INSIDE STORY
TV cameras have been let into HMP Shotts, where men who have committed some of Scotland’s most notorious murders explain how they spend their days
THERE are 200 murderers in Shotts prison, Scotland’s maximum-security jail. Channel 4’s latest reality TV show takes us behind the barbed wire to get a taste of life on a long stretch.
In Lifers Behind Bars, we meet the men (and 98 per cent of those serving life sentences are men) behind some of Scotland’s grisliest crimes.
They talk candidly about taking drugs to cope with the stress of prison and how it feels to live in a cell.
Some of them have been in the system for so long that they call the Scottish Prison Service “mum and dad”.
Tam, 50, an inmate since he was 20, is now at Castle Huntly, the only open prison in Scotland. As he irons his shirt ready for his release, he vows that he will not be coming back. ● Lifers Behind Bars, Channel 4,
tonight, 9pm.