Inside Times: How One Bank Robber Made It Through 32 Years Behind Bars

my name is Noah with Steven Smith for much of my life I was known as razor I was an armed robber in London for over 35 years spent faced who use in prison and I'm now editor of the prison magazine Ian's outside always the only one arrested none of my pals were ever nicked for it they never knew that they were and I'll stand there on my own at the age of 47 or 49 and you hear a judge up there giving you eight life sentences plus 80 years in concurrent sentences and is actually saying in this summing up they have shall never released you kind of figure your life is over you know I mean that is a turning point I just thought to myself this is it you know that's the end of it I'm gonna die in prison [Music] [Music] got a sucky apart from all the peeling ceiling this is a typical prison cell ready I mean I've been in so many of these it's unreal sometimes in a cell this size you'll have three people so you won't have bunk beds on that side or what single bed this side but it is pretty much the same as most cells I mean you know these were all caught in like this stage the sinks in the toilets at one stage this wouldn't have had anything at all it would have been a bare cell and I've got to say there are cells in the system in about 20 different prisons that are even smaller than this probably around about half the size the length of a bed is the size of the cell and they can't put toilets in them this is actually the segregation or as we use to call it at the old days before PC in a punishment block because it's where you're taking it through your punishment and you would spend your time alone in this cell or cell very similar to this with absolutely nothing there is a toilet in the cell now 20 years ago the wouldn't have been a toilet and the sink it would have been just the bed the table a chair and a piss pot it was a rule of silence down there so you couldn't sing you couldn't whistle you couldn't speak the only person you saw where the officers who came and put your meals into the cell you got exercise every two weeks for half an hour you got a shower every 10 weeks and basically it was a bit of a star exists to be on a bit of a living hell they tell you before they come forward a chap through the door get down the back of the cell with your face to the wall if you didn't comply you wouldn't get fed so the prisoner would be standing at the back wall with his face to the wall and the screws would use a broom handle to push the meal in on a plastic plate and there it would lie amongst all the ex woman and once that was done and that's all you've heard three times today was that and then bomb they got when you think that the most dangerous people in the outside world GBH merchants murderers people who would take your eye out without reason they end up in prison so you end up with it instead of one in your neighborhood you end up with everybody next door you all packed in like this and you never know who people are and you can't take a risk in prison the queen of prison violence is do it first and do it fast so and do it and proper put them out of the game because if you don't put someone out of the game they're coming back on the wing and it's going to start again so you've got a really hurt somebody so that they get shipped to hospital went outside the prison and why's they coming back at you tomorrow and that's how you live in prison paranoid brutal and violent there's a thing called jerking which is when you get three or four-year with sharp weapons sharp pointed weapons and you just steamed in one person and stabbed them as many times as you can leaving a move a thousand it's called teabagging will heat to begging is a different finger here are not imprisoned teabagging these stubborn people many times leaving a thousand perforations that's where it comes from tea bagging but hot water with sugar every prison landing had a boiler I don't see when it would have been over there and you get boiling water out this to make tea coffee whatever and what a lot of prisoners use that there was if they really want it to work someone fill up their two pint jug plastic jug with hot boiling water out of it pour a pound of sugar into it throw it over somebody it strips this skin and sticks to your face it will use a horrific weapon anything you find in a prison can be turned into a weapon I mean this was a favorite this is a prison food tray everyone will be issued with one of these at mealtimes now this is stainless steel the weighs quite a bit and I've seen many people after head split open release just crack them a favorite trick in the old days in Boston was the whole tea tray like that if you were going to do someone who was sitting down and that age there is very sharp and jammy into their face if someone wanted to get you and you were in this shower I mean take a look at it it's pretty isolated there's enough room for two people in here maybe free if you're lucky now imagine you were standing there naked having a shower the three guys in masks come through fully clothed and start stabbing you in the shell which is what they normally do they'll get you when you're naked they know you've got my weapon with you and because you're naked and that's the most dangerous time in prison is when you make it in the shower not because something includes to have sex with the hope it's because somebody wants to hurt you severely so this is the best time to do it when you're vulnerable preferably when you just started washing your hair and the shampoos in your eyes they will be over at the door and they'll come flying in and boom that beer I mean I can almost guarantee them if some of these paint there's gonna be bloodstains on these walls because there isn't most prison chairs I think this is the kitchens yeah a lot of people would like to work in these places but they're also very dangerous apartment they slop they put out the prisoners that to eat there was a lot of knives and stuff like that kept in here and in fact in Parkers prison a few years ago the guy was stabbed to death in the kitchens a murderer with a carving knife by a sex offender if you work in the kitchens you don't have to wait a slop you put out you make your own food you know you make it to how you like it so you all right it's a case of one more white Jake and basically I've seen people stirring the big tears or the porridge urns and just spitting in it occasionally you like you know I made the ugly white youth they could keep you out of the kitchens was if you had a blood related disease that you could poison the whole prison if you had appetizers they wouldn't let you in work in the kitchens although I do know people with habit science who worked in the kitchen if you add H IV or AIDS you couldn't work in the kitchens and that was in case and a lot of what you've got imagine there's a lot of mad people there's a lot of bad people and insane people in prison that people with HIV would have no problem cutting a finger and dripping blood in your food they do the sex offenders you know and it was just one of those things and I mean what you gotta take from that is prisoners on the whole and not really you know it totally people they're in prison for a reason and doing strange things especially with the people that have mental illnesses it's kind of theory go for them you know it's standards so you could end up with someone in a prison working in the kitchens who's got HIV and his trip and his blood regularly into the food in the hope of contaminating everybody else he happens the thing you've gotta take on board is prison is so paranoid it prisoners are so paranoid and we're all stuck in this one little small place and it looks massive on film but seriously this is a small area the whole prison and you never go anywhere and you're all there so the paranoia is absolutely tremendous and you never know when someone's plotting up on you or someone wants to stab you or someone wants to scold you so everybody's in a heightened state of awareness so um someplace that those make a loud noise and it all kicks off you know that's the thing about prison this it's very violent place in a very paranoid place as well gradually over the last say five or six years legal highs they're not legalized anymore but say synthetic opiates and Cynthia counts and cannabis in prison has become massive it's easy to smuggling it's cheap and it's changed so much that what they do now they get the wing numpty or the wing junkie they get a parcel in and I find an idiot on the wing and say come in to want some spice and they're testing on them so what it do is they give it to them and they watch what happens to them and if the guy in life flies out of cell which they quite often though and jumps over the landing which is pretty common down onto the main even though that will stop you dieting you won't stop you're breaking buns or being seriously hurt because that's still while so then they find out you know what the strength of it is and what it's going to do to you and then they'll sell it around the prison so I believe there's been something like 69 this in the last two years from legalizing prison which when you think about hip people should be screaming up 69 people have died in our prisons down to smoking legalize or illegal Heisler so yeah I mean drugs in prison are very big if you were if you ask yourself why would anyone need drugs in prison I've gotta tell you hot or a ten-hour shift most prison officers well again have a stiff drink there any of the ten airs supervising imagine living in it 24 hours a day those weak sometimes for decades I mean if you're going to only see these walls every day for the next 10 years you need something when you'd be aren't your door when you're out to smash the sameness of prison just to relieve the boredom and that's why a lot of prisoners tournament drugs when they come into prison well like you know the life I've been talking about it takes something really really big to kind of shake it out and I was doing way of life sentences in white more prison in 2001 and I came back from the OP like one night and if you see any sort of holy man on the on the landings in prison in the top security gels like priest a vicar a man whatever rabbi you know that there to deliver bad news they don't come on the Romans on their stake there to deliver bad news it's too dangerous for them can I came back from the hot plate with a big Judy drug dealer called bud and just you know I sort of elbowed him and I when look I see the priest at the end of Lent know which someone's in for some bad news and when I got up to myself so that was me and it was my 19 year old son Johnson food diet on the outside and I was devastated obviously you know you cut it's really hard to explain that devastated you are I mean that when the priests trying to tell me when I realized that he was coming for me I just flipped and I said man I said don't talk to me I said get away from me and he went boy I have to tell you I said you don't have to tell me nothing I said when go away I said get out myself anyway off he's went and closed it he got a screw the closet door don't tell me through the closed door in case I attacked him so I asked to be let out went to the phone phone up my arm Mike's wife and then it turned out his true and then I mean that that was kind of bad enough I started thinking to myself you know I'm stuck in a top security prison one of the diamond geezers walk around give me the pig and and my son is dead outside and I can't comfort my family so then the next step was I had to try and apply it to go to my son's few and I went to they they so let the security governor in one more at the time what had been a member of staff in Rochester 25 years previous and I had actually broken his mates jaw and he hated me for it and he always used to dig me out and I had to go through this man and begging to be allowed out for my son's funeral and he took great pleasure in begging me begging and then say no and I went away I fought about it and my fault you know I've spent all these years in prison building myself up as this ogre you know attacking prison officers styling wires trying to cause trouble everywhere I went and then I want something from them and they within their rights to say no and I realized I brought it all on myself this didn't come overnight I wasn't that logical just came over a period of thinking of them about three or four weeks whilst I was in grief and what happened was as is the usual case that the prisoners heard about it on my wing Oh seriously dangerous men are mean household names and they come down and citizen Liberty they're not let you go to a funeral so what we're going to do is on the day of the funeral we're going to attack the screws you know in honor of your son inaudible was that they said we're gonna get a load of washing up liquid spread it all over the landing you said we're going to get armed then we're going to ring the bell and when it's crews come running order they fall over we're gonna statement do as many as we can and I could see they was doing it like as a sort of tribute in a fatality sense which would be but they've been doing it so for me to show some of their and and I thought about it overnight and they're not from know I said I thought my legacy muscle as legacy could be a load of prison officers being bashed up and what more prison so I'm thinking another way then and that it was that my son's death or not the kind of funeral that actually made me you know reevaluate my life and find out you know where I was going and what was happening don't forget at that time I thought was never getting out of prison but I still had the urge to kind of change my ways sort of because of Joe's death so that was the real major catalyst that made me show you my ways in prison [Music] [Music] you

Channel: LADbible TV

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Keywords: the lad bible, lad bible, videos, documentaries, exclusives, interviews, journalism, culture, crime, reform, doc, longform, original, interesting, story, UK, Gangs, Prison, Violence, Advice, Reform, documentary, social

Id: Tb5RXu2SpTg

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2017