The Criminal Alphabet (24 page)

See
Ghosted

The mains
is what prison staff and ‘vulnerable prisoners' call the part of the prison that is outside the safe environs of the protection wings. The majority of
VPs
are terrified of being sent on to the mains, as they know they will become serious targets for the prisoners there, who love nothing better than catching a sex offender or informer in their midst. Serious violence often follows.

To
make one
is to escape, as in ‘I hear Ronnie Biggs has made one out of Wanno!'. Outside prison, to
‘make one' is to kick something off, i.e. to have a fight with someone. It's particularly common among football hooligans, as in ‘We'll be making one at Man U on Saturday'.

Moggy
has two meanings.
In the outside world it's a slang word for a domestic cat and inside its meanings are also cat-related. A moggy was a stolen fur coat, in the days
when stealing fur coats (either individually or in bulk) was in vogue. These days,
there's very little call for real fur coats, so criminals have all but abandoned this crime. The word is also used in the phrase ‘get the moggy' instead of
cat
, or
pussy
, to mean corporal punishment as administered with a cat o' nine tails.

See
Cat/Pussy

In prison,
moon
is taken to mean ‘month', as in ‘I see Jerry got three moon for that bit of work'.

In prison, wages are very low and tobacco is very expensive, so a lot of prisoners who smoke tend to smoke roll-ups and re-roll their dog ends.
Mud huts
is rhyming slang for cigarette butts, as in, ‘I'm dying for a smoke, got any mud huts in your ashtray?'.

See
Desperate Dan
,
Little Fellas
,
Swooper

MUFTI
, in prison, is an acronym for Minimum Use of Force and Tactical Intervention. The MUFTI was a squad of prison officers who were specially trained in riot control and taking prisoners down quickly, violently and effectively. They were the predecessors of the C&R
extraction teams
which are now on call within the prison system to deal with disturbances or violent prisoners who may be ‘control problems'. In
1979 the MUFTI at HMP Wormwood Scrubs stormed a peaceful sit-down protest on D Wing
(the lifer and long-term wing) and left sixty prisoners with
serious head injuries which had been inflicted by batons wielded by the MUFTI. To this day, the report into the ‘riot' (which was how it was officially described) has yet to be published. The MUFTI was quietly replaced by Tornado squads and the modern C&R teams.

See
Batter squad
,
Extraction team

NFA
is an acronym for No Fixed Abode and describes a prisoner who has nowhere to live, no definite address.
When being discharged from prison as NFA, the prisoner will be entitled to a higher rate of
discharge grant
, £90 rather than the usual £46, which is supposed to account for one week's benefits payment. Some short-term prisoners pretend they are NFA in order to get extra money to spend on drink or drugs on their first night out, though in recent years more and more prisoners are leaving custody as genuine NFAs.

See
Discharge grant

A
nick
is a prison or police station to which a criminal will be taken once they are ‘nicked'.

A
nicking
is being informed that you have breached prison rules and must appear before the governor for
adjudication
. It's the prison version of an arrest. The prisoner will normally be informed verbally by a screw, as in ‘You're nicked!', and then issued a charge sheet outlining the charge and telling them what rule has been breached.
Previous nickings are always taken into account by the governor in sentencing. It is very rare for a prisoner to be found not guilty of any charge brought against them. Previous nickings are also an issue when it comes to parole or any other prison privilege.

See
Adjudication
,
Block

Nigerian Nikes
are any prison footwear, but plimsolls in particular, and are so called because they are a big favourite among foreign national prisoners and, in particular, Nigerian prisoners (of which there are many in British jails). It's a prejudicial term indicating that the wearer is so poor and unstylish that they will wear anything on their feet and think they've had a result.

See
Adidas sex-case
,
Baccy Tins
,
Fila c***s
,
Jack the Rippers

The
night clockey
is the prison officer on duty overnight on each individual prison wing. The name comes from the fact that they have to patrol the landings at regular intervals throughout the night and turn a security key in a clocking device at the end of each landing in order to prove that all is well and that they have not fallen asleep.

The
night light
is the red strip-light that is kept on during the hours of darkness in the cells of Category A and
E men
. It is kept burning so that the
night clockey
can check at a glance at regular intervals during the night that the prisoner is still in the cell. So it's a security precaution, as
well as sometimes being used to monitor prisoners who are suicide risks or have been placed on a 2052SH (a constant or regular cell-watch for prisoners who are vulnerable to suicide or self-harm; the number is that of the official prison form that covers this, and ‘SH' stands for ‘self-harm').

The
night patrol
is a skeleton staff of prison officers who rove the prison they work in at night checking that all is well. They're on call throughout the night in the event of an escape or a prisoner falling ill.

Night san
, or the computerized night sanitation system, is installed in several prisons in the UK and is used where the cell is too small to have a toilet and sink fitted into it. The night san consists of a keypad fixed to the wall by the door in each cell that is connected to a central computer which, when the right sequence of buttons is pressed by the prisoner, will electronically unlock the cell door and allow the prisoner access to the communal toilet. Only one prisoner at a time is allowed out and, on returning to the cell and closing the door, he must punch in a four-digit number that is randomly displayed on a small screen on the keypad. This enables the central computer to lock the door and let the next prisoner out.

Almost every prison in Britain will have a
Noddy shop
– a workshop where mind-numbing work is carried out by
prisoners. Here are some examples of the work that goes on there: putting strip-lightbulbs into boxes, screwing nuts on to bolts, counting washers, breaking cassette tapes with a toffee hammer, folding plastic bags –
general stuff that requires no skill and no degree of interest. The Noddy shop is where those prisoners with no ambition or influence end up and is called the Noddy shop because most people would just ‘nod off' if they were forced to do this work.

See
Hobbit Shop

A
nonce
is a sex offender, usually, though not exclusively, one who has committed crimes against children. Some people hold to the view that this term is due to the ‘nonsense'
nature of these crimes, i.e. that they do not make sense to normal people. But the true origin of this word dates from the days (pre-1960s) before each prison had a whole wing (or more than one) dedicated to the protection of these type of offenders and they were kept locked up on normal location amongst other prisoners. In order to make sure that the cells of the sex offenders were not unlocked at the same time as those of the general prison population, because they would be immediately attacked,
the screws would mark the acronym NONCE on their cell doors. This stood for ‘Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise' (as all the other prisoners would exercise together in the courtyard). In this way, the sex offenders were never let out on exercise at the same time as other prisoners. And the name stuck.

A
non-stimulant pack
is issued to Mormons in the British prison system instead of the normal brew pack which is
given to those of all other religious denominations. It contains hot-chocolate powder and Ovaltine instead of teabags and coffee sachets.
Some prisoners will pretend to be Mormons just so they can get a non-stimulant pack.
The packs, like normal brew packs, are issued weekly in prison.

Note in the box
is reference to undercover grassing. Every prison wing has a locked box, usually fixed to a wall situated close to the wing office, into which prisoners put their outgoing mail for collection by the censor. If a prisoner wishes to pass on information to the authorities without being seen to do so, they will write a note and drop it into the box as though depositing an ordinary letter. Everything that comes out of the box when it is unlocked daily will be read by the censor, and any notes will be passed on to Security for investigation or action. Some prisoners will use the note-in-the-box tactic to try to have their enemies removed from the wing by claiming they are plotting an escape or dealing drugs. Some desperate prisoners,
usually those who are heavily in debt, will drop a note in the box about themselves,
saying that they are about to escape or assault a member of staff, in the hope that the screws will place them on GOAD (Rule 45: Good Order and Discipline) in the
block
and save them the embarrassment of asking for protection.

The
number-one governor
of a prison is the governor who has been given overall control of the establishment.
The number one will delegate the day-to-day running of
his establishment to the
Dep
and other lower governor grades, but it is the number-one who will have to take the flak and responsibility if anything goes wrong. Most number-one governors will stay in charge of a prison for a minimum of four years or so before being moved on. The regime and reputation of a prison is informed by the attitude of its number-one governor. If they are a hard-line security freak, or an open-minded liberal, then the staff beneath them will usually fall into line with their views or request a transfer. If they are considered weak,
the staff will ignore them and run the prison in the way they feel it should be run.
Many weak governors have been responsible, albeit indirectly, for terrible regimes of brutality and intimidation instigated by their staff.

Someone who hangs around in the screws'
office on the wing is known as an
office cat
and is viewed with contempt and suspicion by other prisoners. The screws are the enemy, and anyone consorting with them is considered to be a traitor. Office cats sometimes come to grief and have bad ‘accidents' when the screws aren't watching.

See
Arse-licker
,
Cat's arse

Old Holborn, or
Old H
,
was once the most popular hand-rolling tobacco in prisons. In recent years it has fallen out of favour, due to its strong flavour and the fact that it is expensive compared to the cheap tobacco now on sale in prison canteens.

Old Virgin
is the nickname given to Golden Virginia, a hand-rolling tobacco which is slightly milder than Old Holborn, its nearest rival. In the days when prisoners were allowed a tin to keep their tobacco in, Golden Virginia ones were very popular. Prisoners would customize them by covering them in matchsticks and painting them. Some would sandpaper the green-and-gold livery from the tins and just leave the words ‘Old Virgin' from the full name G(old)en (Virgin)ia.

One off!
is the traditional cry of the escort screw when removing a prisoner from any part of the prison where the prisoner has been marked on the roll. The cry is directed at whichever officer is in command of the area from which the prisoner is being removed. It is also the epitaph for any prisoner who dies in prison and whose name must be officially removed from the prison roll. It's used by prisoners, in a goading way, to antagonize staff whenever there is a successful prison escape. Cries of ‘One off!' will echo around the prison as prisoners shout long into the night through their window bars.

See
One On!

One on!
is the counterpart of the cry
One off!
and is shouted by any screw who escorts a prisoner into any part of a prison where a roll needs to be amended to take them into account. For security purposes, the staff in ‘the centre' or
‘control' (those who run the workings or mechanics of
the prison)
need to be kept informed of the whereabouts of every prisoner who is moving anywhere in the prison. Not adding a prisoner to a roll board, or forgetting to take one off,
can seriously mess up the count and lead to a lock-down or stand-fast roll check that will disrupt the prison routine.

See
One Off!

The ground-floor landing is known as
the ones
. The upper levels are known as ‘the twos', ‘the threes' and ‘the fours' respectively. Each level will contain a landing with cells on each side for housing prisoners.