Barlinnie’s f irst female inmate in 140yrs
IT has long been Scotland’s most notorious jail and home to some of the country’s most dangerous men.
But now Barlinnie prison has a woman inmate for the first time in its 140-year history.
Official data shows a female was locked up there last year, the sole woman among 1,183 prisoners.
It’s understood the individual may have been sentenced as a male but has since changed the gender they identify with.
The jail, known as the Bar-L, counts some of the country’s most infamous hardmen as former inmates, including gangland figure Paul Ferris and serial killer Peter Manuel, who in 1958 became the second last prisoner hanged there.
It was also the location of the infamous Special Unit, set up in the 1970s to take a then-unprecedented therapy-led approach to inmates previously considered unmanageable. They included Jimmy Boyle, jailed for murder, who became a successful sculptor on his release.
Insiders have suggested inmates could state a new gender to ensure their own space in the overcrowded prison which over the years has often housed two men in each of its small cells. A source said: ‘Situations can arise where someone identifies as transgender after they come into custody.
‘There’s no separate area for transgender female prisoners at Barlinnie but they would not be placed in a cell with a male.’
It’s understood there are several people now identifying as transgender females across the Scottish prison estate as a whole, with about half detained in male conditions and half in female units.
Aside from the single prisoner at Barlinnie, the rest of Scotland’s 300 female prisoners are held at Cornton Vale, Edinburgh, Grampian and Greenock prisons, and Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution. It was revealed last week an inmate who changed gender is now demanding staff treat her as a baby.
Sophie Eastwood, 36, formerly known as Daniel, and jailed for life in 2004 for strangling a cellmate with a shoelace, has told staff at Polmont she wants to identify as a baby, wear nappies and have meals blended like baby food.
Eastwood has also demanded officers hold her hand when she is escorted from her cell.
The Scottish Prison Service said: ‘We do not comment on individual prisoners.’