The Criminal Alphabet (22 page)

See
Hooch Monster

A
hooch monster
is a prisoner who, after partaking of an illicit brew, will go temporarily insane and behave completely out of character – shouting, singing, dancing, fighting or abusing everyone in sight. Hooch monsters draw the screws' attention to the fact that prisoners are drinking so are a bit of a nuisance. In top-security prisons the staff tend to turn a blind eye to the drinking of
hooch
on the wings –
until a hooch monster appears to create havoc: then there will be a crackdown and the cells and wing will be searched and any ‘fermenting liquid' confiscated and its owner punished.

Do say: ‘I think you've had enough!'

Don't say: ‘What about one for the road?'

Hooking
is a way of throwing a line between wings. Most prison wings face each other but have a sterile area between them, usually around fifteen feet across. If you want to pass something, or collect something, from someone on the opposite wing, you hook it.
First, create a long-enough line by stripping threads from a prison-issue blanket and tying the lengths together. Then tie a weight, usually a pencil battery or a bar of White Windsor soap, on to the end of the line, along with a piece of prison-issue plastic cutlery (normally the fork). While you are doing this, your opposite number on the other wing is doing the same. Once the line is ready, reach out between the bars of your window and throw the weighted end of your line out as far as you can on to the ground of the sterile area.Your opposite number then has a target to aim for and will throw their line in an attempt to ‘cross' yours.
This can take hours, sometimes days, but time is one thing prisoners are never short of. Once the lines have crossed, both parties reel in their lines until the weighted ends and cutlery hook together. Then the line is pulled back through both windows and the two wings are connected and items can be slid across.The line is so thin it can't be seen by screws passing below it.

See
Sliding the mirror
,
Swinging a line

Prison meals are usually prepared and cooked in a central kitchen and taken to the wings in a heated trolley to be served by prisoners from the
hotplate
under the supervision of the screws.
A lot of fights occur at the hotplate as, in some prisons, it's one of the few times in the day when prisoners congregate in any number and, also, food is a very emotive issue in prison, as there is a distinct lack of anything that looks attractive or nutritious. In the 1980s at HMP Parkhurst the best meal of the week was the Sunday roast, usually a sliver of roast beef so thin it looked as though it had been sliced with a laser beam. That was the only complaint. Anyway, one Sunday, as the men were queuing for the meal, a hit squad of prisoners, wearing home-made masks and carrying
chivs
, leapt on their victim, who was near the front of the queue and
teabagged
him. The attackers dispersed, leaving their victim unconscious and with twenty-eight stab wounds. The prisoner who had been behind the victim in the queue stepped over his prostrate body and said, ‘Gi's his roast beef, he ain't gonna be up for eating it now'. Hard men – hard attitudes.

See
Hotplate Hamster
,
Hotplate worker
,
Teabagging

A
hotplate hamster
is a screw who wangles duty on the
hotplate
in order to eat prisoners'
rations rather than pay the price of a meal in the subsidized staff canteen. The food is served by
hotplate workers
, prisoners who wear white two-piece overalls and sometimes have a certificate in food hygiene, though this is far from common. The hotplate is usually overseen by at least one screw (in top-security prisons the food is served by prison staff only), who makes sure every prisoner gets their ration. It is a serious breach of regulations for a member of staff to eat inmates' rations, but hotplate hamsters will risk it and, if reported,
will deny all knowledge.

A
hotplate worker
is a prisoner who serves meals from the
hotplate
and washes the pots,
containers and ladles, etc. after every meal. Some prisoners like to work on the hotplate as they get a few perks, such as extra food and access to yeast (for brewing
hooch
) through contact with the kitchen workers. But,
overall, it's a pretty thankless task because you have to bear the brunt of the prisoners' complaints about the state of the food and the size of the portions.
Hotplate workers are often threatened with violence by other inmates if they don't hand over extra portions, or even if they look at someone ‘funny'. On top of this,
and the worst part of the job for a lot of prisoners, is having to make small talk with the screw who supervises the hotplate.

Hump
is used widely in prison and means to be severely annoyed with someone, as in ‘Turn it in, mate,
you're giving me the right fucking hump!' or ‘I've got the hump with this gaff'.

ICE
or in-cell electricity is a relatively new phenomenon in UK prisons. Up until the 1980s prisoners weren't even trusted to have access to their own cell light switch and the light was turned on and off by a prison officer from outside. In most prisons it was lights out at 10 p.m. Since the 1990s there has been a programme of supplying prison cells with electrical points so the prisoners can use a television, radio and kettle. The average prison cell now has a light switch and two power points.

An
ID card
is issued in the majority of prisons. It usually consists of a small plastic card containing the prisoner's name, number and photo. When a prisoner leaves the wing for any reason,
this card must be carried or displayed, and it is also used as identification when collecting canteen goods and medication. Being off your wing without your ID card can lead to a
behavioural warning
or, in some cases, a
nicking
.

See
Home Office numbers
,
Nicking

According to the Appeal Court's own figures, in the ten years from 1991 80,000 convictions were overturned on appeal,
and it has been estimated that as many as 14 per cent of British prisoners may be innocent and have been wrongly convicted of the crimes they have been imprisoned for. The unofficial prison service term for these prisoners is that they are
in denial
or ‘deniers'.

See
PMI

An
indeterminate
is someone who is serving a prison sentence with no actual release date. The indeterminate prisoner must rely on the Parole Board to decide when they are safe enough to be released. There are many indeterminates languishing in the prison system, unable to progress to release because the budget to convene Parole Boards to hear their case is limited. There is also a lack of funding for Offending Behaviour Programmes (OBPs), which indeterminate prisoners need to take in order to prove they no longer present a risk of reoffending and are ready for release. Successive governments, since the 1990s, have created more and more legislation allowing people to be jailed indeterminately. In effect, all indeterminate prisoners are serving ninety-nine years, even if their crime warrants a sentence of only nine months on conviction; in some cases, the judge's hands are tied by legislation and he must give out an indeterminate sentence.

A prisoner's
index offence
will be the main and most serious charge on the indictment on which he has been convicted. If a person is convicted of several criminal charges,
the charge that carries the highest prison sentence will be the index offence.

Since 1997 most prisoners who enter prison for the first time are given an
induction
. They are kept separate from the main prison for a period of anything from two days to six weeks,
depending on the prison and the length of time they are serving, and given time to acclimatize to the prison experience. During this induction period prisoners will be told what they'll need to know during their stay in prison – the
app
process, how to report sick, prison rules, information about the gym, the chapel, etc. When this process is taken seriously by prison staff it can be invaluable in helping prisoners to settle in. But most prisons –
particularly
local
jails, which have a high turnover and transient population – only pay lip service to the induction process.

See
Beirut
,
Induction Pack
,
Induction Wing

An
induction pack
is a folder containing relevant information, such as prison rules and regulations, which is handed to each prisoner when he arrives in prison.

See
Induction

An
induction wing
is a wing or unit of a prison where new arrivals are held for a period of time before being allocated. Because of the transient nature of the induction population, most of these wings and units are filthy and lack anything but the most basic amenities.
In addition, they can sometimes be very noisy and violent, as mentally ill prisoners will also be housed there as an overflow from the prison hospital or to be assessed.

See
Beirut
,
Induction

To be
inside
is to spend time in prison, as in ‘Harry's gone back inside, so we won't be seeing him for at least a three-stretch'. A lot of ex-prisoners refer to prison as ‘inside', just as they refer to the outside world as
The Out
.

IP
is an acronym for In Possession. Anything a prisoner has signed for as property (the items allowed to be kept by a prisoner, for example, a wristwatch, a wedding ring, a radio, etc.) is considered IP, if the prisoner does not request that it be stored in reception.

IPP
(Imprisonment for Public Protection) is an
indeterminate
prison sentence that can be given by a judge if they feel that the specified offence or the record of the offender is such that the public should be protected. It was brought in to replace the two-strikes life sentence, by which anyone
committing a second violent or sexual offence could be held in prison indefinitely. The two-strike life sentence was abolished after challenges were made to the European Court of Human Rights that it was unfair.

If you are in prison and have a partner or family member serving a sentence in another prison at the same time then you can apply for an
IPTC
(Inter-Prison Telephone Call). Inter-prison phone calls are at the discretion of the governor and both prisoners involved must complete various
apps
in order to speak to each other.

See
IPV

An
IPV
is an inter-prison visit. This can be granted on application if you are in prison and have a close member of your family in a different prison and wish to see them. Since the privatization of the prison transport system, it's almost impossible to get an IPV,
as providing the security is very expensive. Nowadays they have mostly been replaced by
IPTCs
(Inter-Prison Telehone Calls) by which arrangements will be made to allow family members to talk to each other by telephone from their respective prisons.

See
IPTC

The Island
refers to the Isle of Wight, which contains three prisons, HMP Albany, HMP Camp Hill and HMP Parkhurst. Being sent to The Island is never a good thing. Apart from the fact that all three have terrible reputations for violence,
they are also expensive and difficult for family and friends to visit. In order to get to The Island visitors have to travel by ferry or catamaran, and then drive or get a cab to the centre of the island, where the prisons are located. It's rumoured that some of the cab drivers on the island are, or were, screws and charge visitors to the prisons over the normal tariff simply because they can. In the modern British prison system, islands are very popular as a site for a prison. Whereas the Isle of Wight was once the only island in the UK with three prisons, nowadays the Isle of Sheppey also has three (HMP Swaleside, HMP Eastchurch and HMP Elmley), while Portland Bill has two (HMP The Verne and HMYOI Portland), and every island from the Isle of Man to Jersey contains at least one prison.

Jacket
is Yank slang that has made its way into British criminal usage. Your jacket is your police or prison record. Both the police and prison officials keep extensive records on those arrested and imprisoned, and these are usually in buff-coloured folders – the jacket
– which will have the prisoner's basic details on the front. The initial page of this record will usually contain warnings about the prisoner's previous behaviour –
whether they are violent, aggressive or an escape risk. If someone is an informer,
this will be marked on his record. In American prisons, this is known as a ‘snitch jacket'.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s
Jack Straw's
was any piece of prison property, particularly prison-issue clothing or food. Under the first New Labour Home
Secretary, Jack Straw, prisoners really believed the prison system would improve and become something better than it was under Straw's much-hated predecessor,
Michael ‘Something of the Night' Howard. Unfortunately, under Jack Straw things only became worse (even though most prisoners wouldn't have thought that possible), so his name became synonymous with anything that was crap or feeble in the prison system. For example, a prisoner might say to somebody who was wearing the prison uniform of acrylic tracksuit (‘Spider-Man suit') and a pair of prison-issue plimsolls (‘paedo pumps'), ‘I see you have your Jack Straw's on.' Or, if a meal is particularly unappetizing, a prisoner might say that it was ‘a load of old Jack Straw's!'. The term has fallen out of use in recent years but is still used in northern nicks, where people seem to have long memories.