FORGET our majestic mountains, brooding castles and shimmering lochs…the sell-out tourist attraction in Scotland this month is a taste of life behind bars. All tickets have been snapped up for a tour of Polmont Young Offenders Institution in Falkirk, which is opening its doors to the public for the first time as part of an annual festival offering free access to hundreds of buildings across the country which the public never get access to. Tours of HMP Greenock, where Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was held, have also sold out as part of the Doors Open Days festival. Other prisons taking part include Scotland’s smallest prison HMP Inverness and the country’s only open prison, Castle Huntly in Longforgan, near Dundee. Thousands have also flocked to see a former prison which was once home to some of the country s most notorious criminals after it opened as a museum this summer.
Peterhead Prison in Aberdeenshire, which stood for over a century from 1887, now offers visitors the chance to see a cell and tells the story of staff who dealt with offenders such as limbs in the loch murderer William Begg and Glasgow gangster Arthur Thompson. Tours of HMP Inverness taking place this weekend for Doors Open Days will happen during a “lock-up” period and include a short introductory talk, a walk around some of the work and educational areas of the jail and a chance to see inside a cell. HMP Greenock is opening its doors to the public on September 10 and 11.
The tours of Polmont will take place on Sunday September 18, with visitors warned in advance they will have to provide two forms of identification and undergo airport style security checks, with mobile phones and cameras banned. Guided visits will take place at Castle Huntly on September 24 and 25. Frances Hendron, project officer for Doors Open Days, said one aspect of the appeal of the prison visits was that people were fascinated by places that are usually inaccessible and out of bounds .
She said: At one level it is as simple as that while these buildings may be within a community, it is a no-go area. There is a fascination at a very basic level of what is behind the walls.
We watch dramas, crime programmes and read the novels if you have never been there you are imagining what it must be like, how awful it is, or whatever your take on a prison might be. Hendron said participating in the Doors Open Days festival also gave the prison service the chance to open up to the public.
I am pleased we can allow people to see the kind of work that goes on, because prisoners are human too and most will get out,” she said.
This is an opportunity for the prison service to actually show what they do to make sure we are all safe and prisoners, whatever their crime is, are able to come out and be part of the community.
Prisons are as much a part of our society as hospitals and schools are.
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Prison Service said: It is important that the public have the best possible insight into the work done on their behalf in transforming the lives of those in our care and helping transform them back into society.