Peterhead (27 page)

The prisoners vied for selection and put their names down on team lists that mirrored the sectarian divide on the outside. You were either playing for the “Gers” or the “Tic,” or the “Huns” or the “Tims,” as some would have it. Before and after these matches the prison could talk of little else. They provided a real buzz about the place. But if you had expected the Peterhead Old Firm matches to be a trigger for violence, you would be wrong. They were no games for weaklings and were noted for physicality rather than tactics. But the on-field players could have given their counterparts in the Scottish professional game a lesson or two. The reason was obvious: the cons – both players and spectators – enjoyed the game too much to risk losing it with a rammy or two.

The last governor, in charge during the wind-down, is that remarkable woman Audrey Mooney. She joined the prison service in 1975 and during her career she worked in Cornton Vale, Barlinnie, Shotts and Perth, as well as Aberdeen and Peterhead. Quite a list of service and for it she was awarded an OBE in 2012. On receiving her award she said: “I am extremely proud to have been given this honour and I cannot begin to describe the excitement this has caused my friends and family. This award reflects the fantastic work carried out by all staff in HMPs Aberdeen and Peterhead on a daily basis and I am privileged to work with such a committed and professional group. The opportunity to integrate the work carried out in the prison with partners in the community has been the highlight of a varied and exciting career and I look forward to developing this model to even greater effect.”

This was a popular award in the prison community, as there is a feeling that, as pointed out on occasion earlier in this book, the work of those in the prison service can tend to be unnoticed and sometimes unappreciated by the public. Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, remarked on that in congratulating Audrey when he said, “To receive an honour is an outstanding recognition for both the individual and the organisation,” and he thanked Audrey Mooney on an “immense achievement.” So with the bulldozers metaphorically warming up in the background there was some good news around.

The building of the new prison was taking the story onto positive ground. As mentioned earlier, some sections of the community will witter on about luxury and a cushy life – they always do. No new prison anywhere in the world has opened without such criticisms. Even in the Isle of Man, somewhat out of the mainstream on penal matters, the fairly recent opening of a smallish prison exercised writers in the local press to a great extent, filling columns for weeks on end.

What do the opponents of new-build prisons really want – cells with no windows, hammocks, no electric light? Maybe they would go along with the original designers of Peterhead in thinking twice on providing proper sanitation. Would they want to bring back slopping out along with their favourite bee in the bonnet, the return of the rope? Or maybe replace nutritious if unappetising meals with a return to bread and water? It is all about balance, of course. And as comedian Frank Carson used to say, “It’s the way you tell them.” That is a favourite phrase of newspapermen as well, with regard to the stories that sell their papers, and there is a great truth in it. The spin that compares decent humanitarian conditions to life in “five-star luxury” is all too tempting for a hack under pressure looking to produce an eye-catching headline. The sad basic fact of the convict’s loss of liberty is ignored in some sections of society’s obsessive prison-bashing.

HMP Grampian has had a taste of this treatment already with the reaction to those stories mentioned earlier of under-floor heating and “toastie toes.” A recital of some of the facilities in the new place presented
en masse
will no doubt start the critics off again. The fact is that if we are serious about rehabilitation and cutting reoffending then throwing people into Victorian dungeons miles away from their families to fester for years without hope is not a sensible solution. Think of that penal island in Norway and the success of its regime in getting people out of crime. Without doubt HMP Grampian will not go as far down the road as liberal Norway. But it is a step forward for society that we seem at last to have learned the lesson that treating people like animals does not work at any level. Maybe the Peterhead dirty protests had some effect on the public perception of how prisoners should be treated. Maybe, just maybe, all that aggro thirty years ago edged public opinion a little away from revenge to redemption and rehabilitation.

The “how you tell it” philosophy is illustrated by some of the advance publicity generated by the new prison. A cell is a cell is a cell – a bed, a chair, a window, and toilet and washing facilities and a closed lock on the door – but this to some becomes “en suite rooms with sea views.” It is absurd. Down the years football pitches have been a part of prison life. It is a no-brainer to see that the chance for cons to play football and get some of the aggro out of their system is a good idea. In particular the “Old Firm” matches behind bars have proved the beneficial effect of sport and exercise on men imprisoned for years on end. The old Peterhead has goal posts painted on the walls at the end of the exercise yard. The new has, wait for it, “four all-weather football pitches.” Is that the end of the world as we know it?

Even the critical point about windows and glimpses of the sea is out of proportion. I remember on a visit to Alcatraz a former inmate telling me of the special sadness brought on at Christmas and New Year by having the ability to be able to look through the bars out across San Francisco and see and hear normal folk enjoying music, drink and fireworks. The windows brought him no comfort and I expect that will be the case in the new prison where the sight of ships arriving and departing and folk as free as birds to go about their daily business may powerfully remind a con he is going nowhere for the next few years.

The new place will also have – shock, horror – landscaped gardens and, here we go again, flat-screen TVs. There will even be a gym, not just a gym but in tabloid speak a gym “that boasts the very best sports equipment.” Allotments for the prisoners to work in, too, will be provided. Let them grow veg and admire flowers – whatever next? No matter how much the hangers and floggers dislike it this is likely to be the face of any other new prison built in Scotland.

And there could be quite a few. Barlinnie in particular is ripe for rebuilding. The current governor there, Derek McGill, accepts that the building has outlived its usefulness, as did his predecessor Bill McKinley. Peterhead is lucky that there was space on the doorstep to build a new prison with not too much disruption of the existing place. A powerful driver in any plan to keep a new Barlinnie in the same area of Glasgow rather than go greenfield is what you might say its nearness to its client base. The inmates, by and large, come from the Central Belt and that is a major advantage for visiting and maintaining vital family contacts. To build a new prison on the same site would be difficult, but Derek McGill believes it could be done. The idea would be to temporarily create a rudimentary short-term prison, utilising the sports fields, workshop areas and other spare bits of ground within the walls. After demolition the new prison would rise on the foundations of the old and when it was complete new improved sports, medical and training facilities could be provided after the short-term jail was swept away.

Will it happen? Who knows, but it has been made clear that Grampian will be the first of several new prisons proposed by the Scottish Prison Service. These prisons will be designed to house all categories and age groups of prisoners, both male and female. The new-style prisons will be unique in the UK. On a visit to examine progress on the site, Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill commented on how the Scottish Prison Service would generally benefit from the example of the new prison. He said it was a very exciting development and Scotland’s first custom-built “community-facing prison,” in this case one designed to meet the custodial needs of the North-East. He went on: “As well as helping to develop a model which I believe will be the future for our custodial services, it will mean prisoners from the North-East will be able to benefit from facilities specifically designed to reduce their offending. The new fit for purpose facilities will maximise the opportunity for prisoners to engage positively to address the underlying causes of their offending behaviour.”

One of the major tests facing the Scottish Prison Service will be getting the public on side with regard to the new thinking that comes with new prisons. Already there is a lot of evidence that this will not be easy. Look at the flack already directed at the prison even during the building period. But speaking to Mike Hebden, the man who will be part of the top management team at HMP Grampian when it finally opens its doors in 2014, I was struck by his positive attitude on what lay ahead when the old prison is turned to dust and only the memories of the iconic jail remain.

He told me: “My association with Peterhead prison goes back to 1989, when I joined the SPS as an officer, and in the intervening twenty-four years I have returned to the establishment a further three times as my career has progressed, culminating in having the privilege of being governor in charge of the prison between 2010 and 2012.

“During my service at Peterhead I experienced a range of different prisoner types and related regimes; from the post-riot ‘lock-down’ regimes of the late ’80s and early ’90s, through the innovative, groundbreaking introduction of sex offender treatment programmes from the mid-1990s and on to the change to a local, short-term prisoner population in 2012.

“There have been good times and not so good times but the common thread throughout all of my experience of Peterhead has been the skill, professionalism and dedication of the staff group who have worked there; rising to and meeting the challenges and opportunities which the various regime changes have required and providing a significant contribution to making Scotland a safer place for us all to live in.

“Looking forward, as a Peterhead ‘loon’ myself, I take great pleasure in knowing that the town’s association with and support of the Scottish Prison Service will continue into the future through the creation of HMP & YOI Grampian; and having been involved in the design and development of the new prison from its conception, I am confident that it will provide a state-of-the-art facility which will facilitate the continuation of this important work.

“So as I bid farewell to Peterheid (or ‘the Napper’ as it is affectionately known throughout SPS), it is in the knowledge that a new generation of prison staff will continue to serve their community within this new facility, in the same positive manner that the ‘Warders’ who preceded them over the last 125 years have done.”

It was a well-expressed and realistic final tribute to the men and women who served in the Napper. When the prison’s Saltire is finally lowered on history and a new one hoisted at HMP Grampian, a new era begins. What will the future hold? Who knows? That is another story. But I doubt if it will have the twists and turns, dramas and tragedies, successes and failures of the place once known infamously as The Hate Factory. The place that was Scotland’s toughest p
rison.

Major S. A. Dodd, 1888–1908

Major F. H. D. Playfair, 1908–1908

J. Stewart, 1908–1923

Major R. E. W., 1923–1930

Captain J. I. Buchan, 1930–1950

Major D. C. Herron-Watson, 1950–1958

D. Mackenzie, 1958–1961

J. Frisbie, 1961–1964

A. Angus, 1964–1969

R. Hendry, 1969–1974

W. Gardener, 1974–1976

A. K. Gallagher, 1976–1979

G. Dingwall, 1979–1981

A. Smith, 1981–1988

A. Coyle, 1988–1990

M. Milne, 1990–1991

A. Spencer, 1992–1996

W. A. R. Rattray 1996–2001

I. D. F. Gunn, 2001–2006

A. Mooney, 2007–2008

M. Stoney, 2009–2010

M. T. Hebden, 2010–2012

A. Mooney, 2012–Present

First published 2013

by Black & White Publishing Ltd

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This electronic edition published in 2013

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Copyright © Robert Jeffrey 2013

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