Free The Criminal Alphabet by Noel "Razor" Smith

vehicle, the professional thief
     will scaff the car: put a length of scaffolding tube into the
     steering wheel and apply pressure until the steering lock snaps. They will then
     eitheruse the scaffolding tube to snap off the ignition barrel, or
     a slide hammer or panel puller – a short steel pole with a heavy
     weight that slides easily up and down it, and into the end of which a self-tapping
     screw slots. They’ll insert the screw into the ignition lock and give it a couple of
     turns until the threads bite into the softer metal of the lock, then twist it in as
     far as it will go and use the weight to exert pressure on the screw, pulling
     backwards. The ignition lock will pop out of its housing quite easily, exposing the
     ignition wires. Then the professional car thief will stick a flathead screwdriver
     into the hole and twist. They now have ignition. Another way of getting ignition is
     to strip the wires and then connect them together; this is commonly known as hot-wiring , as the car thief is looking for the ‘hot’ wire, the
     one with the power running through it.
    See Draggers
, TDA merchants
, Twockers
TOOLED UP
----
    To be tooled up is to be
     equipped for a crime, but particularly for a crime of violence. If someone asks you
     if you are tooled up, they are usually enquiring whether you are carrying any
     weapons on your person. Tooling up usually means obtaining a firearm. In prison, to
     be tooled up is to be carrying a weapon for the purpose of violence.
    See April
TURTLES
----
    If you are going to commit any sort of
     crime, the minimum you are going to need in order to avoid detection, arrest and
     imprisonment is a decent pair of turtles (turtle doves = gloves).
     Gloves are of course used by criminals to avoid leaving fingerprints behind at the
     scene of the crime, butthey are also useful if your theft requires
     you to smash something made of glass (a window usually) in order to gain entry. Not
     only do they prevent your hands being cut, but also, should that happen, they enable
     you to avoid leaving behind an incriminating drop of blood from which DNA can be
     extracted. However, in recent years, forensic experts have been able to take glove
     prints from the scene of a crime, and if the perpetrator is caught with the same
     gloves in their possession, they can be matched.
TWIRLS
----
    Twirls is old-fashioned
     slang for ‘keys’. The word derives from the fact that, once you put the key in the
     lock, you then have to spin, or twirl, it in order to open the lock. At one time (up
     until the 1960s) twirls referred specifically to skeleton keys, or ‘bones’, which
     are used in crime and, in particular, burglary. Car twirls were a set of
     double-edged FS keys that would fit almost any car, up until car security began to
     improve in the 1980s. To be ‘out on the twirl’ was slang for thieving of any
     sort.
    See Boys
WORK
----
    As a professional or full-time criminal
     you will class your criminal activities as work , because this is
     what you earn your living from. Work used to be a word that applied only to armed
     robbery. Robbers would talk of ‘having a bit of work’ or ‘going to work’. In recent
     years the word has come to be applied to most criminal activity from which the
     criminal earns enough to avoid real work.

3. Transport
    Section 12 of the Theft Act 1968 states
     that ‘a person shall be guilty of an offence if, without having the consent of the
     owner or other lawful authority, he takes any conveyance for his own or another’s
     use or, knowing that any conveyance has been taken without such authority, drives it
     or allows himself to be carried in or on it. A person guilty of an offence shall be
     liable to … a fine … or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six
     months, or both.’ This is the crime of taking a motor vehicle or other conveyance
     without authority.
    Transport is essential to most
     criminals, not only for getting to and from the