Authors: Robert Jeffrey
“They go there for visits occasionally, they have come to us from there once they are sentenced. I think they know and trust the SPS to ensure, regardless of where they are, they will receive appropriate treatment and will be safe.”
This is the hallmark of the staff at Peterhead. In a society where sex offenders, especially those who commit crimes against children, are widely held to be the lowest of the low, they conduct themselves with ultimate professionalism at all times.
I ask Macdougall if she has had any disturbing experiences in her time working with these men and she recounts a truly unpleasant anecdote: “In one of my experiences in group, a guy actually committed a sexual offence while I was in group. That was directed at me, he was masturbating in his pocket.
‘It was one of those moments where because I’ve worked here for so long I’ve always thought I can deal with absolutely anything and I know how to deal with anything but I felt a bit frozen. The guy had committed really violent offences as well and I was a bit like, I’m not really sure how to challenge this. That was the first time I’ve ever felt like, “What on Earth do I do?” But she stresses this was the only time an incident of that nature occurred and then describes the men in a way most observers would struggle to comprehend but reflects the reality of these people, that for all the hideous crimes they have committed, they are still indeed human beings and that our challenge as a society is to balance their crimes against that innate reality.
She says: “I have built a good relationship with quite a lot of the guys I have worked with. I get to see the other side of them other than their offending, I get to see the good side, the ones with great personalities, really funny. It is those little elements that people wouldn’t really pick up on and that I see.”
That sort of view of life in a sex offenders unit is not something that the average Scot samples at first hand. The population at large depends on newspaper accounts and TV and radio documentaries for their understanding of what goes on behind bars in the prison service from sex offender units to mainstream prisons and low security prisons and halfway houses. Not surprisingly, the grim place that is Peterhead has down the years fascinated newspapers both broadsheet and tabloid. It is interesting that perceptive writers like Ruth Wishart and Mandy Rhodes got plenty of space in papers such as
The Scotsman
and
The Herald
to give thinking readers real insight into what was going on behind the high walls of the prison.
News editors and feature editors seem to have a predilection to send their top women reporters to look at life in the toughest of units. Maggie Barry of the
Mirror
group is another who visited the sex offenders unit and she had an interesting interview with Audrey Mooney, the first woman governor in the UK of a specialist unit for sex offenders. Described as “slight, slim and blonde with piercing blue eyes” she told Maggie of the difference between a mainstream prison and a specialist sex unit: “It’s a different environment completely. In a normal prison the population moves very quickly and there are a lot of issues around drugs and mental health. You are always aware of violence and when it erupts it erupts quickly, usually in reaction to something. In a sex offenders unit you have a stable population serving long sentences who are more compliant.” [
Some are terrified of being put into
the normal prison population where revulsion at their crimes makes
them a target: many a prisoner would be delighted to
take the chance to attack what they call a “beast
.
”
] Audrey went on to talk about the eerie, indeed, creepy atmosphere. The men inside these units are a different breed – on the outside they groomed and stalked their victims. Inside, for the most part their attitude has not changed. “Everything that happens is premeditated. It is subtle and manipulative.”
Those who worked in the sex offenders unit are well aware of the danger, though it is comforting to note that there were few serious incidents and nothing to compare with the ordeal of officers taken hostage in the dark days of the ’80s. But there were potentially dangerous incidents, perhaps the worst happening in spring 2011, not all that long before the dispersal of the criminals held in the Special Unit to other establishments.
An officer, a woman in her forties, suffered attempted rape at knifepoint. She screamed in terror as an inmate tried to pull her trousers down. She had been working alone in a room normally used for group activities when she heard a noise and was grabbed from behind and some sort of knife held at her throat and told to keep quiet. Fortunately her screaming quickly attracted other officers who jostled the attacker to the ground and locked him in a cell before he was interviewed by the police. Not surprisingly, the officer was devastated by the attack and had to take time off work. It was a fairly uncommon incident but a real reminder of the dangers of working in such a place.
Maggie Barry’s report also raised an interesting issue. In a normal prison no one is shocked by a page three “stunnah” blue-tacked to the wall. Most governors are not too happy about it but a blind eye can sometimes be useful. But in a sex offenders unit? The walls of the six foot by twelve cells are officially allowed to be decorated by the inmates. But where do you draw the line? Should a paedophile have pictures of young female relatives on the wall? I suppose the best you can do is deal with it on a case by case basis, but it is an on-going concern. Like most of what goes on in a sex offenders unit, there is no easy answer.
The contribution of such insightful journalism as that from Ruth, Mandy and Maggie to prison reform cannot be underestimated. With notable and praiseworthy exceptions, most of this analysis occurs in the broadsheet press. The role of the tabloids is a rather different matter and they can on occasion create myths on prison life in the minds of the readers and then pander to the perceptions partly caused by their own sensationalist reporting.
A few years ago one of Scotland’s most respected prison governors told me of his frustration at the way some newspapers portray prison life. An example he gave was the constant repetition of the use of the phrase “flat-screen TVs” whenever conditions in a jail are discussed in the tabloid press. The phrase conjures up visions of loafers, beer in hand, lounging on leather sofas before forty-inch screens watching old movies or the latest sports events. The reality is different – the sets are small-screen and often shared between several cons at least. There are constant arguments about what to watch and the company is not attractive to the fastidious. What tends to be ignored is the fact that various studies have shown that allowing controlled TV watching in prison is of therapeutic value in calming down caged men, many of whom can’t read or take solace in a book or educate themselves.
It is also a window on the world outside the bars. In the old days before TV and radio prisoners could leave a jail after years and enter a world very unlike the way it was when they were sent down. You think of the character Books in that fine prison drama
The Shawshank Redemption
– released after years, he simply can’t face the pace of modern life and commits suicide. Anything, even dire soap operas, is better than to be left staring at the wall hour after hour with nothing to think about other than jealously wondering what your mates are up to on the outside. That can build up resentment that leads to attacks on prison officers and, occasionally, contributes to full-blown riots in which many people get hurt. The level of violence in prison has fallen with the introduction of TVs.
My governor friend also played a master card with a smile – in the twenty-first century even the tiniest of TVs is flat-screen! Think smart-phone-size, not fifty-inch wall-mounted entertainment systems when you are discussing TV in the nation’s nicks. More broadly, it has to be admitted that much of the broadsheet press is preaching to the converted, the liberal elite, and that the tabloids are spreading the word about crime and punishment, retribution or reform, to the people most likely to be involved themselves.
The popular press never misses an opportunity to keep their readers abreast of what is happening to headline cons like serial killer Peter Tobin, who flits around the prison system and has served much time in Peterhead. At the time of their trials the doings of such as Tobin and others, who affront and fascinate in almost equal degree, fill page after page. Those who compile the reports in the tabloids have little use for a thesaurus – the cynic might say just choose an adjective from a ready collection such as evil, monster, beast, vile, depraved, caged, or whatever and off you go. But in their own way the tabloids play a role in the evolution of the prison service. Their reporters are a vital link between the men and women behind bars and their families, and their jailers and society in general. There should be no secrecy about what goes on in prisons. A classic example is capital punishment. Detailed reports of the horror of deliberately killing a human being contributed greatly to the clamour that led to its abolition. To be “hung by the neck until you are dead” is easy and quick to say – to read in detail the grim process of an execution and its effect on those who participate and witness the calculated and deliberate killing of a human being is another matter. Had the death penalty been conducted in total secrecy it probably would be with us today as a blemish on a civilised society.
Pin-ups on cell walls and rows over cosy cushions are only some of the controversies that are generated by happenings in jails such as Barlinnie and Peterhead. The media ferrets out anything at all unusual, such as secret booze brewing factories or drugs smuggled into cells. You can’t hide from a good investigative reporter. Ask any governor! And those “inside” stories can spark what you might call reading rage among the punters who buy the tabloids. That little tale of the money earned sewing cushions was one example – even more annoying to the public at large was the story that, for a time, changed the nickname of Peterhead, from The Hate Factory to COLDitz.
It happened a few years ago and at the centre of the row was sex pervert Tobin, the killer of two teenagers, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, and a Polish student in Glasgow called Angelika Kluk. You could not make it up, as they say, but Tobin and some mates were complaining that it was too cold in the jail and that the heating was turned off too early in the spring and back on too late in the autumn. Tobin is an expert in complaining – in almost every nick he is sent to he would complain about something or other and he is an expert at faking illness to gain attention and trips from jail to court. He took any and every chance to moan about his treatment. But, by any standards, for a prisoner to complain it is cold in Peterhead takes some hard neck. Remember back in the early days the governor would not even let you wrap your blanket round you when not in bed. The complete lack of shame shown by Tobin also surfaced when in jail in England when he whined he wanted a transfer to a Scottish nick since he was “lonely.” That is hard to beat as a prison complaint.
Ask any old lag about his time in the jail “up north” and he will mention the gales howling in from the North Sea in storms that often began in the frozen wastes of northern Russia and Greenland before sweeping south to Scotland. The sort of guys that Walter Norval is wont to call “proper” cons took the freezing conditions as par for the course, as a golfer might say. And the locals, including those who still fish the wild waters nearby, also took it as a fact of life in such a place. But here in the twenty-first century the papers were telling the citizenry that the most evil of the evil men held in the local jail were complaining about central heating. This little story generated a lot of heat, appropriately, locally. And zero sympathy.
Before the decision was taken to disperse the sex offenders to other units after HMP Grampian opens, the place was home to many of the worst offenders behind bars in Scotland. It is interesting to reflect that not so long ago many of the inmates could have ended their life on the gallows rather than be treated in a special unit. As well as in its final days holding Peter Tobin, the sex offenders unit also held a villain called William Beggs, who was convicted of killing an Ayrshire teenager after a Christmas night out in Kilmarnock. Beggs dismembered his victim, leaving body parts in Loch Lomond and his head in the sea off Troon, hence his tag in the press – The Limbs in the Loch Killer. There seemed to be over-representation of Ayrshire in the newspaper crime world for a while. In addition to Beggs, Charles O’Neill, who preyed on young boys in Skelmorlie and Irvine, was held in Peterhead. Other infamous names in the unit included Robert Foyle and Lee Barrass, who killed a
Big Issue
seller and committed a sex act over her body. Newspaper stushies on how these villains were treated made regular headlines and outraged members of the public. Typical was a story that Beggs of all people had been accepted on a joinery course in the jail. The outrage in this case has some serious validity – Beggs has had experience with saws.
Apart from butchery, Beggs had another area of expertise when in jail. He became a notorious jailhouse lawyer who eases the pain of confinement by bombarding the authorities with legal claims and advising cons on appeals and compensation claims. There is a slight echo of another famous jailhouse lawyer – Johnny Ramensky, whose crimes, it must be said, were as of nothing compared to that of Beggs. There is also a similarity to the Great Escaper’s prison campaigns for better medical treatment in a recent spat Beggs has had with the authorities. The killer angered the establishment with claims in a prison magazine that the authorities had not acted with suitable speed in the case of an elderly paedophile who had complained of being ill. The prison service responded: “We have well qualified medical staff in all prisons who will provide expert care.” Despite what might have happened back in the ’30s, no one could argue that prisoners today do not get that expert care.
Another recent row was over the sort of DVDs inmates were allowed to watch. The newspaper outrage in this case was over the supply of films featuring murder and violence. The prison PR people are always on the back foot when such issues get into the papers and generally rely on saying they “do not comment on individual prisoners.” The DVD story makes regular return appearances in the papers. But it is hard to get a DVD today that will not contain something that someone somewhere will complain about. And watching DVDs in controlled circumstances is, like TV itself, a possibly calming influence.