Officers had to wear body armour for protection
CRAMPED
Peterhead Prison in 2002
STABBINGS, attacks on officers, violent skirmishes among inmates, hostage-taking and riots were all in a day’s work at the old Peterhead prison.
And in the mid-80s, staff had to wear body armour to protect themselves.
The Victorian prison on the Buchan coast was designed for punishment and the cells were tiny. Slopping out – the manual emptying of human waste in cells without a toilet – was still common.
Many of the prisoners were from the central belt so visits from relatives or friends were rare leaving prisoners isolated, angry and frustrated.
A riot the year before the siege should have sounded alarm bells for the authorities.
Triple killer Andrew Walker, who gunned down three Army colleagues in a payroll robbery, and a group of prisoners took a young prison officer hostage and threatened to throw him off the roof.
Daily Record reporter Ian Cameron, who the prisoners had demanded to speak to, talked them into ending their protest.
Afterwards, there were little pockets of violence until the siege a year later.
A different approach to prisoner management was needed and a new governor, Andrew Coyle, was brought in from Greenock Prison in 1988. His brief was “get Peterhead off the front pages”.
Most of the central belt prisoners were sent to Shotts and the difference was almost immediate. Staff didn’t have to wear full riot gear on every shift and the focus turned to the sex offenders at Peterhead. Rehabilitation programmes were created and the prison became a centre of excellence for its work with sex offenders.
Since then, modern prisons have been built in Scotland and classrooms, gyms, recreation and training workshops are now part of day-to-day prison life.
Peterhead was eventually shut down in 2012 and HMP Grampian was built.