Carstairs Hospital was constructed between 1936 and 1939. Although it was planned and financed as a facility for "mental defectives", it was first used as a military hospital, during the Second World War. The War Office relinquished control of the hospital in 1948, when it became the State Institution for Mental Defectives. On 1 October 1957 there was a large transfer of 90 criminally insane prisoners from the criminal lunatic department at HM Prison Perth to Carstairs, and this new combined unit became the State Mental Hospital. In 1994 the State Hospitals Act 1994 enabled management of the hospital to be transferred from the Secretary of State for Scotland to NHS Scotland, coming under the control of the State Hospitals Board for Scotland. A redevelopment of the hospital was approved by The Scottish Government in September 2007. Construction began in April 2008 and the new hospital facilities were officially opened on 26 June 2012.
Security
The hospital has an alarm system that is activated if any patient escapes to alert people in the vicinity, including those in the neighbouring town of Lanark, and local villages such as Ravenstruther. The system is tested on the third Thursday of every month at 1300hrs when the all clear siren sounds. One infamous incident of a break out happened in 1976, when two patients, Thomas McCulloch and Robert Mone, murdered a nurse, a patient and a police officer with axes in an escape attempt.
Controversies
In August 1999, a convicted killer walked free from Carstairs after his lawyers exploited a legal loophole. Noel Ruddle, who served seven years for shooting his next door neighbour with a semi-automatic Kalashnikov type rifle in 1991, was given an absolute discharge by a sheriff because his mental illness was deemed untreatable. He admitted that he had not been cured and had also boasted about beating the system. A year after his release, Ruddle escaped a prison sentence for threatening to kill a priest. An emergency Bill was brought forward by the Scottish Executive to prevent further exploitation of this loophole, becoming the Mental Health Act 1999, the first Act of the Scottish Parliament. As emergency legislation, it was repealed and replaced by the Mental Health Act 2003 on 5 October 2005.
In December 2004, Michael Ferguson was allowed an unsupervised visit to see his fiancée at East Kilbride Shopping Centre. He failed to report back to Carstairs staff two hours later as agreed. First Minister Jack McConnell ordered an urgent report into the decision.
In September 2008, it was revealed that there was a cost of £630,000 a year to provide the only female patient at Carstairs State Hospital a ward to herself. Labour health spokeswoman Margaret Curran said: "This defies common sense. This cannot be in the interests of the NHS or the patient... We need immediate explanation and action."
In 2011, a nurse was accused of giving romantic messages to a patient.
In June 2013, a patient absconded while on an escorted outing to the McArthurGlen shopping centre in Livingston, and was later arrested and taken back into custody after being spotted by members of the public in Hamilton.
