Stephen Richards Quotes - Page 2

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
The riot screws didn’t give a monkey’s about the state he was in, no sir. They dragged him by his hair in to the first cell that was opened, where he was stripped and beaten.
Stephen Richards
Once the screws left, most of the six or seven boys who had been overpowered by the SAS were not in any fit state to move, never mind talk. In May 1988 Malkie and Sammo and one other boy, whose name escapes me right now, got a total of twenty-seven years between them for mobbing and rioting and assault.
Stephen Richards
When the infamous Shotts riot of ‘93 kicked off, Dingus was in the hall but he never started it or took any part in it whatsoever, he just sat in one of his friend’s cell, smoking hash, waiting for the riot to end. Dingus had seen all the crazy shit before.
Stephen Richards
The riot screws did not stop there, they dragged him down the corridor where ten other nameless screws repeatedly coshed him over the head and face and body. Dingus by now was totally out cold, he had received the equivalent injuries of someone who was involved in a car crash.
Stephen Richards
Now if you want to look to the medical profession for a true hard bastard, there is none harder, in my opinion, than the man I will now name. I mean, 99.9 per cent of doctors would want to protect their pension and keep in with the in-crowd, not, though, this man amongst men. The star witness against the screws from Barlinnie was Doctor Simon Danson.
Stephen Richards
Dr Danson made a series of claims about violent assaults on three prisoners by staff at Barlinnie. Three prison officers subsequently appeared in court charged with assaulting inmates.
Stephen Richards
I had today so what does tomorrow matter!
Stephen Richards
I pulled the homemade jail knife out that I had in my hand, Porkie pulled out the very sharp lockback knife that he had concealed up his sleeve. We told the warden and nurse to sit on the floor, and if they did as we told them then no one would get hurt.
Stephen Richards
I will not go into detail but the screw put up a little bit of a resistance, fair play to him, but we were so desperate for the drugs in her medical bag that nothing was going to stop us getting at them. That is what happened, we got the bag of drugs from her hand. I can tell you, we were like two tramps round a bag of chips in a bin.
Stephen Richards
Porkie and me came to some sort of agreement with the screw and the nurse, and after some haggling we gave ourselves up. After that, I never saw my friend Porkie again until we appeared at Edinburgh High Court, where we each got six years on top of our sentences for one night of madness. That just shows you how drugs can get a grip over your mind.
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
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
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
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
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
You know, in a society where children just about have to seek parental permission to sit on Santa’s knee, the word ‘paedophile’ should send more shivers up your spine than the word ‘druggie’.
Stephen Richards
Mags seemed to attract trouble wherever she went. The Raploch Estate in Stirling was a nice backdrop, a middleclass place to live and bring up your kids until the scourge of drugs took a grip of its sons and daughters, like any other quiet township. The more the people needed drugs, the rougher and more violent the place became.
Stephen Richards
The junkies had themselves a field day, they didn’t care for the safety of the overseas tourists, no sir. They would stop at nothing. Some tourists were left bloodied and battered on the sacred ground of the Wallace Monument, minus their video cameras and the likes. The camera’s were soon sold to a fence in the Raploch for pennies, compared to the actual price it was worth, then the junkies didn’t waste much time getting to Big Mags’ door with the £20 that they had got from the local fence in the nearby neighbourhood.
Stephen Richards
Brian ‘The Tax Man’ Cockerill - While I’m mentioning drug dealers, I have to give a mention to a man hated by the peddlers of soul destroying stuff, big Brian ‘The Tax Man’ Cockerill (AKA as Scot’s Brian), born on 16 December 1964 in Coatbridge, in Lanarkshire, at 6ft 3in, with 23 stone of rock solid muscle, his awesome power has made him a truly terrifying force in Britain’s underworld. A walking colossus, anyone who gets in his way and tries to stay there had better be ready for the hiding of their life.
Stephen Richards
As for that Maxine Carr, she could have helped clear up the murders much quicker, but she chose not to grass her lover to the coppers, no one in the criminal world likes grasses, but this isn’t any normal criminal case. Huntley isn’t a criminal, he is a total fucking, monster beast who, if I had my way, I could hang him in Soham town hall for the families to see.
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
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
At one point the worst thing to happen was the odd stabbing or slashing, the violence that we live with nowadays used to only be seen in Hollywood gangster movies such as Gangs of New York, Menace to Society and Boys and the Hood. Even when we were reading about the crack hitting London, no one in Scotland would have thought in their wildest dreams that it would have taken off in our cities, towns and now even highland villages.
Stephen Richards
I was reading that there are children at the age of twelve and thirteen selling their bodies at dinnertimes for as little as £5 when they should be at school. Now if that is not a problem, I don’t know what is. The drug problem has got way too far out of hand.
Stephen Richards
There are now babies being born in our hospitals with crack or heroin habits, come on, fuck, no one would have dreamt such a horrible thing would happen to a newborn babies in Scotland. I didn’t think the sons and daughters, mothers and fathers of Scotland would have been messed up in such a nasty circle of misery, depression, violence, suicides and prisons because of drugs.
Stephen Richards
Ian Brady was born Ian Duncan Stewart on 2 January 1938 in Glasgow, Scotland, he’s responsible for a series of murders that took place from 1962 until 1965 in Greater Manchester. Brady and Myra Hindley met in 1961, she was a 19-year-old typist, he was a 23-year-old stock clerk. By 1966, both were tried at Chester Assizes for multiple murder. The trial lasted 15 days; Brady and Hindley were convicted on 6 May 1966, sentenced to life imprisonment.
Stephen Richards
TC Campbell doesn’t need any introduction, the man is a legend in the prison community and outside when this very strong-minded man was trying to prove his innocence for the six murders he had been convicted for. TC went on a fifty-day hunger strike, he ended up in hospital. This man was willing to die to prove his innocence, if he never done his famous hunger strike he probably would have never go the MPS in government to sit up and take note.
Stephen Richards
If it doesn't take your breath away, make a bigger wish.
Stephen Richards
It is how hard you want, what you want that gets it.
Stephen Richards
Confident persons hit roadblocks while pursuing their dreams and objectives, but they look for an alternate route rather than giving up and going home.
Stephen Richards
Lack of confidence is stunting if it stops us from achievement.
Stephen Richards
Just as chillingly as Manuel took police to the spot where he had buried 17-year-old Isabella Cooke, it was reminiscent of this when Brady took police to Saddleworth Moor in Yorkshire, when he and Hindley were flown there by helicopter to walk on the graves of more victims.
Stephen Richards
On the morning of Wednesday 13 March 1996, Thomas West Hamilton shattered the peaceful country town of Dunblane, Stirlingshire, with a fusillade of gunfire that reverberated round the world.
Stephen Richards
There’s just no comparison between these hard men, some fight with their bare hands, some with their brains and some with weapons. Some have a sixth sense for survival, avoiding death with catlike ease. I don’t include any world champ at this or that, but I do include men that would wipe the floor with any world champion at anything you wanted to throw at them.
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
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
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
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
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
No one was expecting the six-man team of elite SAS officers to storm the prison, but that is exactly what they did do. Hurling stun grenade and tear gas canisters, they entered the jail through a skylight before freeing the terrified prison warder.
Stephen Richards
How you see the world is a reflection of what is within you.
Stephen Richards
If words were actions then we would all be winners!
Stephen Richards
Rank and status do not represent power when surrounded by negativity.
Stephen Richards
Love does not cost a thing, but it is priceless...
Stephen Richards
Putting yourself first means you will never be last.
Stephen Richards
When you mark where your self-doubt is, then you can begin to conquer it.
Stephen Richards
If there is something you think you can do well, perfect the action.
Stephen Richards
Don’t wait to think out of the box – create your own box.
Stephen Richards
If you cast doubt aside then you go beyond where even you could have imagined ....
Stephen Richards
Everyone or almost all eventually evade reality and we invent what we need.
Stephen Richards
There is no need for a long, persuasive introduction about self-confidence. If you are not a confident person, you already know it.
Stephen Richards
If you play and work hard then rest hard.
Stephen Richards
They think giving people longer prison sentences is going to teach people a lesson. Well that is just fantasy, as we just take our drugs and violence in to the prison. Our brothers and sisters, pals or rivals outside plug the gap that has been left by the dealer that was selling the crack or smack in the first place. Just like kamikazes, when one is dead, fifty queue up to take their place.
Stephen Richards
Bongo and Shug seen what was going on and decided to smash holes all over the roof of the hall, just for something to do. Bongo was first on to the roof, where, unknown to him he was being filmed from a cell in the hall straight across from him, but Bongo didn’t give a fuck as he never even wore a mask to try and protect his face, he was in his element, so was Shug. And to their credit, they didn’t half wreck the roof of the hall.
Stephen Richards
There is no getting away from the fact, he is one of only a few screws in the system who are the real McCoy. Anyone reading this book who has spent time in Scottish prisons will no doubt agree, this chimp is up for it just as much as the prisoners. I personally would love to see more screws like him, as he doesn’t bother with all this shitty report piss. If you want to fight him, he comes into your cell, one-on-one, man-to-man.
Stephen Richards
Rockweiler (nickname) has settled down over the years, he is a man mountain, he stands some six-and-a-half foot tall, and is round about eighteen or nineteen stones in weight. He too works in Barlinnie, this dog was responsible for giving the Wendy House seg unit the tough name tag, as he dished out the beatings to some very hard prisoners in the past. I can’t take that away from him, but he was a bit of a shit bag as well because he wore the full riot body armour when he offered to fight.
Stephen Richards
Adrian (not sure if real Christian name?) was a PTI in Perth Prison before he came to work in the special units with us. Adrian was a gentleman, but he was also a very, very hard man that didn’t take any shit. He is now working up in Inverness Prison, but I can tell you, this man can go for fun. I have witnessed him in action, I have been about all the diggers in Scotland ten times over and I would put this man up there with the best of them for a roll about with the prisoner.
Stephen Richards
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
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