In his 2011 inspection of the prison, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Hugh Monro noted: “Barlinnie is well led and the staff have a good understanding of what they are required to do. Staff embrace change and are not afraid to lead the way in innovative practice.” People coming in were used to having a shower every day, but in Barlinnie they could only shower once a week. There were pots of poo in their cells. These were young people from a different world, prison needed to go along with that.” Steele along with his brother Jim and Archie Stein escaped from Barlinnie citing at the subsequent trial that they did not escape they fled the harsh and brutal regime enforced in Peterhead at the time, where they were due to return.

But when he was finally freed in 2004, in a case that proved for the first time in Scotland that police “fitted up” Steele, instead of being able to celebrate his release, Steele hid a terrible secret. But Steele, 33, claimed he did not recall the stabbing. He said that if he did kill PJ, it must have been self-defence. But while still crippled by overcrowding – with an official capacity of just over 1000, it currently houses 1400 men – Barlinnie’s tough regime has been replaced by a more enlightened approach. If she says there is nowhere further to go then it becomes more serious. But I will just have to wait and see.Today Barlinnie handles 20 per cent of Scotland’s prisoners. Even visiting time is a logistical nightmare of around 7300 visitors every month, including around 1100 children. includes the alleged offences of named individuals unless it is considered to be already common public knowledge Clearly, the Justice Secretary cannot become personally involved in appeals regarding the re-opening of such cases, that would be a matter for the relevant authorities. It was this weapon that would later be used to kill PJ. Steele again holds the fighting knife in his right hand.

While most prisoners languished in miserable conditions, Barlinnie’s Special Unit took some of the most notorious and introduced them to an experimental regime of art, poetry and literature. Some, including notorious multiple murderer Peter Manuel, never left Barlinnie’s grounds. The graves now raise the uncomfortable issue of exhuming their remains and finding a new location for burial. Steele, 57, said: “The brutality of life in Scotland’s hardest prisons, even years of solitary as punishment for repeatedly breaking out in protest at the wrongful conviction, wasn’t enough to break me.Today Barlinnie is said to be Western Europe’s biggest single dispenser of methadone, handing out over 8700 litres every year. But he remembers an Alcoholics ­Anonymous request for prisoner support groups being met by stony silence. The man wrongly convicted of the Ice Cream War murders has revealed how he won his life-or-death battle with drugs.

There were men with severe mental health problems. The medical centre seemed to hand out two paracetamols for a headache and eight for a broken leg,” adds Willy, who writes about Barlinnie in his book, Life is Not a Long Quiet River. Barlinnie already had a grim reputation when D Hall’s ‘Hanging Shed’ gallows opened in the mid-1940s. The execution cell was the last place 10 prisoners saw before being hanged and their bodies placed on a mortuary slab in a chamber below. You should never stop analysing how you have ended up where you are. Give yourself credit for what you do right. Some people end up in this life through circumstances usually beyond their control. I was born into this life, but it wasn’t me, I never liked it and, really, I wasn’t able for it. Always be true to yourself. The fighting knife was also found at the scene but Steele claimed PJ had it and he’d never seen before. Good morning Johnnyboy, let’s start at the beginning. Where are you from and how was your childhood?

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Johnnyboy Steele is the most punished prisoner in Scottish Penal History. He was sentenced originally to 12 years for two counts of assault and robbery. John Steele was acquitted of murdering Paul “PJ” Douglass, 20, after claiming self-defence. He said PJ had a knife which he had never seen before.

It was a constructive meeting. Mr MacAskill was really impressed with their resolve and determination to turn something terrible into something positive, through the valuable work they are doing with community projects to help turn around lives. Johnnyboy is also the brother of Joseph Steele who along with one Thomas 'TC' Campbell was wrongly convicted of the murders of 6 of the Doyle family in the so called Glasgow ice cream wars. Steele spent many years in HMP Barlinnie as well as HMP Peterhead and the notorious cages in HMP Inverness. Calls for reform grew increasing loud. A wave of prison riots across the country arrived at Barlinnie in 1987, sparking Scotland’s longest prison siege. Inmates ripped apart its Victorian halls, others climbed on the roof with five staff hostages and posters claiming brutality.

Prison gets set for final stretch with its replacement to consign Bar-L to history books

Notorious for overcrowding and a slopping out system that only ended in 2005, infamous for its violence, ground-breaking Special Unit with controversial art therapy, convicted killer Jimmy Boyle’s dirty protest and its D Hall ‘hanging shed’, Barlinnie’s daunting walls and blunt chimney pots have carved a formidable sight on the east end skyline for 137 years. I loved my wife, Dolly, and my two boys so much, being taken from them after tasting what it was like to be a proper family, was the start of the darkest period in my life. What do I remember from that first time? Dirt,” he says. “I came from a post in Bangladesh, but Barlinnie was worse for your health than Bangladesh. At least there you could do your best to survive, in Barlinnie you were subjected to the regime. For Johnny, whose escape bids contributed to him being dubbed ‘one of the most punished prisoners in the history of the British penal system’, 1980s Barlinnie was a powder-keg just waiting to blow.