1990 Strangeways Prison Riot - Aftermath

Aftermath

Strangeways was rebuilt and refurbished at a cost of £55 million, and was officially re-opened as HM Prison Manchester on 27 May 1994. The press were invited to view the new prison and talk to the prisoners by new governor Derek Lewis. A prisoner told the visiting journalists:

The better conditions in here are not down to the prison department. But for the riot, we would still be in the same old jail banged up all day and slopping out ... The rioters brought this about. These conditions ... should not have cost the lives of a prisoner, a prison officer and two huge court trials. They should have done it years ago but it took a riot to get them to do it.

"Slopping out" was abolished in England and Wales by 1996, and was scheduled to be abolished in Scotland by 1999. Due to budget restraints the abolishment was delayed, and by 2004 prisoners in five of Scotland's sixteen prisons still had to "slop out". "Slopping out" ended in HM Young Offenders Institution Polmont in 2007, leaving HM Prison Peterhead as the last prison where prisoners do not have access to proper sanitation, as 300 prisoners are forced to use chemical toilets due to the difficulty of installing modern plumbing in the prison's granite structure.