhead imminent the convicts in its special unit were dispersed to other prisons. But the good work done in Peterhead and the expertise built up will not be wasted but put to good use in other establishments. It is also interesting to note that with regard to dispersal strategy of sex offenders, England and Wales rejected the concentration policy in favour of dispersal as long ago as the 1960s.
Alex Spencer’s intellectual “take” on what went on in the institution during and after his time would, however, you suspect, not always chime with the opinions of the general public. A case in point would be the affair of the trendy pillows! This storm in a sewing basket broke out in 2010 when the
Daily Record
ran an exclusive headlined: “Charity Pays Pervert Prisoners £60 for Sewing Cushions.” It seems that prisoners in the sex offenders unit were “cashing in” on the demand for trendy cushions and earning £60 a pop for cushions and such like that were sold by an organisation called Fine Cell Work for around £150 a time.
Embroidery experts from Fine Cell Work were said to travel to prisons in Scotland and England to hold specialist workshops. It was certainly all rather different from the ’70s when, as mentioned earlier in this book, the Glasgow Godfather and his cronies behind bars made soft toys for the world-famous Sick Children’s Hospital in Glasgow. Walter Norval and his mates bought the cloth and stuffing from their own prison wages. It was not a money-making operation. This minor row over the pillows is an indication that sometimes what went on in the sex offenders unit went a tad too far for the man and woman in the street: witness the anger in the Twitter-sphere when the pillow scheme became public. It was all a bit reminiscent of the furore created by the teaching of creative writing, painting and sculpture in the old Barlinnie Special Unit. Some outside the bars have no stomach for any ploy, however well meaning, that equates with what they call a cushy life inside a prison, especially a sex offenders unit.
But what was it really like in the place that held paedophiles, serial killers and rapists? A row over a few fancy cushions is swatted into insignificance by the reality. In its final days the unit was highly praised for its work but it had a barbaric predecessor – “the digger,” as the original Peterhead segregation unit was called. Prisons throughout the world have similar places. In American jails it would be “the hole.” It is remarkable that in the closing years of the twentieth century such places still existed. In less enlightened times troublemakers in prisons were more likely to be literally thrown into a hole in the ground and left to rot rather that receive counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy. Dirty protests, attacks on warders and disruptive behaviour meant long months in solitary or deep in the darkness of the digger. Those prisoners cast into such pits became dangerous men and the public got a hint of it in the 1980s with those stories of warders in full riot gear standing by whenever the cell doors were opened.
But eventually as the years passed there was a gradual change in society’s attitude to what was happening in such places. The prison service itself changed and slowly more emphasis was put on treating the psychological problems of sex offenders in addition to making sure the public was safe from their vile crimes. In the mainstream parts of prisons, there was also a change of attitude. Schemes like “training for freedom” evolved and prison officers became more interested and involved with their charges rather than being mere jailers. The battle to stop reoffending will never be complete but at least these days things are inching in the right direction. It is a healthy change.
What went on in the digger in the early days would have been red meat for any horror film director. The place smelled of violence and hatred. It was all rather different in the final days of the sex offenders unit, but it was still no place for the faint-hearted to visit. A perceptive and sad insight into the atmosphere in the unit was told to me by one of Scotland’s top columnists and radio and TV broadcasters, Ruth Wishart. Ruth has long had an interest in the penal system and in particular the effect on offenders’ families and the difficulties encountered by them with prison-visiting regimes. Indeed she has campaigned to help get better access for relatives and more understanding for them from the public. Here is how she told me of her visit to the Unit in Peterhead:
“I had written about the sex offenders unit in Peterhead prison at various points, and interviewed academics, social workers and others about the likelihood of successful treatment, the dangers of reoffending, and the problems posed post-release in terms of neighbourhood protests. But then print journalism with tricky subjects is relatively easy. You control and edit what appears and you select the cast list according to the points you want to get over. However, when I was working as a daily broadcaster for BBC Radio Scotland, it was suggested that a programme from the pioneering sex offenders unit might make compelling listening, and that raised a whole raft of more difficult issues – not the least of which was getting the Scottish Prison Service to agree.
“In the event they were extremely helpful. They knew we weren’t in the business of sensationalising the subject; we’d already agreed to anonymity for the prisoners concerned, and, as it was a pre-record, there was the possibility of editing out anything problematical.
“We also had agreement from the many professionals across different specialisms who regularly worked with the men in the unit in terms of unravelling their motivation, assessing their personalities, and working to make them accept and confront the fact that their behaviour was completely beyond the pale – because it’s dispiritingly usual for many such men to insist that the people they abuse, especially children, were willing co-conspirators, to whom they were merely offering love.
“So far, so good. I went up to Peterhead with a producer and sound engineer and talked through the practicalities of where we would record and how many men would take part. There were no particular restrictions placed on what we could ask, only the reasonable insistence that nothing we said could in any way identify the victims.
“Then, with all systems go, word came through to us that the men themselves had changed their minds. They didn’t want to take part anymore. Without their agreement we had no programme. I asked the prison authorities if I could talk to them as a group and they agreed.