HMP Barlinnie Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Today Barlinnie is the largest prison in Scotland, holding just under 1,400 prisoners although it has a design capacity of 987. The prison currently receives prisoners from the courts in the West of Scotland as well as retaining male remand prisoners and prisoners serving less than 4-year sentences. It also allocates suitable prisoners from its convicted population to lower security prisons, including HMP Low Moss and HMP Greenock, as well as holding long-term prisoners in the initial phase of their sentence prior to transfer to long-term prisons such as HMP Glenochil, HMP Shotts, HMP Kilmarnock or HMP Grampian.

Barlinnie prison still consists of five accommodation halls with each holding approximately 200 inmates and an additional National Top End Facility (Letham Hall) housing long term prisoners nearing the end of their incarceration. All five accommodation halls were refurbished between 1997 and 2004. There is also a hospital unit with accommodation for 18 prisoners, which includes eight cells specially designed for suicide supervision. A new administration and visiting block was completed in 1999.

The in-cell bucket-as-toilet routine known as slopping out was still in practice there as late as 2003. Since 2001, refurbishment has taken place after critical reports by the Scottish Chief Inspector of Prisons.

In October 2018, it was announced that HMP Barlinnie is to be sold and replaced with a new superjail within Glasgow or its outskirts.

In 2019, local MP Paul Sweeney proposed that the historic prison buildings be saved from demolition and converted into a prison museum after it is decommissioned.

In January 2020, the Prison Service announced that the proposed site for the replacement prison was a 22-hectare (54-acre) site adjacent to the nearby Provan Gas Works.