The Good Prison Guide - I've done more Porridge than Goldilocks - and now I'm going to tell you all about it. Charles Bronson
who came out of the woodwork to save them would be equally as done against … who can befriend a paedophile … yuk!
By giving you an insight into prisons, I hope that you can prepare yourself for the day of your incarceration. Hey, it might never happen, but who knows what’s around the next corner? Shit, as they say, happens. You’ll be glad you read this book, you’ll be glad that Bronco showed you the way ahead.
As for you old lags out there, you know the score and you know what lies ahead. You’ve endured it and been through it, you all deserve a winner’s medal. Wear a T-shirt for me, will ya?
When you’re behind bars, you have no control over your food, clothing or any of the details of your life. You live within a framework of strict supervision and control, whether you are banged up in a prison cell or working as a day-release prisoner.
The control is not reliant on prison walls or cell bars – it is regulated by the powers invested into the custodians of that particular system.
The real meaning of a con’s punishment is that he or she is wholly subject to his or her custodians and can do only what they allow or direct. This is when you value the right citizens have to freedom from restraint, which is a precious right, and the loss of that right to freedom is a severe deprivation.
Just imagine you have been taken hostage and illegally held by your captors, and let’s assume you suffer a grave injury. The courts would award you a massive payout. And this is true even if your captor treated you very nicely.
But when an offender is held in legal custody, he or she suffers a grave punishment, however free from punitive conditions their treatment might be. What about the prisoner who hardly gets any letters or visits compared to his peers? Isn’t he being discriminated against? What about the prisoner who is forced to accept visits under what are called ‘closed’ conditions, in which he is placed behind a bulletproof screen and is not allowed even the minimum of human contact from his visitors? These are very distressing circumstances, the prisoner being wholly cut off from his family, friends and all familiar life. Their crime also affects their family. Prison has been described as ‘a monastery of men unwilling to be monks.’
Prison does not just take a person’s liberty from them; it also punishes on an unremitting scale without fear or favour.
No doubt, in the course of reading this book, you’ll find some slang words that aren’t in your everyday vocabulary and you’ll wonder what they mean, particularly as I’ve built up quite a following around the world, and I don’t want all my readers abroad to wonder what the hell I’m on about. It is a rough guide to prison terminology, which is sometimes used in the street but has probably originated from prison. Here’s an example of a judge being bamboozled by slang:
Prosecuting barrister: ‘M’lord, the defendant was masked up when he did the blag.’
Judge: ‘What is a “blag”?’
Prosecuting barrister: ‘A robbery, m’lord. The defendant had with him a sawn-off shooter.’
Judge: ‘Sorry to stop you again, but what is a “sawn-off shooter”?’
Prosecuting barrister: ‘A shotgun, m’lord. The defendant copped for being nicked.’
Judge: ‘What does that mean, “copped for being nicked”?’
Prosecuting barrister: ‘It means when he was caught, m’lord. The defendant’s previous form was a nine-stretch for robbery.’
Judge: ‘What does “stretch” mean?’
Prosecuting barrister: ‘It means time served, m’lord. I have the evidence here, m’lord … a blow-up doll.’
Judge: ‘Was that the deluxe blow-up doll, or the super silk lips deluxe blow-up doll?’
Well, perhaps it didn’t quite happen like that, but as I’ve asked for blow-up dolls when I’ve taken hostages in the past, I couldn’t resist it.
| Arse-bandit/shirt-lifter/ cacky-stabber/backdoor burglar | Homosexual |
| Banged up/ behind the door | Locked in your cell |
| Baron | Prisoner dealing in illicit items and making profit from it |
| Beast/nonce | Sex case |
| Bible Moth | Prisoner who can’t leave religion alone |
| Big Bird | A long prison sentence |
| Big House | Prison |
| Bird | Serving a sentence |
| Blade | Knife or cutting blade used in attack |
| Blag | Robbery |
| Blagger | Robber |
| Block/seg unit | Prison within prison |
| Boss | Friendly name given to prison officer |
| BoV | Board of Visitors |
| Box | Strongbox, impenetrable isolation cell |
| Brek | Breakfast |
| Brown | Heroin |
| Bruv | Term used to express closeness to a fellow prisoner |
| Burglars | Prison security team searching your cell |
| Burn | Tobacco |
| Cabbaged | Brain dead |
| Canister | Head |
| Canteen | Prison shop |
| Cat | Category of prison (A, B, C or D) |
| CDM | Cadbury’s Dairy Milk |
| Centre | Main prison control room |
| Charva | a person of limited intelligence who always wears sports labels, swears a lot and drinks too much |
| Chib | Knife |
| Chivved up | Stabbed or cut up by a chiv |
| Chokey | Prison |
| Civvy | Civilian worker/manufactured cigarette |
| Clink | Prison, named after a prison called ‘Clink’ |
| Con | Convict |
| Cop for this | Have some of this (usually said to person on receiving end of punishment beating) |
| Copped | Caught |
| Crack/Craic/what’s the crack? | The talk/What’s going on? |
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