“Big Rab has worked in Barlinnie’s Wendy House for over seven and a half years. The average time a screw works in the seg blocks is two years, this man has seen it and done it all. Most prisoners will agree, he isn’t a dog either but can be when he wants. He has had legendary roll abouts with some of Scotland’s hardest criminals but at the end of it he doesn’t hold any grudges.”
— Stephen Richards
“When Barlinnie’s Prison doctor, Dr Danson, came to see Dingus, he turned in disgust at the state Dingus was left to lie in. Doctor Danson refused to treat him as he knew Dingus’s injuries were life threatening, he told the top warden that Dingus would need to be rushed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary for emergency surgery. The screws in the seg block refused to listen to the doctor, they pushed and manhandled their own doctor out of Dingus’s cell and threatened him with a severe beating if he made anything public about Dingus’s injuries.”
— Stephen Richards
“The screws are just as bad as us, maybe not now but certainly in the past they used to beat you with their riot batons, strip you naked, cuff your hands behind your backs and then take shots of kicking you in the head and body until you were knocked out.”
— Stephen Richards
“Dyslexia, for me, is rather like being a six-fingered typist on LSD!”
— Stephen Richards
“Habitual procrastinators will readily testify to all the lost opportunities, missed deadlines, failed relationships and even monetary losses incurred just because of one nasty habit of putting things off until it is often too late.”
— Stephen Richards
“If words were actions then we would all be winners!”
— Stephen Richards
“I have known Hammy for years, he has been shot in the chest twice at point blank range with a sawn off shotgun. The other hard men must have been shocked when he got out the car he was in and chased them with his own hand gun, he has also been stabbed multiple times in prison and out on the rough tough streets of Glasgow but he is still standing.”
— Stephen Richards
“From the tens of thousands of criminals I have mixed with behind bars and in the streets or have known of over the last three decades of my criminally active life, the Eighties, Nineties and Naughties, I have selected the crème de la crème of the toughest, maddest, hardest Scottish bastards that have ever drawn breath.”
— Stephen Richards
“The screws have brought all the revenge attacks on themselves. Most prisoners that have done some nasty damage in the system have come through the young offenders, where that was just a breeding ground for hatred from the screws point of view. They were famous for bullying and battering young, defenceless boys to the point of death, in some cases.”
— Stephen Richards
“It is not always possible to do away with negative thinking, but with persistence and practice, one can gain mastery over them so that they do not take the upper hand.”
— Stephen Richards
“Promises are only as strong as the person who gives them …”
— Stephen Richards
“Giving materialistically is the soft option, but when you give from what you do for others then your reward is immeasurable contentment.”
— Stephen Richards
“Rank and status do not represent power when surrounded by negativity.”
— Stephen Richards
“I was also in Glenochil Prison in 1992 when Hammy was stabbed five times in the chest and belly off another man called Fudge, but give Hammy his dues, he never tried to jail bait his attacker up. Fudge never got any more time to his sentence for the frenzied attack on Hammy. This man has also had pit bulls and rottweiler dogs set on him and guess what, he beat the dogs.”
— Stephen Richards
“As equally as one may use size, the cunning James Crosbie was once classified as the most dangerous man in Scotland, notorious for his daring bank robberies and escaping on a bicycle. He was the criminal mastermind behind many successful crimes carried out throughout the UK.”
— Stephen Richards
“I keep telling the screws over and over again, ‘If you treat a young boy in prison like a dog, keep him in a cell that is like a cage and constantly beat him and bully him, that boy is going to grow up hating yous and the system.’ The only thing on his mind will be revenge, maybe it is not revenge on the screws that so frequently bullied and tortured him, but in the boy’s eyes he is getting revenge on the uniform, as it all means the same thing in the boy’s or man’s eyes.”
— Stephen Richards
“Both positive and negative thinking are contagious.”
— Stephen Richards
“One can observe that such changes in the breath are the direct result of your reaction to thoughts. If you can simply dismiss the thoughts by giving them no value then the breathing will find its own medium and become subtle.”
— Stephen Richards
“Love does not cost a thing, but it is priceless…”
— Stephen Richards
“Another man of sheer violence was the late Stewart Boyd, he was killed in a car accident over in Spain’s Costa del Sol shortly after being released from prison in June 2003. But he certainly left his mark on the city streets of Glasgow. He was a force to be reckoned with, a gang enforcer. Murder and witness intimidation were high on his criminal charge sheet.”
— Stephen Richards
“Thirteen years have past since 1993, and I still have not seen one single book, documentary or anything to the biggest epidemic in Scottish, British prison history. I would go as far and say, no other prison in the world had fourteen men catching the HIV virus at the same time.”
— Stephen Richards
“It was so funny, I witnessed this with my own eyes, Andy and the screw were like two WWF wrestlers, we were locked behind the grill gates cheering Andy on, the chants started. The chant was to the tune of Jingle Bells and went like this: Stab a screw, stab a screw, stab a screw today, all that fun it is to stab a screw on New Year’s Day, but it was only 29 December.”
— Stephen Richards
“Only when you give from the heart does it make the giving whole.”
— Stephen Richards
“Do not focus on your failings, for you will only encourage them. If you keep beating yourself up on the head over these, you will only reinforce them.”
— Stephen Richards
“Putting yourself first means you will never be last.”
— Stephen Richards
“Gary Moore is another legendary figure of sheer violence. In prison, Gary has spent most of his adult life inside one jail or another. When, on the odd occasion, he does get out of prison, it doesn’t take him long to go on a murderous campaign of total terror. Gary has been charged and stood trial for some three or four different murders.”
— Stephen Richards
“Aberdeenshire’s Peterhead jail housed the hardest, badest, meanest motherfucker prisoners in the Scottish prison system. So no one was surprised when the pressure pot jail finally erupted in to violence that has not been seen or equalled since.”
— Stephen Richards
“Before Mags became a household name across Scotland, it was during the mid Nineties when she became an avid anti-paedophile campaigner against paedophiles on the Raploch Estate, attracting media attention, even appearing on Robert Kilroy-Silk’s morning TV show. At the height of her anti-paedophilic crusade, she led a howling mob of protesters to a hostel near her home where a known paedophile was staying.”
— Stephen Richards
“Fear can make a moth seem the size of a bull elephant.”
— Stephen Richards
“When you win big, that is the time your true character will show.”
— Stephen Richards