The Criminal Alphabet (28 page)

In London, ‘bubble' is also used for
someone who gives information to the police or other authorities. So a
grass
can also be known as a bubble in some quarters and this
has nothing to do with the Greek explanation but is due to the fact that the rhyming
slang ‘bubble and squeak' can also mean ‘speak'. If someone calls you a bubble and
you're not of Greek origin, then you'd better watch your back.

Budgie syndrome
is what
a lot of prisoners who regularly use the prison gym seem to suffer from. It's a
disease that makes them pose or parade up and down in front of the full-length
mirrors, preening and chirping at their own
reflection. Every
prison gym will have a large quota of bodybuilders who act as though they're on
Muscle Beach, grunting and stretching and working out, but always with one eye on
themselves in the mirror. It's called budgie syndrome because these prisoners ape
the behaviour of budgerigars locked up in cages with only a mirror for company. Many
men in prison make use of the gym in order to build themselves up, and a lot of them
take it very seriously. In some prisons there's a roaring trade in steroids and a
lot of gang members will hit the gym, which is classed as neutral territory – very
few people will cause trouble in a prison gym, as they know they'll be instantly
banned and that means more time locked up in their cell. The way to make a
bodybuilder turn into a paranoid quivering wreck is to ask casually if they're
losing weight – as the bodybuilder's target is to bulk up in order to look bigger,
the thought that they may be losing weight is, to them, as the crucifix and garlic
are to the vampire.

Bumba claat
is a West
Indian insult in common usage in Jamaica. Its literal meaning is ‘bum cloth'. Before
the invention of toilet paper (and even in some poor countries today), you would
clean yourself after defecation with a piece of rag. The sound of the words ‘bum
cloth' in Jamaican patois is drawn out, creating the expression ‘bumba
claat'.
It's also called a
raas claat
. ‘Pussy claat'
is very similar in origin, and is also used as an insult in Jamaican patois.

A
bum bandit
is a
predatory homosexual who will try to force himself on vulnerable or unwary males. In
essence, they are sex pests and rapists who target men and boys. Ronnie Kray was a
notorious bum bandit.

A
cabbage
is anyone
dimmer than a 20-watt light-bulb. Before the advent of in-cell television in
prisons, there was a communal TV set, usually at the centre of the wing, where
prisoners on
association
could get their daily diet of soap operas.
This was commonly known as the ‘cabbage patch' or
vegetable patch
,
because only those with not much going on between their ears would gather there.

See
Hobbit hole
,
Vegetable patch

A very common insult, particularly in
prison: a
cardboard gangster
is someone who likes to pretend to be
a real gangster, though in reality they are no such thing. ‘Celebrity gangsters' are
a prime example of this, posing with fake guns and pretending to be major criminals
when they have no such pedigree as a ‘working criminal'. Some people are attracted
to the dubious glamour of the criminal world, in much the same way that certain
women are attracted to the worst kind of serial killer.

Care bear
is a
disparaging term used by some prison officers to describe the minority of their
colleagues who
try to help prisoners with their problems. The
world of prison officers is, overall, a macho one, where daring to show that you
care about doing your job properly is frowned upon by the majority. If a prison
officer gets a reputation among his fellows as a care bear, he can expect to be
sneered at and treated like an idiot. Some prison officers pride themselves on how
little they can get away with doing during their working day and treat all prisoners
like shit. Being a care bear in this culture and environment is a bit like being a
fart in a spacesuit.

See
Dog screw

Cat's arse
is rhyming
slang for
grass
, so another name for an informer, as in ‘I don't
like that new bloke on C wing, I heard he's a bit of a cat's.'

See
Grass
,
Lolly
,
Midnight

A
cell soldier
is a
prisoner who is full of mouth when locked in his cell, shouting insults and threats
at other prisoners through his cell window during lockdown, but who is as meek as a
kitten when the cell doors are opened and they are faced with the people they have
been abusing. ‘Cell soldier' can also be used to describe somebody who remains in
solitary confinement, usually in the punishment block of a prison, and shows no
signs of concern – somebody who can handle their
bang-up
.

See
Bang-up
,
Cardboard gangster
,
Window warrior

Charlie Big Spuds
is the
generic insult for anyone who walks around giving it
the Barry
, a
bully who may have a tendency to fold when confronted. It's particularly used in
prisons, where some criminals try to reinvent themselves. Other forms are Billy Big
Bollocks or
Jack the Biscuit
.

To young people,
chief
is a dire insult and to call someone it is to invite violence: you cannot ‘chief
someone off' and expect to get away with it. The word has African connotations and
relates mainly to Nigerians, who are considered by some to be stupid, greedy and
ruthless enough to inform on anyone in order to save their own necks. It comes from
the fact that many Nigerian criminals will falsely boast that they are the chief of
their tribe or village in order to perpetuate fraud. Nigerians have a reputation
unparalleled around the world as major fraudsters, so much so that, in 1989, the
Nigerian Government, embarrassed by a report which claimed that Nigerians made up
the highest population of foreign prisoners in most of the prisons in Europe,
decreed that any Nigerian national who had been convicted of crime or served a
prison sentence abroad would be deported back to their homeland and face an
immediate five-year prison sentence.

See
Boy

Clean-and-jerk
is
rhyming slang for a Turkish national and is used quite extensively in the parts of
the criminal world
in which there are a lot of Turks involved, in
particular, the heroin trade. In British prisons, Turkish prisoners are known as big
gamblers and provide a great income for the prison bookies. A clean-and-jerk is a
weightlifting exercise used in competitions; it involves lifting a heavy weight to
waist level and then jerking it up above your head in one clean movement.

See
Gon-bee

A
crackhead
is someone
addicted to the semi-solid form of cocaine known as crack. Once known as freebase,
crack is made from powdered cocaine which is cooked, or ‘washed', and turned into a
rock that can be smoked in a pipe. It's very addictive, as the initial high doesn't
last very long; addicts can go downhill fast in the search for cash to fund their
addiction. Crackheads are avoided by serious criminals. They generally have to
become prolific thieves to feed their habit but, usually, the only people who will
work with them are other crackheads. Even
skagheads
look down on
crackheads.

See
Skagheads

Curry muncher
is a
derogatory term for anyone of Asian origin but particularly Indians and Pakistanis.
It's taken, obviously, from the fact that curried meat and vegetables are the staple
diet.

See
Half-ounce
,
Joe Daki

A
dabbler
is a prisoner
with no, or very little, history of drug use or abuse who will start to use heroin
whilst in prison. Unfortunately, heroin is a drug that is cheap and widely available
in UK prisons and a lot of prisoners take their first hit whilst behind bars.
Dabblers usually think that if they only smoke the drug, rather than injecting, and
use it every few days rather than daily, they will not get addicted. Sadly, they are
usually wrong. The large majority of dabblers will leave prison with a habit to feed
and only one way to get their hands on the money to do it – stealing. It is dabblers
who are more likely to die of an overdose once released from prison. This is because
they have become addicted to prison heroin, which is weaker than street heroin as it
has been further cut in order to maximize profit behind bars. As soon as the dabbler
has their first hit of strong street heroin they will realize the difference, but by
then, it may be too late.

A
didikoi
is a Gypsy of
mixed blood, not strictly a Romany. The word is used as an offensive term or insult
by criminals to describe an amateur who can't be fully trusted. In the Gypsy world
the didikoi was never fully trusted by full-bred Gypsies as he was ‘neither here nor
there'.

Dis
is a word frequently
used by the young to mean ‘disrespect'. The concept of respect is a broad one for
most youngsters nowadays. If you make a face at someone, if you stand on someone's
toe or even just disagree with
them, you are showing a lack of
respect for them. Most of the postcode gang wars in London and other major cities
start with one person dissing another.

Div
is a very common
insult in the criminal and prison world. Meaning a stupid person, it comes from the
Romany word
divvio
, meaning a little bit mad. A form of the word is also
used as an adjective,
divvy
, as in ‘I ain't sure about Tony, he
seems a bit too divvy to deal with the alarms on his own'.

See
Fraggle
,
Mong

If something or someone is described as
dodgy
, it usually means that there's something decidedly
suspect about them: risky, not quite right, fake, as in, ‘That kettle looks very
dodgy, you sure it's a Rolex?'. It's probably derived from ‘dodge' (to avoid or
evade, moving swiftly and shiftily). Street traders and fly pitchers sell the
dodgiest of dodgy gear to the public.

Prison warders are traditionally known as
screws, but if a screw is classed as a particularly bad bastard, one who detests the
prisoners in his charge and behaves towards them accordingly, then they will be
known as a
dog screw
, that is, one who should not be approached as
they will behave like a rabid dog, snarling at you as if you had tried to snatch a
bone from them. In my estimation, and speaking from thirty-two years' experience of
the prison
system, the ratio of dog screws to regular screws in
the UK prison system is about 1:10.

See
Care bear

If someone were to tell you to
do
one
, it would mean you are to go away and attempt to procreate with
yourself. It's a relatively polite way to tell someone to fuck off, widely used by
criminals, and often followed by the word
mug
, as in ‘Do one, you
mug, or I'll rip your head off and piss down your neck'.

A
dosser
is a
down-and-out, or homeless person, who will sleep wherever they can. The word is used
as a mild insult, especially by young Travellers.

See
Paraffin

Dry lunch
is an East End
expression for someone who is particularly tight-fisted with money, and refers to
the fact that even when having a meal this person will not buy a drink.

This is to inform on someone indirectly
by talking loudly or performing suspicious actions when screws are around.
Dry snitching
is an Americanism mainly used by younger
prisoners; ‘snitching' is American slang for informing or grassing. There is a
popular saying in American jails, which
has now made its way into
the British penal system: ‘Snitches Get Stitches.' This means that if you inform on
anyone to the authorities and you are found out, you will be seriously cut, usually
around the face or across the buttocks, though not exclusively so.
Sweetgrassing
is the British version of the dry snitch, and it
pertains to someone who informs in a roundabout manner rather than directly. For
example, you might say to an officer, ‘How come so-and-so has got his own jeans on
but the rest of us have to wear prison-issue jeans?' To someone on
The Out
that might sound like a perfectly reasonable enquiry, but in prison
it is seen as grassing so-and-so for not wearing prison-issue jeans. For this you
can get in serious trouble, but it depends on who hears you and whether so-and-so
then has his jeans confiscated by the staff because you have pointed them out.

See
Grass

Eejit
, meaning a very
stupid person, is an Irish corruption of ‘idiot', though it is now quite extensively
used by English people with the same meaning and context.