Scotland’s Johnnyboy: The Bird That Never Flew

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Good morning Johnnyboy, let’s start at the beginning. Where are you from and how was your childhood? 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. 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. 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.” 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.

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. Inside Time reserve the right to republish comments in its newspaper or in any of its other publications, however, in these cases, comments will be anonymised. Prison breeding ground eventually bred a better man, but it was a long hard Glasgow road for battle weary JohnnyboyFor Johnny, whose uncle perished in a fire in his Barlinnie cell and whose brother Joe was wrongly convicted of Glasgow’s Ice Cream War murders, it’s hard to imagine no more Bar-L.

In what he says is his last interview before he reclaims the life he was denied when he battled for 20 years to clear his name, Joe Steele reveals how the brutal regime of prison life and being fitted up for the murders of six members of the Doyle family did not break him. MacAskill spent 30 minutes talking to Maureen and her supporters. She said afterwards: “Apparently, the Solicitor General called Kenny MacAskill this morning to see if his office had received the letter I sent them. Former priest Willy Slavin, Barlinnie chaplain from 1982 to 1992, also remembers walking through the same wooden door for the first time. Inside, he says, were “disgraceful” conditions.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. 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. 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. He said: “Throughout the years I’d battled the system and never gave up hope. But being taken away from my family and new baby finally broke me. To relieve the pain, I did what I’d never done before – I succumbed to drugs. Steele spent many years in HMP Barlinnie as well as HMP Peterhead and the notorious cages in HMP Inverness.

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. 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.

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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. With the end in sight, it’s been suggested Barlinnie could be reborn as social housing or upmarket flats; a world away from rows of 6ft by 11ft cells and slopping out. 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. 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. 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.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The Douglass family have had to deal with a devastating tragedy and the Justice Secretary was happy to meet with them personally to pass on his sympathy and listen to their views. 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.

But like an old lag counting down the days to release, Barlinnie has now entered its final stretch.