The Barlinnie Special Unit


Book Description

Fifty years ago, a small unit in HM Prison Barlinnie, Glasgow, became a radical experiment whose approach polarised opinion. It encouraged shared decision-making between prisoners and staff, allowed greater access to families and enabled prisoners to explore creative activities. Through the support of visiting artists, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, notably the sculptor Jimmy Boyle (author of A Sense of Freedom), its impact challenged prevailing, disciplinarian prison culture. Arts of various kinds, plus respectful and challenging dialogue, released dormant abilities and strengths in hitherto recalcitrant, formerly violent prisoners. Always controversial, the legacy of the Barlinnie Special Unit challenges overly punitive ideas around crime to this day. The first edited collection on the Barlinnie Special Unit’s almost 22-year history with contributions by those who were there at the time, or helped preserve its legacy. They include artist filmmaker Bill Beech, Scotland’s first art therapist Joyce Laing, leading Scottish impresario Richard Demarco, Sara Trevelyan, ex-wife of Jimmy Boyle (who also contributes), Rupert Wolfe Murray, son of Boyle’s publisher, Professor Mike Nellis of Strathclyde University, Claire Coia, a curator at Glasgow’s Open Museum, Andrew Coyle, founding Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies and journalist, and former Scottish MP Brian Wilson. Based on first-hand accounts, the book is a definitive retrospective and the first detailed history/analysis of the unit. A supreme record of an ‘iconic’ social experiment which includes diverse and largely unpublished materials. Review ‘Looking again at the BSU is a reminder that we have to reform the prison system. It means treating people in a humane way, even those who have committed serious crime, and by inventing creative projects which restore a person’s self-worth as a better route to redemption than mere punishment’ — Baroness Helena Kennedy KC (from the Foreword).




Imprisonment Today


Book Description

A collection of papers on various aspects of the imprisonment process in which each chapter highlights a critical area in the prisoner's passage through the penal system. The book aims to promote a greater understanding of the issues and problems inherent to the British penal system.







A Sense of Freedom


Book Description

Foreword by Irvine Welsh 'My life sentence had actually started the day I left my mother's womb...' Jimmy Boyle grew up in Glasgow’s Gorbals. All around him the world was drinking, fighting and thieving. To survive, he too had to fight and steal... Kids’ gangs led to trouble with the police. Approved schools led to Borstal, and Jimmy was on his way to a career in crime. By his twenties he was a hardened villain, sleeping with prostitutes, running shebeens and money-lending rackets. Then they nailed him for murder. The sentence was life – the brutal, degrading eternity of a broken spirit in the prisons of Peterhead and Inverness. Thankfully, Jimmy was able to turn his life around inside the prison walls and eventually released on parole. A Sense of Freedom is a searing indictment of a society that uses prison bars and brutality to destroy a man's humanity and at the same time an outstanding testament to one man's ability to survive, to find a new life, a new creativity, and a new alternative.




The Barlinnie Story


Book Description

Barlinnie is one of the most notorious prisons in the world and for a hundred years it has held Glasgow's toughest and most violent men, swept up from the city streets. Ten men died on its gallows in the infamous Hanging Shed, including serial killer Peter Manuel. It has sparked rooftop protests and cell block riots, and been home to godfathers of crime like Arthur Thompson Snr and Walter Norval. Barlinnie was also the scene of one of the most controversial experiments in penal history, the Special Unit, where the likes of Jimmy Boyle and Hugh Collins were at the centre of a fierce battle between those who see prison as retribution and those who regard it as a step on the road to redemption, even for the most evil killers. Paul Ferris, T C Campbell and gangleaders galore have languished behind its grim walls and, a hundred years on, Barlinnie still makes headlines. This is its fascinating, turbulent story.




So You Think You Know Me?


Book Description

The autobiography of an ex-offender and twice-times inmate of Barlinnie Prison, now a social work team-leader in his native Scotland.




Scottish Hard Bastards


Book Description

Meet the hardest men from a country where the streets are the most dangerous and the gangsters and criminals are the scariest in Britain. These faces have seen it all: the guns, the knives, the fights and the toughest prisons. This book will take you deep inside the rough, mad, bad, drug-infested, cut-throat, back-stabbing world of the Scottish prison system, bringing to light the last fifty years of infamous incidents that have taken place behind bars in some of the highest security prisons. With a frightening in-depth look at the most notorious prisons and institutions and the most daunting and fearsome of inmates, this compulsive guide covers them all from murderers to armed-robbers, a female crime clan with a family feel to it and some of the most notorious cases in Scottish criminal history.




Freedom Found


Book Description

Sara Trevelyan was independent, clever, and privileged. She was a qualified doctor who campaigned for penal reform. She fell in love with and in 1980 married Jimmy Boyle, a convicted murderer who had become a famous writer and sculptor.




The Pain of Confinement


Book Description

Diary kept while in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow Special Unit.




Little Book of Prison


Book Description

Koestler Platinum Award Winner (judged by author and comedian Will Self). As Frankie Owens writes in The Little Book of Prison (LBP), Society wants to know about prison life, an interesting place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there. --An easy-to-read prison survival guide of do's and don'ts. --Perfect for anyone facing trial for an offence that may lead to imprisonment, their families and friends --Packed with humour as well as more serious items --Backed by prisoner support organizations --Straightforward and highly entertaining. Frankie started writing the LBP from day two of entering prison as a first-time offender. He had no idea how the system or a prison worked. He was clueless about it all and it was hard for him going in and frightening for the family and loved ones he left behind. The writing began as self-help and as the days progressed it occurred to Frankie that the LBP would prove useful to first-time offenders as well as other prisoners and help them get through what is surely one of the most difficult times in their lives. It also motivated him to get out on the prison wing and find out as much as possible about his new home. There are a lot of books about people in prison, people in far worse places than Frankie was and on far longer sentences. But the LBP is a book about prison not people, and will help new inmates, their friends and families get to know what to expect from the system. The LBP is a masterpiece in comic writing but somehow gets through to people with serious information in a way that more formal texts cannot. Already organizations connected to the criminal justice system are beginning to acknowledge that Frankie Owen's LBP is an ideal read for people facing the trauma of a first prison sentence. It will also be of considerable interest to other prisoners or people working in a custodial setting. "If people want to know what prison is like it's for them, if people need to know what happens in prison it's definitely for them". Frankie Owens was prisoner A1443CA at Her Majesty's pleasure until 2 August 2011. Publisher's note.




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