The Criminal Alphabet (16 page)

The average wage paid to UK prisoners is
£7 per week, so prisoners who smoke have had to learn to be resourceful. There is an abundance of Holy Bibles in prison, due to the propensity of religious zealots to see any atmosphere of misery and desperation as an opportunity for a conversion, and the thin pages of these religious manuals are perfect for roll-ups. Some prisoners who cannot afford to
buy rolling papers will roll their tobacco in
bible pages
and smoke the printed word of God along with their cheap shag. The traditional cry of those who smell the burning pages is ‘Holy smoke!'

See
Burn

Biff
or
Biffa
is an offensive name for sex offenders. It comes from a character in
Viz
, Biffa Bacon. Biffa Bacon is not a sex offender, but sex offenders have traditionally been known as
bacons
. ‘Biff' can also be used to describe a complete idiot, particularly in Scouse slang.

See
86
,
Bacon
,
Beast
,
Nonce

Serving a prison sentence is known as
‘doing your
bird
' (bird lime = time). It dates back to the Victorian era and came about because most prisons had high walls and towers that were invariably covered in bird lime (avian excrement). A short sentence is known as a bit of ‘sparrow' (a small bird). ‘Do yer bird' is an encouragement to get your head down and do your time without making a fuss, often heard being shouted from cell windows to people who are making too much noise, or to newly arrived prisoners as a dig that they are just starting their sentences.

A
birdman
is a prisoner who has served a very long prison sentence or many prison sentences with short breaks of freedom in between, after the 1962 film
Birdman of
Alcatraz
, starring Burt Lancaster as real-life birdman Robert Stroud, a convicted killer who became an avian expert while in prison.

See
Bird

To do a
bit
is to serve a prison sentence, normally quite a short one, as in ‘Yeah, just got out of
The Ville
, done a twelve-week bit for
hoisting
'. This is an Americanism that has made its way into British usage through film and television.

See
Carpet

A
blade
can be any sharpened implement with a cutting edge or a point used for inflicting injury, or sometimes death, in prison. Inside, almost anything can be made into a blade.
Favourites are tin lids (usually from cans of tuna, which can be bought in the prison canteen), scissors (broken in half to make two blades) and even a piece of hard plastic or perspex. Plastic, sharpened by being rubbed against brickwork or concrete, is a particular favourite in top-security prisons, as it does not show up on the metal detectors, and the screws in such prisons carry
wands
(hand-held metal detectors) in order to check prisoners for weapons without actually searching them.

A
blanket job
is one of the ways prisoners deal with any ‘undesirables' that end up in their midst – sex offenders,
informers, granny bashers, etc. It involves creeping up on the victim and throwing a prison blanket over their head before dishing out a stabbing or severe beating. The blanket serves three purposes: it stops the victim being able to identify his attackers; it prevents the attackers getting blood or other forensic evidence on their clothing; and it increases the fear and disorientation of the victim.

See
Mattress Job
,
Sheeting

The
block
is the common name for the punishment block, where prisoners are held in solitary confinement for any infraction of prison rules. Most blocks are cold and dirty with no redeeming features or comforts. The prisoner will spend twenty-three hours a day locked in a small cell with nothing except a plastic
pisspot
. Some block staff have a bad reputation for brutality. If a screw is deemed ‘a bit too quick with his stick' while working in his normal location – if he is involved in one too many
‘incidents' – he will normally be sent to the block to work off his frustrations. In
1997 twenty-seven screws at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, most of them working in the punishment block, were suspended from duty for violently and sexually abusing prisoners. Six of them were convicted of criminal offences and sentenced to prison terms. Witnesses spoke of a ‘torture room' with padded rubber walls in the block where they would be taken to be assaulted. Many blocks in prisons around the country have similar or worse reputations than the block at HMP Wormwood Scrubs. In recent,
years the prison system has attempted to sanitize the public perception of the punishment block by rebranding it as the ‘segregation unit', but prisoners still call it the
block and it's still the place they are taken to be punished.

See
Chokey

Since the introduction of ‘volumetric control' in prisons in 1995, prisoners have to be able to fit all their possessions into two
blue boxes
supplied by the prison. This includes bedding,
clothing, canteen goods, books, magazines, legal paperwork and toiletries. Any item that does not fit into the boxes is confiscated. The boxes used by all prisons are of standard size and issue.

Blues
was the common name for the uniform worn by all convicted prisoners up until the mid-1990s. It consisted of a blue denim jacket and jeans. The colour blue was used to distinguish them from those on remand and yet to be convicted, who wore either
browns
or their own clothes. Both uniforms were replaced by
‘Spider-Man suits' for those who could not, or would not, wear their own clothes.

See
Banana suit
,
Browns

The prison-issue shirt with
blue stripes
was part of the standard prison uniform before the rules were relaxed to allow even convicted prisoners to wear their own clothes. The reason the British Government changed their policy on this was because IRA prisoners had refused to wear prison uniform from the start (they classed themselves as political prisoners rather than criminals). IRA prisoners wearing only prison-issue blankets was an embarrassment
to the government, so they came up with the rather devious solution of letting all prisoners wear their own clothes so as not to be seen to be giving in to the IRA. Problem solved. British prisoners, therefore,
can thank the Irish Republican Army for the fact that they no longer have to wear uniform. Blue-striped shirts – made of 100 per cent cotton and with thin light-blue stripes on a white background – were the only popular part of the original prison uniform and were a favourite both in and out of prison. Up until the turn of the twenty-first century, prison-issue blue-striped shirts could command prices of up to
£50 outside (as long as the shirt had the official HMP stamp on the inside front panel). Many prisoners made extra money by smuggling them out of prison, usually stuffed inside soft toys they had made in the hobbies class, and selling them to market traders, particularly in places like Camden Market and Petticoat Lane, for resale to the public. A typical prison-made teddy bear could contain up to ten blue-striped shirts. It was a nice little earner for the newly released prisoner.
Inside, there was also a huge black market for altered and tailored blue-stripes –
with short sleeves, breast pockets and granddad collars being the favourites. Every prison tailor shop had at least two prisoners who could modify blue-stripes, and they earned more from this than from their official job, even though any prisoner caught altering or modifying prison property could be
nicked
and lose up to fourteen days' remission. Any prisoner caught in possession of altered clothing would get the same. That said, most staff would turn a blind eye.
Eventually, the prison system, seeing an opportunity for an earner and knowing it would be almost impossible to stop prisoners smuggling the shirts out, decided to cash in and sell the shirts themselves through their own outlets. Unfortunately,
whether they flooded the market or people no longer wanted blue stripes
because there was no longer a frisson of illegality about them,
the price of a blue-striped shirt dropped to £12.There are still plenty of blue stripes around in the prison system today, but they are all old stock and no longer in demand. This piece of prison-issue clothing has become a design classic.

A
body belt
is a form of restraint used in prisons in order to control and incapacitate violent prisoners. It consists of a broad leather belt that locks around a prisoner's waist, with a handcuff on each side of the belt in which the prisoner's wrists are secured. Once a prisoner is locked into a body belt they cannot lift their hands above waist height.
This is a very vulnerable position to be in, and many prisoners, including Charles Bronson, have complained of being attacked by screws while they were helpless in the body belt. The body-belt guidelines say that this type of restraint should not be used on a prisoner for longer than twelve hours, but this time limit is often abused with the excuse of ‘exceptional circumstances', the favourite get-out clause of most rules and regulations enforced by prisons.

Almost every prison wing or landing has a
boiler
, a machine which dispenses boiling water so that prisoners can make hot drinks (since the prison system no longer supplies
diesel
). Sometimes, the boiling water from these machines is used to scald or
jug
other prisoners. The prison system considers these activities and the horrific injuries that result from them a lot cheaper and far less work than
having to bring hot water or tea around to each cell at intervals during the day, which is how it used to be done before communal boilers were fitted in the mid-1990s. ‘Boiler' can also be used as a slang word for an old and ugly woman who is still sexually active, as in ‘I ended up lagging drunk and rumped some old boiler out of the club'.

See
Diesel
,
Jugging

In most modern prisons the beds are bolted to the floor.The reason for these
bolted beds
is to prevent prisoners using them to
barricade
themselves into their cell.
However, this would be almost impossible in most modern jails, because the cells are built with ‘reversible cell doors', that is, doors that can also be opened outwards by removing a restraining pin.

See
Barricades

In 1997 the British Government announced to the world that slopping out, the practice of prisoners having to use a pot or bucket as a toilet and then empty it communally every morning, had ended. Before this, a lot of prisoners had to resort to defecating in newspapers laid out on the floor of their cell and then making it into a ‘parcel' and throwing it out of the cell window. These parcels were known as ‘bombs' or ‘shit parcels'. So every prison had its
bomb squad
– a group of prisoners whose job it was to clean the yard and remove the bombs that would inevitably litter the ground around each prison wing. Escorted by an unlucky screw and armed with gloves, shovels, stiff brooms and a bin on a trolley, the bomb squad would deal
with a daily labour on a par with Hercules' cleaning of the Augean Stables. Some of the shit bombs would be well wrapped, but the contents of others, which had come from the higher windows, would be splattered all over the concrete yards. Being on the bomb squad was a much-hated job, and no one but
divs
,
hobbits
and ‘grovellers' would do it. Since 1997, most prison cells have had toilets fitted, though to this day there are ten prisons that are still slopping out and still have a bomb squad.

See
Div

Boob
is another word for prison, as in ‘I've just spent three
moon
in the boob', indicated that being in prison was a temporary mistake or boob.

Boosters
are a means by which prison psychologists can keep on milking the cash cow of the prison system long after their ‘work' with the prisoner is done. If a prisoner completes one of the many Offending Behaviour Programmes (OBPs) – for example, Enhanced Thinking Skills, Cognitive Thinking, CALM or the Sex Offenders Treatment Programme, etc. –
early in his sentence, he may be ordered to take a booster course before being released, or even afterwards, as a condition of parole or licence.

A
boot room
is a good beating, generally administered by a group of prisoners. It comes from the old juvenile Detention Centres and
borstal
institutions, which usually
had a windowless room at the end of each wing where prisoners had to store their work boots on racks so as not to trail dirt on to the highly polished floors of the wings. The screws rarely entered the boot rooms, and this was where prisoners would be attacked, or scores settled, away from the prying eyes of the authorities. The term is now taken to mean any blind spot on a prison wing where attacks take place.

See
Stabbers'
Alley

Boo yakka!
is an exclamation of excitement, meant to resemble the sound of a gunshot, often heard shouted from cell windows by prisoners of West Indian origin and
jafakens
. You hear it quite a lot when music or live sport is broadcast on television or the radio. It's a verbal throwback to the Jamaican custom of firing guns into the air at sound-system music gigs.