The Criminal Alphabet (18 page)

If someone in prison says that your
Claires
are rank, it is not a compliment. It's rhyming slang
(Claire Rayners = trainers), after the celebrity agony aunt. In prison and,
particularly, in young offender prisons, you can be judged by the make and state of your trainers. A report from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the 1990s revealed that the trainers worn most commonly by criminals, and especially burglars,
are Reebok Classics. This was discovered by analysing footprints left at crime scenes. Reebok Classics are cheap and stylish and, like most trainers, leave a recognizable print.

Clink
is a somewhat dated term for a prison, in use until the 1970s, after a prison in Southwark which started taking prisoners from the twelfth century and closed only in 1780. The prison was owned by the Bishop of Winchester and stood next to Winchester Palace. It housed both men and women and was one of the first prisons in England. It
is said that the name derives from the sounds made by the wrist and leg chains the prisoners had to wear. In 1450 rioters protesting against the Statute of Labourers released all the prisoners and burnt the Clink to the ground.
The prison was rebuilt but was then used mainly to imprison heretics; in later years it became a debtors' prison.

These days, The Clink is a prison museum, and in 2008 HMP Highdown in Surrey started up an in-prison restaurant called The Clink, in which serving prisoners can train to become chefs and waiters. The restaurant is open to sections of the public by application and has a great reputation for serving up gourmet food – and for getting ex-prisoners into work in the catering trade. Of course, the food in HMP Highdown has always been a contentious issue – before the opening of the restaurant the prison had a terrible reputation for
jank
grub.

See
HMP Pie-down

Your
co de
is the person or persons who have been charged alongside you with any sort of criminal enterprise.
In serious cases, the prison authorities will usually split co des up and keep them well away from each other before the trial to prevent collusion. In some cases,
particularly serious fraud, conspiracy and drug dealing, there can be several co des, some of whom you may never have met before the trial.

In
local prisons
there is a mix of prisoners, including those on remand and not yet convicted of any offence: JRs, or Judge's Remands, who have been convicted but not yet
sentenced; civils, who are serving sentences for civil-law crimes such as contempt of court, failure to pay maintenance or compensation; and convicts
– prisoners who have been convicted and sentenced. A lot of older prisoners refuse to be labelled as inmates and prefer to be called
cons
.

In the 1970s and '80s there was a psychiatrist named Dr Cooper who ran the special unit for the criminally insane at HMP Parkhurst. This unit contained some of the most violent men in the British prison system, and Dr Cooper treated them with a mixture of medication and one-to-one therapy. The prisoners in this unit were widely known as
Cooper's Troopers
.

A
cowboy hat
is the cardboard waste pot supplied in the strip cell or ‘strongbox' of the segregation unit, so-called because it very much resembles a cardboard Stetson when turned upside down. (And because they are sometimes worn on the head by mentally disturbed prisoners.) If someone in prison tells you they've just had two weeks ‘wearing the cowboy hat', it means they have been held in a strip cell.

In prison, it's quite common for people to
crack up
– have a mental breakdown – and it's not always those who are serving a long sentence. The most common form is when a prisoner literally cracks and starts smashing up his cell.
This usually happens late at night when time and claustrophobia hang heavily on the mind. In most cases, the screws will just leave the distressed and ranting con locked in until morning and then
nick
him for damaging prison property when he has calmed down.

Do say: Call a doctor.

Don't say: Stop whinging, this is a holiday camp according to the
Sun
!

See
Bang-up

The
crank
was a device from the days of hard labour in prisons and consisted of a wheel and counter on the outside of the cell, directly connected to a crank handle inside the cell. The prisoner, held in solitary, had to turn the crank handle for a set number of revolutions per day, often for up to fourteen hours. If the prisoner didn't meet the target, or was deemed to be slacking by the warders, a small screw could be tightened on the wheel, making it harder to turn and making the ‘work' take even longer. Prison warders were awarded the title of ‘screws' directly because of this.

There is also another prison use for
‘crank' and in this sense it is someone who is not quite right, a little bit mad, or constantly angry. This usage of the word persists into the modern prison system but comes from the days of hard labour on the crank handle when prisoners who had been held in solitary and forced to turn the handle, sometimes for months on end, would emerge from the sentence understandably insane.

See
Bread
,
Radio Rental

Sex offenders and other
‘protection-heads' (debtors, grasses, cell thieves, etc.) are usually segregated for their own safety under Prison Rule 45 (formerly 43); this is also known as going ‘on the numbers'. They should not be confused with prisoners held in the
block
(the segregation unit) under Prison Rule 45 GOAD (Good Order and Discipline).
Cucumbers
is rhyming slang for ‘the numbers', which is itself prison slang for seeking the protection wings. It is called ‘the numbers' because you will be moved to the segregation unit under Rule
45, paragraph 2 before you are moved on to a protection or
VP
(Vulnerable Prisoner) wing.

See
43OP
,
86
,
Cab caller
,
Home Office numbers
,
Nonce
,
On the bingo

Cut up
is slang for self-harm with a sharp implement. Cutting up is very common amongst prisoners,
particularly among the young, and among female prisoners and the mentally ill.
Almost anything with an edge can be used to cut up, including toothpaste tubes and fingernails.

The
daddies
were the
chaps
of the old
borstal
system, leaders who had clawed their way to the top of the borstal food chain by showing gameness and the ability and willingness to inflict serious violence on their fellow detainees.
Each wing had a daddy, who would rule, usually with an iron fist, and accept tribute
(by way of canteen items and favours done) from other prisoners. Some of the
old borstal daddies went on to become chaps in the adult prison system.

See
Borstal

DC
, or Detention Centre to give it the official name, was also known as ‘the short sharp shock'. In the
1970s it was believed that the way to rehabilitate juvenile offenders was to treat them as harshly as possible, make them do plenty of physical exercise and hard labour and subject them to brutal beatings. This was the torture and ill treatment of children sanctioned by the state. The Detention Centre system took kids from the age of fourteen to seventeen, for sentences of between three and six months. Some of the most discipline-obsessed screws in the prison system staffed these juvenile prisons and did their best to make things as uncomfortable as possible for their young charges. As an encouragement not to reoffend, it didn't work, as the harsh treatment tended to make the young detainees bitter and resentful and fostered an anti-authoritarian streak in a lot of kids. After bad publicity surrounding the deaths of some inmates the system was quietly phased out in the early 1980s. The most notorious junior DC in the south was Her Majesty's Detention Centre Send, in Surrey, which later became an adult male Category C prison, before changing again,
in the late 1990s, to become an adult female prison.

See
Borstal
,
DC
,
HMDC
,
HMYOI

The
Dear Jane
letter is the female equivalent of the
Dear John
. It sometimes escapes the public's notice that there are a lot of women in prison in this country, the majority
for non-violent crime, and they, too, can suffer the breakdown of their relationships.

See
Dear John

A
Dear John
is something men serving prison sentences, or sometimes even on remand, dread. It is the letter from your wife or girlfriend telling you that the relationship is over. It is hard enough when you are in the outside world and your relationship ends, but to be locked up, helpless, and unable to see your partner and hear it from them face to face is a nightmare for a lot of men. Getting a Dear John is part and parcel of being given a long sentence, as relationships rarely stand the trials and tribulations of two people being apart for so long. Imagine if you were in prison for ten years and the only contact you had with your wife or partner was a couple of thirty-minute visits per month, during which you're under the scrutiny of CCTV,
gimlet-eyed wardens and in a room full of other people. The only other ways to keep in touch are letters (which are opened and read by a prison censor) or by prison telephone (which is overpriced, and recorded and listened to by the authorities).
Keeping a relationship alive whilst serving a prison sentence is almost impossible,
despite the guff about helping prisoners to maintain family relationships which you read in the HMP mission statement. Many men who receive a Dear John feel as though they have nothing left to live for, and their behaviour in prison deteriorates.

See
Dear Jane

Almost every local prison has a
death cell
, where, before the death penalty was partly abolished in 1968, prisoners condemned to death were held awaiting execution. Most of these cells are now used as storerooms or offices, though a few remain as cells and still house prisoners. Prisoners, being a superstitious lot on the whole, try to avoid being housed in them, and there are many stories of bad atmospheres, sightings and ghostly sighing emanating from these cells. Cynics might of course say these things are par for the course in prisons and have more to do with drug use and prison overcrowding than with the paranormal.

In the prison system
Dep
(singular) is an abbreviation for Deputy Governor – the right-hand man or woman of the
Number-one governor
. It is the Dep's job to deal with all other governor grades and to take any flak that is meant for his boss. In reality, the Dep can set the running of the prison regime and instruct the attitudes of the rest of the staff towards prisoners. How draconian or easy the prison regime is will usually be dictated by the personality and attitude of the Dep.

See
Number-one governor

A prisoner's
deps
are his court depositions, the bundle of written statements, photographic evidence and index of exhibits that make up the prosecution case against them. Every defendant in a Crown Court case must be issued with the evidence against them in advance of the trial. A
prisoner's deps are his ‘passport' in some of the more dangerous prisons in the UK, particularly if the prisoner is unknown and there is no one to vouch for their status as an ‘ODC' (Ordinary Decent Criminal). Many undercover informers and sex offenders will try to mix with other prisoners on normal location to gather information for the authorities about breaches of prison rules or law-breaking, so they can trade it for perks or, in some cases, early release. If you are suspected of being any sort of ‘wrong un', then you will be ordered to show your deps as proof of who you are and what you are in prison for. If you refuse to show them, you're immediately a ‘suspect' and violence will inevitably follow. It has long been rumoured that sex offenders and paedophiles on protection wings trade each other's deps as pornography, as they contain evidence photos of victims and detailed statements given by the victims. It is also strongly rumoured that some undercover police informers are issued with false deps by the police or the prison system in order to allay the suspicions of other prisoners. These are jokingly known as
laminated
pages
and are supposedly handed over when the suspect leaves prison and used by the next informer.

See
Paperwork

Clan is a foul-smelling pipe tobacco that is sold in every prison canteen; the rhyming slang for it is
Desperate Dan
. It is one of the cheapest tobaccos on sale in prison and is only bought by those who are really desperate and short of funds. It's always smoked in roll-up rather than in a pipe. Smoking Desperate Dan is viewed as a sign that you have pretty much hit rock-bottom as a smoker, as it's a terrible smoke; the alternative is to become a
swooper
.

Convicted, sentenced prisoners are divided into two main categories:
determinates
and
indeterminates
. Deter-minates are those prisoners with a fixed sentence and a final release date. They have both an
EDR
(Earliest Date of Release) and an LDR (Last Date of Release), and they cannot be held in prison longer than this.