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The Barlinnie Special Unit: A Penal Experiment

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Imprisonment Today

Abstract

There has been increased public pressure to review the Prison Service in Scotland following the unrest that started in a number of Scottish prisons towards the end of 1986. Furthermore in both Scotland and in England and Wales there has been concern about the management of particular groups of potentially difficult prisoners. This has led to the publication by the Home Office of two reports; The Report of the Working Party on Regimes for Dangerously Disruptive Prisoners (Home Office, 1983) known as the Atherton Report and the Report of the Control Review Committee, Managing the Long Term Prisoner (HMSO, 1984). In view of such concerns it is opportune to examine the development and functioning of the Barlinnie Special Unit, opened in 1973, and hailed by penologists throughout the world as a courageous experiment in working with difficult long-term prisoners.

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© 1988 Simon Backett, John McNeill and Alex Yellowlees

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Stephen, I. (1988). The Barlinnie Special Unit: A Penal Experiment. In: Backett, S., McNeill, J., Yellowlees, A. (eds) Imprisonment Today. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08897-3_8

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