Here’s what they’re saying. The officers are saying they’re deeply worried. The charity workers are saying the place is “boiling” and could explode at any moment. And the governor himself is saying that there’s a risk of “catastrophic failure”. That’s what people are saying about Barlinnie. So what’s the Scottish Government doing about it?

Before we try and answer that, let me tell you what the people who work in Barlinnie are actually facing. I spoke to staff at the Prison Officers’ Association who said their members are concerned and frustrated at the conditions: the number of prisoners, the complexity of who’s being held, the organised crime gangs, and the new types of drugs. The combination of it all, they say, is making for an unsafe environment for prisoners and staff alike.

And here’s what Natalie Logan MacLean said to me. Natalie runs a charity called Sisco which helps prisoners recover from drugs and she says that every time she goes into Barlinnie, she can feel the tension. The metaphor she uses is a boiling kettle with the switch stuck to “on”: at some point it’s going to explode. She also points out that the prisons inspectorate has been highlighting for years that Barlinnie is not fit for purpose and, like the officers, she sees it when she goes into the building: over-crowding – gross over-crowding – creates a stressful, toxic environment.

The reason I was talking to Natalie and the prison officers union was because of the comments made over the weekend by Barlinnie’s governor Michael Stoney. His prison is so overcrowded and outdated, he said, that it could suffer a “catastrophic failure” at any time. He said a lot of his time was spent just trying to keep the jail functional but at some point the failure would happen. “We know that day is coming,” he said.

To avoid the danger of going over the top, we should try to be clear about what Mr Stoney is, and isn’t, saying. Although we can’t know the future obviously, no one I spoke to thinks we’re talking about a potential riot here – Natalie said she hoped the days of prison riots were over. Instead, we’re talking about a serious collapse of the fabric of a prison that was designed for some 900 prisoners but is accommodating around 1500. We’re also talking about deterioration across a number of other fronts: more fatalities, more suicides, more violence, more staff off sick, and so on. As the governor says: catastrophic collapse.

We’re told there’s a solution: the new HMP Glasgow will replace Barlinnie and it will undoubtedly be different: more single rooms, access to computers in the cells, and generally just a better, cleaner, healthier environment. But I’m afraid to say it’s the Scottish Government that’s in charge so a project due to be completed in 2025 has been pushed back to 2027 and absolutely no one would be surprised if it was pushed back further. That means many more years of the old Barlinnie, boiling away.

The other problem is that you can build a new prison – in fact you could build a hundred of them if you like – but if you don’t fix what’s going on underneath, it won’t be long before the new jail is just as bad as the old one. Professor Philippa Tomczak, who researches prisons and their effects, told me new prisons cannot fix the fundamental problems: cuts, shortages, staff turnover. She also makes the point that drugs will get into prisons however shiny and new the facilities are. This will happen at HMP Glasgow, no question.

So that leaves us with two problems to fix: the short-term and the long-term. The short-term one is Barlinnie as it is now and the Scottish Lib Dems’ spokesman on justice Liam McArthur is clear about what’s needed. While the replacement is being developed, he says, the government should provide more resources to support staff and ensure high standards of safety are met and maintained and he’s right: the prison needs more help, money, resources and staff right now.

The longer-term problem is trickier though because it involves ministers, police officers, solicitors, judges – and most of the rest of us to be honest – overcoming our deep-seated assumptions about crime and punishment. We are still sending too many people to prison for relatively trivial offences because, in socially conservative Scotland, we assume nothing’s really being done until we can hear the jangle of the keys, the thump of the boots, and the bang of the door. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is just as fundamental and it’s something most of the people I speak to about prisons say: we need to get better at tackling the social problems that often lead to people committing crime in the first place. Poor education. Drugs. Some kind of trauma in early life. Natalie herself struggled at school because her dad had issues with addiction, served time in prison and committed suicide and she recognises how a chaotic life can end in jail. The other issue is once you’re in jail, you’re disconnected from your family, friends, support and wider society so the chance of ending up back behind bars again increases.

As it happens, Natalie is relatively hopeful about the replacement for Barlinnie and thinks it will be a definite improvement (how could it be worse?) but the delays to its opening are deeply concerning. The Prison Officers’ Association told me the staff at Barlinnie had already been waiting for a replacement for their rotten, deteriorating prison for a very long time and the fact that its opening has been pushed back is beyond frustrating: it is genuinely worrying.

But I also worry about something else in the end, which is that we’re not learning the deeper lessons of Bar-L. Imagine you’ve got off drugs and you’re put in a cell with someone who’s using. Imagine you’re stressed out of your box but can’t get any sleep because your cell-mate is watching the telly all night. Imagine your cell-mate doesn’t wash. Imagine having to watch him go to the toilet. It goes on and on, but even so, I worry that a lot of Scots – in ordinary jobs and perhaps even in government jobs – still think that, at some level, the prisoners deserve it. Prison should be grim. It should be awful. Tough luck matey.

Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic on this and perhaps we are slowly moving towards a more progressive (and effective) policy on prisons. But perhaps the deeply buried belief, or prejudice, or instinct that prisoners should suffer makes it easier for a government to allow a situation like Barlinnie to continue. And perhaps it also makes it easier for governments like ours to just do what they’ve always done. Build prison. Fill to capacity. Keep sending people there. Repeat ad infinitum.