Photo: Cover artwork for 'The Barlinnie Special Unit: Art, punishment and innovation'.
The Barlinnie Special Unit: Art, punishment and innovation
Edited by Kirstin Anderson
The Special Unit in HMP Barlinnie in Glasgow was unique in its day (1973-1994). It was a therapeutic penal innovation which offered transformational opportunities to some of Scotland’s most violent and notorious male offenders. It is unique today in that it is the only British penal initiative from fifty years ago that anyone in Scotland (or the rest of the UK) cares to remember – and celebrate – as a remarkable event. Its positive lessons, however, were never properly learned – not that everyone, then or now, was positive about it. The controversy surrounding this very bold experiment in minimising punitiveness behind bars is an important part of this story.
