The Criminal Alphabet (26 page)

Whenever a prisoner starts a
dirty protest
there are certain official procedures that have to be adhered to. The door of the prisoner's cell is sealed with masking tape, all staff who go near the cell wear protective suits and masks, and meals are pushed into the cell with a stick so the staff do not have to enter. The staff designated to do all this are called the
shit watch
; they are responsible for the dirty cell and the prisoner.

Sliding the mirror
is a way in which prisoners can pass messages and small items of contraband to each other when their cell doors are locked. Every prison cell is equipped with a small, flat plastic mirror for prisoners to use while shaving – they are standard issue and have a small hole punched through each corner so they can be screwed to the wall.
Prisoners usually unscrew the mirror from the wall and thread a line through one of the corners. They then
tie their message, or item, to the mirror and place it flat on the floor of the cell, slide the mirror back and forth a few times in order to build up momentum, then slide it under the gap in the door with some force. (All prison cell doors have at least a half-inch gap at the bottom, for ventilation.) The aim is for the mirror to shoot across the corridor and under the door of the cell opposite. A prisoner can do this not only with the cell directly opposite but with any on the other side of the corridor they can see by lying on the floor and looking through the gap. Of course, you have to keep hold of the end of the line …

See
Hooking
,
Swinging a Line

A
spin
is a cell search,
so called because once the
DST
(Designated Search Team) have searched your cell the place will look as though a tornado has been through it. The DST will rip a cell apart in their search for contraband, but the cleaning up after the search is left to the prisoner.

See
DST
,
Pad spin

A prisoner under the age of eighteen can be
starred up
– that is, have a star placed on their prison file –
if they are considered too dangerous for the juvenile system. Once this has been done, they can be transferred to an adult prison.

A
stiff
is a letter that has been smuggled out of prison in order to avoid the contents being read by the prison censor. It's called a stiff because, in the old days (up until
the 1960s), prisoners weren't allowed to have writing paper so would have to write on bits of cardboard they had managed to rip from boxes in the workshop. A stiff might contain information that the sender does not want the authorities to know about, or it might just be a chance to write to a loved one without having their words read by a prison officer. If a prisoner, gets caught trying to smuggle a stiff out of prison, they will be charged with a breach of prison discipline and can receive up to fourteen days' loss of remission.

Swinging a line
is how prisoners pass items from cell to cell, and sometimes from wing to wing, when they are banged up. There is a certain amount of skill involved. Firstly, you make your line, usually by unpicking lengths of thread or material from a prison blanket and tying them together, and put a weight on one end of it – a plastic prison cup,
plastic spoon, a bar of prison soap, a sock with a battery in it, or whatever else you may have in the cell that has a bit of weight to it. Then you alert the person you'll be swinging the line to by calling to their cell window. The person catching the line will hold a rolled-up newspaper or magazine out between the bars of his window and patiently try to catch the weighted end. Both prisoners now have one end of the line and can pass packages – usually drugs, tobacco, a weapon or a note –
back and forth along it.

See
Hooking
,
Sliding the mirror

A prisoner never has enough tobacco,
simply because prison wages are so meagre and tobacco is so expensive.
Therefore there are prisoners – heavy smokers – who are always on the hunt for it. When a smoking prisoner runs out of tobacco and has exhausted his credit with other prisoners through constant borrowing, there are only two courses of action open to him – either kick the habit or start
swooping
.
Swooping is picking up discarded cigarette butts from the exercise yard and anywhere else they can be found. The butts are either smoked as they are or broken open for the tobacco, which will then be rolled into a cigarette. Some enterprising non-smokers who have access to the screws' offices as cleaners will gather up discarded cigarette butts from the ashtrays, break them open, put them into a pouch and sell or trade them to smokers; the resulting tobacco is commonly known as
‘Roadside Virginia'. Swoopers get their moniker from the fact that they will swoop down on any discarded cigarette butt, sometimes snatching it before it hits the ground.

Most swoopers have long abandoned any pride or self-respect in their pursuit of nicotine, but there are ‘undercover swoopers', also desperate for their nicotine hit but unwilling to suffer the ridicule of their fellow prisoners. One undercover swooper I observed in HMP Wormwood Scrubs back in the 1980s would attach a piece of sticky tape to the toe of one of his shoes, and if he saw a particularly big cigarette butt he would press his toe on to it, it would stick and he would ‘walk' it into his cell. Nicotine is a very addictive drug and probably the most sought after in prisons, where the percentage of smokers is much higher than in the outside world. Withdrawal from nicotine can cause already volatile men to become violent and disruptive. In fact,
the government tacitly acknowledged this by exempting prison cells from the 2007
smoking ban. A recent blanket ban in HMP Jurby, the Isle
of Man prison, has led to reports of prisoners smoking teabags, hair and cloth in order to try to satisfy their cravings. Assaults in this prison have increased by 48 per cent since the ban was implemented. It's a widely held belief among prisoners that were the authorities to try to implement a prison-wide ban on smoking there would be riots and unrest on a massive scale. We should also remember that even the most hard-line screws and governors acknowledge that British prisons can only be run with the consent and cooperation of the prisoners.

A
tailor-made
is a manufactured cigarette. The majority of prisoners who smoke will buy cheap tobacco and roll their own. The wages in prison are very low – £7 a week on average – so tailor-made cigarettes, at over £8 a pack, are a great luxury.

See
Civvy

If something or someone is described as
two bob
it means it is cheap and useless. In the days before decimalization, one shilling was known as a bob and little of any value could be purchased with it. The old two-bob piece is the equivalent of ten pence.

See
Two-bob rocket

If someone is described as ‘going off like a
two-bob rocket
, it means that they are not very convincing,
a bit of a damp squib, as in ‘Yeah, I thought Jimmy was going to smash the
wing office up when that screw told him to fuck off, but he went off like a two-bob rocket and just kicked the door'.

Undesirables
is the name given by some prison staff to sex offenders and other prisoners on the protection wings. On the whole, the staff who work with these kind of prisoners volunteer,
because the prisoners are less violent and don't cause the same kind of problems as those on the main wings. However, this isn't always the case. Sometimes staffing levels mean that prison officers who don't want to be there are sent to work on protection wings.

See
The Mains

Undies
are anyone on a prison wing who prisoners think may be undercover, for example, a prisoner in for a sex offence or another undesirable crime who is pretending to be in for something else rather than seek protection. The term can also be used for any prisoner who is suspected of being a grass or an informer, as in ‘That ginger geezer on B wing is a bit sussy; I think he might be an undie'.

See
Grass
,
Nonce

HMP Pentonville, in Caledonian Road,
North London, has long been known as
The Ville
by anyone who has had the misfortune to cross its threshold. Opened in 1816, it was the first of the
‘modern' prisons in London. The Ville originally had separate cells, with room for
860 prisoners sentenced to imprisonment or awaiting transportation to the colonies.
These days, it holds around 1,300 prisoners and is an adult male Category B and C jail. The cost of keeping a prisoner there in the 1840s was 15 shillings (75 pence) a week; today, it's £38,000 a year. Prisoners in The Ville tend to come from North London and round about and have their own slang and way of talking. For example, in other parts of the country a £50 note is called a
‘nifty' (rhyming) or a ‘bullseye' (the centre of a dartboard, worth fifty points),
but in North London it's known as a ‘McGarrett' (after Steve McGarrett, a detective from 1970s television show
Hawaii Five-0
). A bit like Scousers (the name comes from the name of a traditional Liverpool stew), the North London contingent have a pretty convoluted take on rhyming slang. Not to stereotype or generalize
(which is exactly what I'm doing!), but I've found criminals and prisoners from North London tend to specialize in
hoisting
, ‘the snatch' or
‘blagging' (armed robbery) as their chosen method of crime. There is a large contingent of criminals based in the
Cali
(in and around the estates of Caledonian Road) who are prolific thieves and are always in and out of The Ville. It's as if some of them have their names on the cells.

VP
(Vulnerable Prisoner)
is the official acronym for any prisoner who seeks protection from other prisoners.
Prison protection wings are known as VP wings or VP units, and some non-vulnerable prisoners call them ‘VIPs', as they believe those on them are treated better by the prison system than ‘ordinary' prisoners.

In all top-security prisons any prisoner wishing to leave a wing or spur for any reason – to go out on the yard for exercise,
or to go to the hospital wing, for example – will have at least a rub-down search by prison staff and probably will also be ‘wanded'. The
wand
is a hand-held metal detector which the screws pass over the prisoner's body in order to scan for hidden
blades
or weapons.

This is another term for a prison. A
warehouse
is a huge building used for storage, and a prison, on the whole, is a huge warehouse that stores humans. A warehouse prison is usually a
local
jail, where there is very little in the way of facilities for prisoners, very little training, education or rehabilitation. In them, prisoners may spend up to twenty-three hours a day locked in their cells. The warehouse analogy fits perfectly – think of row upon row of concrete boxes each containing one or more ‘body' just waiting for their sentence to end.

See
The Hate Factory

Prisons are brutal and violent places.
Violence is committed by prison staff on inmates, by inmates on prison staff and
inmates on their fellow inmates – in prison, violence is commonplace. The violence
committed by prison staff on inmates is done so for a variety of reasons: power,
anger, revenge, boredom and mental illness (believe it or not, there is no
psychological evaluation of prison staff or anyone applying for the job). There are
also many reasons for the violence committed by prisoners on staff (psychological
evaluations
are
done on prisoners, and a recent report by the Social
Exclusion Unit, on ‘Psychiatric Morbidity among Prisoners in England and Wales'
concluded that 70 per cent of offenders in prison have at least two or more
recognizable mental illnesses).

Prisoners manage to make weapons in what
is, ostensibly, a sterile, safe environment specifically designed to prevent weapons
being used or made. It was recently estimated that the murder rate in UK prisons is
seven times higher than in society as a whole. This can partly be explained by the
fact that prison is where murderous and violent people are sent for their crimes
and, if they behave in a murderous or violent way while they're outside, at large,
then what's to stop them at least having the inclination to carry on once they're in
jail? They no longer have the threat of prison to keep them in order, and that
threat obviously didn't work in the first place, as they're in prison now! It can't
be any surprise to anyone that the institution to which society sends its harshest,
most violent and chaotic offenders is itself going to be a harsh, violent and
chaotic place.

Prison violence is usually swift,
merciless and carried
out on the spur of the moment. The creed of
prison violence is: do it fast, do it good and do it first.

Bed-leg
is the common
name for a
cosh
. The word comes from the small section of steel
pipe used to separate prison bunks, which is put in a sock to make a weapon.
Bed-legs are formidable weapons: heavy, and capable of caving a man's skull in with
one blow. Prisoners will only use a bed-leg cosh when they mean to do serious damage
to their victim.

A
chiv
is any
prison-made cutting or stabbing implement, of any shape or size, made from any
material that can have an edge or a point fashioned on it. Due to the large number
of metal-detecting machines in high-security prisons, chivs are no longer likely to
be made from metal. In fact, most are now made from plastic, crudely sharpened by
having been rubbed briskly against brick or concrete. The traditional chiv is a
toothbrush handle which has had two razor blades melted into it. Other chivs
favoured by purveyors of violence in prison are the six-inch nail, usually fitted
into a piece of wood, or a pair of scissors snapped in half to make two separate
blades.

See
Blade
,
Shank
,
Stripe
,
Tram
Lines

Corp the feen
is a
Romany term exhorting a companion to knock out, or ‘kill', someone who has insulted
them or issued threats. On the whole, true Gypsies are known for
sorting their problems out via fisticuffs rather than by using weapons or going to
the authorities.

A
cosh
, from the Romany
word
koshter
, meaning stick, is any makeshift weapon used for hitting
people. In prison, before the introduction of in-cell electricity, prisoners were
allowed a battery-powered radio (MW and LW only), and a good one, such as a Roberts
Rambler or a Hacker, would be powered by a PP9 battery: square, nine volts and
weighing in at around a pound. Drop one of these batteries into a prison-issue sock
and you have a very dangerous cosh. Drop two or three of them into a pillowcase and
you have a devastating weapon. Some prisoners favour six or eight RS20 batteries
(the large round ones) laid end to end, then tightly wrapped in newspaper and taped
together for maximum strength, though this does take a little more time. In prison,
almost anything can be turned into a weapon, even several bars of prison-issue soap
wrapped in a T-shirt or vest – surprisingly effective for such a crude weapon.

See
Bed-leg
,
Millwall
Brick

Perhaps the worst of prison violence
involves the action of
fatting
someone
up
. This is
normally reserved for the worst sex offenders – those who commit crimes against
children – but is also sometimes used against prison staff. The method is to buy a
couple of pounds of beef dripping from the prison canteen (top-security prisons
allow long-term inmates to cook their own meals), then melt it on a hot ring of the
communal cooker. Once the fat has liquefied and is bubbling hot, it is thrown over
the victim. Burning fat
causes terrible damage and immense pain.
It's a truly horrific ‘punishment', no matter what the crime. In HMP Whitemoor in
1995 a life-sentenced prisoner retired two prison officers by throwing a pot full of
boiling fat over them. The governor of the prison decreed that, from then on,
prisoners could no longer purchase oil or dripping from the canteen. Ever
resourceful, they then began to use margarine to cook, and in fatting up. There is
only one thing more painful and damaging than having hot fat thrown in your face,
and that is having melted, boiling margarine thrown over you. As long as prisoners
have access to cookers, they will find a way to fat up their enemies.

A
Glasgow kiss
is a
headbutt to the face, given this name because of its popularity in the city.

Jerking
is stabbing
somebody very seriously so as to cause the utmost damage, and takes its name from
the body's reaction to it. In prison, these stabbings will usually be done with half
a pair of scissors or a sharpened six-inch nail set into a wooden handle (known as a
‘jerker', or
chiv
).

Jugging
is a very
violent prison punishment. Every prisoner is issued with a two-pint plastic jug to
keep drinking water in when they are locked up in their cell. This jug can be used
as a weapon (usually reserved for sex offenders and informers, though not
exclusively so) if it is part-filled with sugar and then topped up with
boiling water from the wing's communal waterboiler. The mixture
is stirred until it becomes a boiling syrup and then thrown in the face of the
victim. The syrup clings to the skin and burns like acid, often leaving the victim
permanently scarred.

See
Teabagging
,
Wetting up

A
mattress job
is a
beating, usually given by the police to a prisoner in a police cell. Each police
cell contains a thin blue mattress for prisoners to sleep on. If a prisoner is a bit
leery or causes problems, is violent or won't admit to crimes, the police will enter
the cell
mob-handed
and knock him to the floor. They will then
throw the mattress over him and proceed to stomp and kick him all over his body. The
blows will hurt very much but leave no tell-tale cuts or bruises because of the
mattress. Mattress jobs are also sometimes used in prisons by prison officers in the
punishment block.

See
Blanket job
,
Mob-handed
,
Sheeting

A
Millwall brick
is a
makeshift weapon popularized by the hooligan element of Millwall Football Club. It
is a normal newspaper that has been folded several times until it's the size of a
housebrick; it's then a solid block that can be used to
cosh
rival
hooligans. It's a very effective weapon in the right hands (though it usually
isn't). The Millwall brick became popular when police searches were introduced at
football grounds in order to prevent hooligans bringing weapons in. A newspaper
would attract no suspicion.

A
shank
is any kind of
bladed instrument used for cutting or stabbing. It's an Americanism that has found
its way into common British usage via films and rap music.

See
Blade
,
Chiv

In recent years, particularly among
prisoners in Young Offender Institutions (though not exclusively so),
sheeting
has become a common punishment. It involves prisoners
throwing a bed sheet or duvet over the victim from behind and then beating (or, in
extreme cases, stabbing) the victim while they are wrapped in it and unable to see.
This method of attack has three advantages: the victim won't be able to identify the
assailants; the cover will stop blood or other DNA evidence from splashing on to the
attackers; and the sheet or duvet will muffle the screams of the victim.

See
Blanket job
,
Mattress job

Almost every prison wing will have a
blind spot where there are no screws or cameras. These spots are known as
Stabbers' Alley
, originally after a short, dark corridor in HMP
Winchester used as a location for ‘hits' on other prisoners. If you venture into
Stabbers' Alley, the chances are you'll be stabbed, beaten or cut, or see it being
done to someone else.

To
stripe
someone is to
slash them with a
chiv
or razor, usually across the face, leaving a
stripe. Striping is a pretty common punishment in prison, particularly in young
offenders' jails, and is often dished out to drug debtors and informers. A stripe
from ear to mouth is called a
telephone line
and is the mark
usually given to informers.

Teabagging
comes from
the Tetley teabag adverts that boasted of the bags having a thousand perforations. I
now realize that the term has a very different connotations in the outside world,
but in prison it is a serious stabbing, usually by two or more assailants. It can
happen anywhere, but the favourite location is the shower block, preferably when the
victim is naked, with shampoo in their eyes and at their most vulnerable, or in the
meal queue, when there are very few screws about. (There are no Marquess of
Queensberry Rules governing jail violence.) A teabagging relies on speed: the
assailants attack quickly then melt into the background, leaving the victim in a
pool of blood.

Teabagging is usually reserved for sex
offenders or informants but can also be a punishment ordered by a dealer because a
prisoner owes him a serious amount of money. The average price for hiring a hitman
in prison is around £50 worth of heroin.

A prisoner or criminal with a scar that
runs from his mouth to his ear is usually one to be avoided. This kind of
scar is called a
telephone line
and it is
usually inflicted to show that the victim has informed.

Prison violence is brutal and bloody. One
method that causes serious injury to an enemy is to melt two razor blades into the
handle of a prison-issue plastic toothbrush, usually with a good gap between the
blades, and use this as a weapon, a
chiv
. The reasons for using two
blades are, firstly, because they will make a distinctive scar and, secondly, the
wound will be very hard to stitch up. The strip of skin between the cuts will also
be affected and so the attack will leave a broad scar. It's known as handing out the
tram lines
because the two cuts resemble a tram track.

To
wet
someone
up
in prison is to attack them using a mixture of boiling water
and sugar.

See
Jugging