Banged up: sent to prison.
Bent up: Being restrained.
Burn: Tobacco.
Bounty: Goods.
Category A: High security prison. Prisoners who pose the most threat to the public, the police or national security.
Category B: Local prisons or training prisons. Training prisons hold long-term and high-security prisoners.
Category C: Training and resettlement prisons. They provide prisoners with work, training and classes to help them resettle back into the community. Most of the prisoners in the UK are in Category C Prisons.
Category D: Minimum security prisons.
Celly: Cellmate.
Cons: Convicts/prisoners.
Cowboy: A new prison officer.
Doing time: Serving a sentence.
Doing bird: Serving a sentence in cockney rhyming slang.
Dosh: Money
Diesel: Prison tea.
Drama: Fight or assault.
Dirty protest: Covering your cell in feces.
Fish: First time prisoner.
Grass: Informer or snitch.
Jacket: Prisoners file.
Kettled/ being kettled: Boiling water and sugar. The boiling hot syrup is thrown over inmates.
Mess or Mess hall: Dinning hall.
Mug: A cup or an idiot.
Necking: A disciplinary.
Nosh or Chow: Food.
Screws: Prison officers.
Pad: Cell.
Pad mate: Cell mate.
Pad spin: Cell search.
Padded up: Sharing a cell.
Papers: Drugs. Coke, heroin or meth.
Potted/piss pot: Feces and urine in a bucket. Usually thrown over a prison officer.
Storage compartment: Anal cavity.
Second shelved: Way up in your anal cavity.
Sweat box: Van that brings you to prison.
The Block: Solitary confinement.
A ‘Peter’ is slang for a cell. It derives from Victorian times when there was an infamous robber called Peter Pell. Cockneys hijacked it and created the slang for a cell becoming a “Peter Pell” - although more commonly shortened to being called a ‘Peter’. When sharing a cell with another inmate, people refer to it as being ‘petered up’ with someone.