The Criminal Alphabet (15 page)

For some archaic reason, prisoners are always given an
award
(punishment) on
adjudication
. Awards vary from a caution to loss of remission and solitary confinement.
‘Award' seems to be another one of those words that has a strange context when used by prison officials.

See
Adjudication

The aways
are members of a criminal gang or family who have been jailed and are serving their sentence. Some might say that there is no honour among thieves, but whenever the gang or family outside nick a nice few quid, there will always be a share put aside for the aways.
Sometimes benefit parties are held to raise money for the aways and the proceeds are sent to them in prison or handed to their families.

Baccy tins
is the name given to prison-issue plastic shoes, because they are square-toed and resemble a pair of tobacco tins. Real tobacco tins (that is, tins for storing tobacco) are very popular in prison where, due to the cost of
tailor-made
cigarettes,
most smokers tend to roll their own. There is a big market for decorated tins,
either painted or covered in matchsticks or wood. If you wear baccy tins in prison,
you must expect to be singled out for light-hearted abuse and insults.

See
Adidas sex-case
,
Fila c***s
,
Jack the Rippers
,
Nigerian Nikes

The
banana suit
is prison-issue high-visibility clothing worn by
E men
(those who have escaped or attempted to escape from custody). It usually consists of a two-piece
blue denim uniform with a broad bright-yellow stripe running down it. The banana suit is also issued as a one-piece bib-and-brace overall with the same yellow stripe. The idea behind it is that E men can be easily picked out of the crowd and observed. Also, should the wearer of a banana suit escape, he'll be easier to spot outside – or at least until he changes clothes. In the early 1990s prison-issue banana suits could fetch up to £100 on the outside from the rave crowd,
as the yellow stripe was luminous under strobe lights and, apparently, looked great when whoever was wearing the suit was dancing. This proved a nice little earner for the staff and cons who worked in the prison clothing stores. Cons would smuggle them out of jail packed inside stuffed toys and via the prison hobbies class. The banana suit was all but replaced in the late 1990s by a one-piece coverall made up of different-coloured panels. This is worn by E men and Category A men during transfer between prisons. Not as popular as the banana suit, possibly because of its unflattering cut, or maybe due to the decline in popularity of the acid-house rave scene, it was quickly nicknamed the ‘Noddy suit' by prisoners (though most people who have seen it tend to agree that it bears more of a resemblance to the attire of
1950s children's puppet Andy Pandy than to the snazzy two-piece worn by Enid Blyton's racist pixie.)

See
E men

Bang-up
is prison slang for any time spent ‘behind your door' in a cell. It was originally shouted by screws at the end of association period – ‘Bang up! Get behind your doors, bang-up time!' –
and refers to cell doors banging
shut. It's now a phrase used by cons and screws alike. Another meaning of this phrase, not so commonly used now, is to inject drugs, usually heroin. So if you're a junkie and new to prison, don't get too excited when you hear that seven-thirty is bang-up time. The term is also used by ex-prisoners, as in ‘Yeah, just got out of bang-up'.

See
Window warriors

Bar L
is the nickname of Scotland's most famous/infamous (delete as appropriate) prison, HMP Barlinnie.
Scottish prisoners sometimes also call it ‘the Ranch', apparently because it's full of cowboys!

Every prison will have a
barmy wing
, where mentally ill prisoners are kept. Once upon a time, barmy wings were officially known as prison hospital wings, but then came the rebranding of prisons in the mid-1990s, after the Strangeways riots, and the hospital wing became known as the healthcare centre in the push to gentrify and sanitize the public's perception of jails. The government, fully aware of the bad publicity surrounding the Woolf Report into the riots, which spoke of a run-down, dilapidated and brutal prison system, made a few cosmetic changes, such as renaming the punishment block the ‘segregation unit', solitary confinement ‘segregation', and so on. But prisoners are not great lovers of change for its own sake so they still call the healthcare centre the barmy wing.

Baron
is a bit of an old-fashioned term for the prisoner who would run the black market on each prison wing. It dates back to before the 1970s, when tobacco was the only currency in prison and whoever had access to large amounts of ‘snout' could virtually control their wing. Each ‘snout baron' would run their little fiefdom as they saw fit,
setting credit terms, punishments for late payers and
knockers
, and exchange rates for snout and money. A prime fictional example of an old-school prison snout baron is the character Harry Grout from the BBC television comedy series
Porridge
. Incidentally, in modern prison parlance ‘Harry Grout' has become rhyming slang for ‘snout', a case of life imitating art if ever there was one. Barons usually earned enough from their dealings to do their bit of ‘sparrow'
in comfort and were left alone by the screws because they were seen as a necessary evil. In some cases, the authorities might ask the baron to use their influence to intervene when there was unrest brewing. Barons were universally envied and hated by other prisoners because of the control they exercised, and had to keep a constant eye out for coups by the serfs and takeover bids by would-be barons. As Billy Shakespeare once said, ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.'

See
Knockers

Putting up
barricades
is one of the traditional tools of the recalcitrant and subversive prisoner. The most common place for a barricade is in the cell: various items of cell furniture stacked in front of the door make it difficult for a C&R (Control and Restraint – the staff heavy mob)
extraction team
to get in. Prisoners will barricade for
various reasons – to delay or postpone transfer to a worse prison, as a protest against a real or perceived problem, as a ‘cry for help',
out of insanity or just for the fun of it. The prison authorities take barricading very seriously, as the whole prison has to be locked down in order to deal with the incident. There are specially trained negotiators at most prisons, who will take control of the situation almost immediately and try to talk the prisoner out.
Michael Peterson, aka Charles Bronson, ‘Britain's Most Dangerous Prisoner'
(according to the tabloid media), has been involved in many barricades and hostage-takings.

See
Extraction team

To be put on
basic
is a punishment for having the wrong attitude rather than for any specific breach of prison rules. It is the lowest rung on the three-tier Incentive & Earned Privilege scheme (IEP), introduced by the Home Secretary Michael Howard in 1993 as part of his ‘austere but fair' prison policy. Every prisoner starts out on the middle rung – standard level – and can be promoted to
enhanced
level or demoted to basic level. Prisoners on basic have to wear prison uniforms and have fewer privileges than other prisoners, including fewer family visits and a lot more
bang-up
time. Each prison practises its own refinements on the three-tier system, and some are more draconian and spiteful than others in the way they treat basic prisoners. This ‘punishment' (though the prison system claims it isn't one) is frequently used by prison staff to ‘adjust the attitude' of prisoners who they consider to have a bit too much spirit. In effect, the three-tier system has created a class system amongst prisoners, with basic being the underclass.

See
Enhanced

The
batter squad
is any bunch or gang of screws who will attack a prisoner mob-handed. There will be a batter squad in most punishment blocks or segregation units, and they believe it's their job to teach cheeky or subversive prisoners a lesson by beating them into submission. Some of them are psychopaths, some are sadists and some are just plain thugs – HMP is an equal opportunities employer. In 1997, after complaints by many prisoners, backed up by statements from the Board of Visitors
(
BOV
), police started an investigation into the behaviour and actions of a large group of prison officers at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, West London.
Twenty-seven prison officers at the prison were suspended during the investigation,
and six were convicted of torturing and abusing prisoners in the segregation unit at the jail. Three prison officers were sent to prison and a number of prisoners and ex-prisoners were compensated for torture and sexual abuse. There have been many other incidents of abuse by prison officers in prisons up and down the country.

See
Extraction team
,
MUFTI

A
beast
is any prisoner in for a sexual offence, especially one involving children.These prisoners are treated like scum and are subject to constant vilification, threats and severe violence from other prisoners, and sometimes from prison staff.

See
86
,
Bacon
,
Biff/Biffa
,
Nonce

A night in the punishment block before appearing in front of the governor for
adjudication
is known as
bed and breakfast
, as is an overnight stay in any prison while en route to another one. For example, getting from HMP Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight, to HMP Dartmoor, in Devon, can take up to three days and involves bed and breakfast at HMP Winchester and HMP Exeter. This was before the prison transport system was privatized and the prison officers' union secured very generous payments and expenses for members who volunteered for escort duties and overnight stays. (Now it can take weeks!) The typical journey from the Isle of Wight prisons (there are three: HMP Albany, HMP Parkhurst and HMP Camp Hill) would hit HMP Winchester, HMP Highpoint (known as ‘HMP Knifepoint' because of the number of stabbings there) in Suffolk, HMYOI Onley in Warwickshire, HMP Bristol, HMP Channings Wood in Devon, HMP Exeter and, finally, HMP Dartmoor. For the prisoners on transfer it was three days of rattling up and down A roads in an extremely uncomfortable prison transport,
being heavily chained and having overnight stays in grim local jails – but for the screws it was the chance of a ‘foreign piss-up' and plenty of overtime.

Beggar's lagging
is two months' imprisonment under the Vagrancy Act.

A
behavioural warning
is one given by the prison authorities to any prisoner whose behaviour they consider
unacceptable. If a prisoner receives two written behavioural warnings, he will automatically be placed on
basic
level. A prisoner doesn't have to actually breach any prison rule or regulation to receive a behavioural warning, just their ‘attitude' is enough.

See
Basic

In a lot of prisons there are ‘problem'
wings, or landings, which are akin to war zones. The worst place in a prison, apart from the punishment block (brutal) and the prison hospital (mad), is usually the induction wing, invariably known as
Beirut
, or ‘the Bronx', because of the noise and the violence. These parts of the prison are normally run down and lack amenities because of the high turnover of prisoners; the population housed in them is transient. They also house loud, violent and, in some cases, mentally ill prisoners and only the most brutal and ignorant staff seem to be chosen to meet the challenge of running them.

See
Induction

Bending up
is practised by C&R and
extraction teams
and involves incapacitating a prisoner by using a series of painful martial-arts pressure holds. Many prisoners have suffered broken bones and more permanent damage from being bent up. The holds themselves, when administered by two or three screws, cause the prisoner's body to bend out of its normal shape, hence ‘bending up'. Bending up is mostly used on prisoners who refuse to cooperate.

See
Extraction team

A
bib
is a brightly coloured nylon vest issued to prisoners in some jails to wear on social visits. The bib is to make prisoners stand out and be easily identifiable amongst their visitors in a crowded hall and is worn for security reasons. The wearing of bibs started to be seriously enforced in high-security prisons (Category A and B jails) after some high-profile ‘walk out' escapes from prison visiting rooms. In 1994 a prisoner nicknamed Houdini (for obvious reasons) walked off a visit in HMP Swaleside on the Isle of Sheppey (a Category B prison) and was let out through eight locked gates and doors by staff. Once outside the prison, he walked to a local pub and phoned a taxi.
He got clean away and was out for nearly a year. He had been serving ten years for serious armed robberies. The staff laid the blame for their poor security procedures on the fact that prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes on visits and could not easily be distinguished from the civilian visitors, which led to enforcement of the bib rule. When the escaped prisoner was recaptured he was put into Category B HMP Maidstone. He immediately scaled the twenty-foot wall and escaped again.