The Criminal Alphabet (14 page)

See
430P
,
Cucumbers
,
Home Office numbers
,
Nonce

On reception into prison every prisoner will be examined by the prison doctor and classified according to what form of labour they're fit for. The standard fitness classification is
A1
(fit for all labour). The examination is cursory, to say the least, and unless you have any visible physical disability your file will be stamped ‘A1'. The examination might be nothing more than the doctor looking in at you through the spyhole in a cell door and declaring you fit and healthy without having spoken a word to you. Sometimes the doctor will ask, ‘Are you fit?'; an affirmative answer could have you working at anything from digging holes to putting washers on bolts for ten pence per thousand in the prison workshop.

See
Quack

Ablutions
is one of those quaint Victorian words you hardly ever hear in the modern world – except in prisons. To be ‘at your ablutions' means to wash, shave, use the toilet, etc. It's still in use because a large proportion of English prisons date from the Victorian era and still have the original signs on the doors, and
ABLUTIONS
is still the sign above communal bathrooms, or ‘recesses', in various prisons. The rule book for the old juvenile
borstals
and
DC
s
(detention centres) stressed that trainees, as young prisoners were euphemistically described, had to perform their ablutions each morning before the breakfast bell.
Failure to do so was cause for disciplinary action, usually a swift kick in the arse and the loss of two days' remission.

See
Borstal
,
DC

ADAs
, or Additional Days Added, is the new name for what used to be called loss of remission. The breach of any prison rule that results in
adjudication
before the governor or an independent adjudicator can be punished by ADAs. These days are added to an existing prison sentence and have to be served after the initial sentence is finished.

See
Adjudication

An
adjudication
is a disciplinary hearing chaired by a prison governor or independent adjudicator to deal with any breach of prison rules or regulations by a prisoner. The prisoner receives a charge sheet outlining the charge before being marched into the adjudication room.
The evidence is then read out by the charging officer and the prisoner is asked to plead guilty or not guilty. The prisoner may then be found guilty and given an
award
by the presiding official. This award can be anything from a caution to loss of remission (now known as
ADAs
), loss of wages, a fine or a period in solitary confinement. Prisoners mostly refer to adjudications as
kangaroo courts
. At the time of writing, there are twenty-five offences for which a prisoner can face adjudication. There is an apocryphal tale amongst prisoners about an inmate at HMP Wandsworth accusing the charging officer of lying about his evidence on adjudication. The governor said, ‘If my officers tell me you were riding a motorbike around the landings, the only thing I need to know is where you got the petrol from.' The governor will generally believe the charging officer over the prisoner in adjudications.

See
Award
,
Block
,
Fit-up
,
Frame
,
Nicking

Admin
is how almost everyone in prison refers to the administration block, which is invariably run by female civilians. An essential part of every prisoner's daily life, the admin block and its workers deal with all the paperwork, including the calculation of sentences,
the issuing of parole and release dates, money and wages, and the booking and issuing of visiting orders, among many other things. Admin workers are never seen by the prisoners, and this has led to a long-standing rumour that there is actually no such thing as admin and that all paperwork issues from a massive super-computer kept in the bowels of the Home Office. This is obviously untrue because that which does not have a heart, a conscience or a soul will surely have no need of bowels.

An
advance
is given on a prisoner's reception into prison. It's a credit note for the canteen and will enable new prisoners to purchase items such as tobacco, phone credits or toiletries. The advance is never more than £5 and is automatically deducted from a prisoner's pay at the rate of fifty pence a week.

AFCs
, or Accommodation Fabric Checks, must be carried out in every cell of every prison at least once a day. They involve at least one screw visiting the cells and physically checking that there are no holes or tunnels being dug or bars being sawn through. The screws also check that the lights and emergency cell bells are working properly.
Anything suspicious, such as contraband, or any suspicious behaviour will be reported to the Security Department immediately or be written up on an SIR (Security Information Report), depending on its urgency and seriousness.
AFCs became the norm after a much-publicised escape from the Special Secure Unit
(SSU) at HMP Brixton in 1980, when three Category A men, including IRA active-service-unit volunteer Gerard Tuite, broke through the walls of three cells over a period of days. Tuite escaped along with London robber and gangland hitman Jimmy Moody and armed robber Jimmy Thompson. Tuite (who was claimed to have been responsible for at least eighteen bombings), Moody and Thompson dropped into a yard and then used abandoned scaffold boards to scale the fifteen-foot perimeter wall.
Tuite's escape led to the police issuing 16,500 ‘wanted' posters picturing him under the heading ‘
TERRORIST ALERT. THIS MAN MUST BE CAUGHT
'. Tuite was arrested in the Irish Republic two years later and sentenced to ten years for possession of explosives. Jimmy Moody was never recaptured and was shot dead in a pub in North London eighteen years after the escape. Thompson, who had been on trial for security-van robberies, gave himself up after two weeks, as the jury at his trial (which had carried on in his absence) came back with verdicts of not guilty on all counts. He handed himself in to the authorities and was given three years for the escape.

Every time a prisoner is transferred between prisons he has to go through the
allocation
process. In theory, unless a prisoner is being
ghosted
,
or ‘shanghaied', the Observation, Classification and Allocation (OCA) Department has to
take lots of factors into account, such as crime, length of sentence, special medical needs, distance from family, the category of the prisoner and anything else on their record that might make them unsuitable for the move. In my opinion, though,
it's often only the prisoner's security classification that's considered, and the prisoner is sent wherever there's a prison space that needs filling. If you're a Londoner, I'd say you can almost guarantee you'll be allocated to a jail in Birmingham, Manchester or Cardiff.

See
Ghosted

Ankle-breakers
are the uneven, jagged pieces of masonry fitted to the base of the outside wall of a prison,
a security precaution designed to make escape without injury difficult for any prisoner who manages to scale the wall and hopes to jump or drop down outside.

The
app
, or written application to give it the full title, is one of the ways by which the British prison system contributes to the annihilation of the rainforests and the gradual destruction of the planet. Almost anything you might want to know in prison is handled by way of the app. There's even an appointed hour every morning in every prison in this country which is dedicated to the writing, submitting and distribution of apps. If, for example, you are in need of toilet roll, you must fill out an app form and submit it to the relevant member of staff. Depending on what it is that you want, your app will be passed to, say, the wing manager or a governor,
who will approve your request, or not. If your app is approved, it will be passed
along the line to the relevant department. In the case of toilet roll, the app goes to the storeman, who will add his comments and then pass it on to the cleaning officer, who will pass it to one of the inmate cleaners, who will then issue (or not) your toilet roll. In some prisons this process takes so long you'd be better off wiping your arse with the app in the first place. (Incidentally, in prison, each prisoner's toilet-paper ration is six sheets a day.)

See
John Wayne

Aramark
plc was one of the main companies that took over the running of prison canteens after the partial privatization of the prison system. It's an American company and is universally hated by prisoners for what they believe are its extortionate prices, lack of choice and charging for items they have not supplied.

An
arse bandit
is a predatory homosexual who will take what he wants, by force if necessary. In prison these men are usually housed on the protection wings with the sex offenders.

An
arse-licker
is any prisoner who hangs around the screws hoping to gain favourable treatment, such as getting a decent prison job, home leave, parole, etc. Detested by other prisoners and always suspected of
grassing
, these prisoners have no shame and more front than Brighton.

See
Office cat

There seems to be an abundance of
arsonists
behind the walls of our prisons and mental-health hospitals, and they come in many varieties. Arsonists may do it for money, i.e.
torching a business for the insurance, or for revenge, which, although they should never be condoned, you can at least understand the reasons behind, but there are some arsonists who get ‘turned on' by lighting fires, and these are harder to understand. If you're in prison, it goes without saying you should avoid having this kind of arsonist as a cell mate. Anyone who can only have a wank when the flames are dancing is going to be a serious liability in a cell the size of the average family bathroom.

The
Aryan Brotherhood
is a white supremacist gang that is very big in American prisons. Its members deal drugs, murder, take on ‘hits' (killing people for money) and, generally, engage in gang activities. Since the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in UK prisons, the Aryan Brotherhood is making inroads into the British prison system. There are still only a handful of members, but it's catching on gradually as white prisoners find themselves increasingly isolated by Muslim gangs. The original Aryan Brotherhood was an Irish gang which formed for protection after the desegregation of the Californian prison system led to a spate of murders and stabbings. This is why all Aryan Brotherhood members have a tattoo of an Irish shamrock somewhere on their bodies.

Aspirin water
is simply aspirin dissolved in water: a cure-all, according to prison medics. Since the introduction of Mandatory Drug Testing in 1994 any painkiller or other drug that may show up in a urine test will only be issued with the approval of a doctor in consultation with the Security Department, so aspirin water is the main medication offered to sick or injured prisoners. The other choice is nothing.

See
Quack

APVs
is a national scheme whereby families of prisoners who are on low income or claiming benefits can receive financial help in order to visit a family member who is in prison.

Association
is another one of those quaint words used daily by the prison system and is any period of the day when prisoners are allowed to mix with each other. In most prisons the association area is on the ground floor of the wing, where there'll be a communal television set and tables on which prisoners can play cards, chess or backgammon.
Some prisons also feature a small pool table, table-tennis table or table football.
The duration of association time varies from prison to prison and, in the past, some prisons, such as HMP Wandsworth, took great pride in providing no association time for prisoners. (These were – and are – known as ‘
bang-up
nicks'
because of the amount of time prisoners spend locked up in their cells.)
Up until the 1980s, in some prisons, association time had to be earned by good behaviour and there was a minimum six-month bang-up period before association was allowed. Since 1994 there have been payphones in every prison and the association period is when prisoners can use these phones to speak to family,
friends and legal advisers.

AVs
are Accumulated Visits. Prisoners who are being held in a prison far away from their home area and so find it difficult to receive visitors can save up, or accumulate, up to six months' worth of visiting orders, then request a temporary transfer to a prison closer to their home area in order to have visits. The transfer will be for a maximum period of twenty-eight days and whether this is granted depends on the behaviour and record of the prisoner and whether there is space in the
local prison
. During the AV period the prisoner may be allowed a visit every day, depending on how many VOs he has accumulated and whether space is available in the visiting hall. AV prisoners and their visitors are subject to the same security procedures as any other. During times of prison overcrowding the AV facility is usually the first thing to go. Despite the prison system's mealy-mouthed lip service to the importance of family contact, a prisoner's contact with their family is essential only as long as it coincides with the Ministry of Justice's financial and warehousing policies.