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HM Prison Addiewell

prison in West Lothian, Scotland, UK

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ5635125
Source-derived summary

HMP Addiewell is a private prison near the village of Addiewell in West Lothian, Scotland. HMP Addiewell is operated by Sodexo Justice Services and contracted to the Scottish Prison Service. The prison holds adult males who have been convicted as well as those being held on remand

Opening

In January 2004, a six-week public consultation began for a planning application for a new £80 million prison in West Lothian. In June 2006, the contract was awarded to a consortium of companies that included Sodexo Investment Services and the Royal Bank Project Investments. The prison opened on 12 December 2008 with capacity for 700 prisoners, with a further 96 places held in reserve.

History of operation

In February 2009, a cell was damaged by fire in an incident that lasted 3 hours.

In October 2009 there was a disturbance involving around 20 inmates which led to a prison custody officer requiring hospital treatment.

Two prison custody officers were injured during a riot in January 2010.

In November 2010 the prison was running at capacity, with 700 prisoners being held.

In March 2011 HM Chief Inspector of Prisons expressed concerns about the level of assaults on staff.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “HM Prison Addiewell” is prison in West Lothian, Scotland, UK. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Prison, Addiewell and prison, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004, 2006, 2008, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2008. For this dossier, Prison, Addiewell and prison is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “prison in West Lothian, Scotland, UK” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5635125. Authority coordinates are 55.847, -3.599. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2009.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “HM Prison Addiewell”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow HM Prison Addiewell primary sources, HM Prison Addiewell archive and Prison research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “HM Prison Addiewell”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from HM Prison Addiewell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.