Slopping out

Slopping out is the emptying of buckets of human waste when the cells are unlocked in prisons in the morning. Inmates without a toilet in the cell have to use a bucket or chamber pot while locked in during the night. The reason that some cells do not have toilets is that they date from the Victorian era and were therefore never originally designed to have toilets. As a result, there is no space in which to put a toilet, together with the expense and difficulty of installing the necessary plumbing.

Slopping out was allegedly abolished in England and Wales by 1996, although Private Eye in 2011 reported that Prisons Inspector Nick Hardwick stated that it still persisted at HMP Gloucester. It was scheduled to be abolished in Scotland by 1999. Due to budget restraints the abolition 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 did not have access to plumbing, as 300 prisoners had to use chemical toilets due to the difficulty of installing modern plumbing in the prison's granite structure. Peterhead ultimately closed in December 2013.