Friday, January 29, 2010

Professionalsim

Prison staff hate to be called "warders". No, they insist that they are called "prison officers", a professional class.

Some of the terms they have for prisoners include: scrotes, mongs, numpties, cons, creatures, beasts, animals, and my favourite, bodies.

Professionalism. Ain't it grand?

4 comments:

  1. We used to call them "Kangas" as rhyming slang for kangaroo = screw. When i first went to jail i had no idea what anyone was on about, now i know all the slang.

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  2. And your informal names for the warders... sorry prison officers are?

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  3. I bought a really funny book called 'prison slang' by Abson Books, London, a while back, and found that quite a few prison terms are already familiar and in use in general slang.

    Perhaps not surprisingly, some were Romany words, like 'scran' for food for example.

    But of course the new words do keep coming and they can be very funny.

    The term 'bodies' as a way to describe prisoners is really funny in a sort of sad / sick way.

    Great blog Ben.

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