Feltham Young Offenders Institute is a badge of honour, it’s more of a test than GCSEs

David Cohen
20 Oct 2009

A Standard investigation reveals how Europe's biggest young offender institution is seen as 'a holiday camp'...

Perched on a railing, Mick and Trig look out over their east London neighbourhood and compare labels. Kitted out in his top-of-the range Nike trainers, joggers and hoodie, Mick, 19, grudgingly concedes to Trig, 15, his "younger", that Trig's Adidas attire "has more swagger".

"You getting up there," purrs Mick approvingly, causing Trig, who is bunking off school, to break out in a broad grin.

Suddenly a caretaker emerges from the estate and politely asks them to move on. "What!" retorts Mick. "Go away dickhead," he warns, loping towards the caretaker who momentarily stands his ground. "I'll smash your face." As the caretaker backs off, Mick, who is six foot tall and a member of a notorious east London gang, shouts after him: "I'll give you a slap. Don't come here and chat your shit."

It is the kind of confrontation seen all too often in inner-city London. We all fear crossing the paths of teenage hoodlums like Mick and Trig, symbols of broken Britain. But what, the Standard set out to discover, is it like to be on the other side of that exchange? What does London look like from "under the hoodie"?

On the surface Mick, whose nickname is "the punisher" and whom I meet on three separate occasions, is an articulate teenager who exudes confidence and charisma. He is black of Caribbean descent, born in London, the third of six siblings from a broken home and "admires" his hard-working social worker mother but "hates" his absent alcoholic father whom he sees "as little as possible". He was 14 when he first had sex, he says, 15 when he first smoked weed [cannabis], and 15 when he started dealing drugs. At school, Mick got Bs and Cs for GCSEs and could have had a place at a sixth-form college.

But there was only one institute he was seeking to join. "I wanted to go to Feltham, bruv," he says. "By the time I was 16, I couldn't wait to get banged up. Earn my stripes."

Since he was 13, he explains, when he saw a Channel 4 musical documentary called Feltham Sings - which showed the inmates of Feltham Young Offenders Institute in Hounslow rapping their stuff and strutting around like peacocks - he wanted to go there. Two weeks after leaving school, Mick got his wish: he was sentenced to 14 months for 23 armed robberies at knifepoint across east London involving laptops, wallets, mobile phones and handbags.

"Feltham turned out to be even better than I expected," he says of his 11 months there. "I had three meals a day, my own private bedroom with a nice TV, a nice Sony stereo radio, and I got a PS2 [PlayStation 2] after two months for good behaviour. I got to work out in the gym, shoot pool, [play] table-tennis. And most of my friends were there. To me, Feltham was holiday camp.

"A lot of the youngers [14 and 15-year-olds] I meet want to go to jail, too. They think it's a badge of honour. To them, it's more of a test than GCSEs. They see it as a place where they can work out, get muscly, make friends, and all the girls gonna fall over them when they get out. And it's a break from the grind. You don't have to hustle for a living when you banged up."

Stigma? What stigma? Some teenagers regard the biggest young offender prison in Europe not with dread but as a glamorised rite of passage. How representative is he?

"Very," says Ray Lewis, whose Eastside Academy in Plaistow for wayward black youths is regarded as a model by Boris Johnson. (Lewis stepped down as deputy mayor last year after being accused of dishonesty in a 10-year-old church file, allegations never put to him at the time and which he denies). "For a growing number of boys growing up on the estates, going to Feltham represents the pinnacle of their lives. For these boys, Feltham is a substitute family. It replaces their chaotic home life with routine, structure and status. The politicians have not grasped this because it's too frightening to contemplate. If our prisons are no longer a deterrent, what is?"

Lewis knows Mick - he calls him "Headcase Mick" - because 18 months ago his mother, having had her door kicked in at 1am by boys brandishing guns looking to kill her son, had marched him over and begged Ray to turn her son around. Ray won Mick's confidence but despite getting Mick on a plumbing course, Ray has not, he admits, been wholly successful.

Within minutes of my meeting Mick, he sells a wrap of cocaine and uses the proceeds to score weed from a 14-year-old kid on a bicycle. His volatile personality is also instantly to the fore. When I refuse to hand over £20 for his cannabis, he casually tells the dealer: "Slap him man, he's acting up, give him a slap."

Later he admits he's known for his vicious temper but insists he would "save" me if I got into trouble. Why would he do that when he hardly knows me? "You lead a normal life, bruv, you not mixed up in my shit," he says. Then ignoring my request not to smoke in the car, he rolls a joint, lights up and adjusts the wing mirror to keep a look-out for the police.

He laughs that the dealer we just saw is a member of an Asian gang, the Blackhawk Boys, whose "boss", Raffique, knows Mick because he "also graduated from Feltham". Mick's gang (whose name we have agreed to withhold) is about 30-strong, aged 18 upwards, and is one of the most feared in east London.

"Our click is well known to the police but the police don't get how we work," he says. "They hunt the leaders but our click were all at school together and we have no leaders and no hierarchy, except for youngers who attach to us."

How does he spend his day? "I take care of business first," he says. "I wake late morning, visit my supplier then get the stuff sold fast as possible. I got my regulars: business guys, City guys who need a fix. I keep my shit upbeat. I do home deliveries, pick-ups, whatever. Nights, I'm with my girl. Last night we were up until 5am. We watch porn." He laughs. "It gives me stamina."

He outlines his business strategy. "Selling weed is easy but it's not what makes money. Cocaine and heroin, you making about two grand a day, mate, especially if you go sell in funny places in the countryside like Basildon and Portsmouth." He rents a flat on a modern well-kept estate in Leytonstone, for which he pays £850 rent a month, he says, and claims to have £10,000 in the bank. "Believe it, bruv. Just cos I don't floss it [show off] doesn't mean I don't have it."

How does he see his future? "I want a big house with three cars: a Mercedes, a Range Rover, and a Lamborghini Gallardo." How? "Eventually I will go legit, get a job, maybe interior design. I like Ikea. I can design that sort of stuff."

But quite when and how he intends to go legit, he has yet to nail down.

The next time I meet Mick is a week later: he is nursing a painfully swollen gashed lip with three stitches. He'd been hit with a knuckle-duster, he says, part of a long-running tit-for-tat feud with another boy. It started about two years ago, he says, when a girl "grassed up his cousin who then got done on a murder charge". Mick "flipped out" and beat her up so badly that she was hospitalised and he, in turn, was charged with assault and sent, once again, to Feltham. His second spell inside was six months. Ever since he got out, the girl's brother has been after him. Last weekend he finally caught up.

Will Mick retaliate? "Ray [Lewis] has told me to let it go, but I told the goon that he won't see Christmas." Will he carry out his threat? "It's all about respect," he says. "A man disrespects you, you got to do something about it. I'm not afraid to die. To me, life's like a video game: you either make it to the end or you die early. And if you die early, it means you weren't any good at the game.

"But also, I respect Ray's opinion," he adds. "He's like a father to me. If he hadn't come into my life when he did, I'd be completely off the rails. He's showing me options. Like I can go back to college. The problem is that education is nothing these days. It doesn't even get you a job."

In the meantime, Mick doesn't stray far from his estate without "tooling up" - carrying a weapon. "Youngers carry knives but I prefer to roll with a strap," he says, referring to his 9mm Glock pistol which he once used to shoot somebody in the leg in a fast-food restaurant.

What is to be done? Apart from turning Feltham "into a tougher regime", Ray Lewis believes that the solution is to create "alternative father figures". His plan, called Capital Men, is to recruit 1,000 male mentors from across London to support at-risk boys, and he says it is currently under consideration by Boris Johnson.

"We especially have a problem with black boys," says Lewis. "It's the elephant in the room, the thing politicians are too afraid to admit, but we face a crisis of masculinity in black families where fathers are absent. We need to tackle it now if we're to save the next generation of boys coming up after Mick."

After five years of hustling drugs for a living, Mick admits he is tired of "the grind". "I could go either way," he says. "I could be dead in six months or turn over a new leaf."

But Trig, who has also started dealing class-A drugs and has known Mick since he was 10 years old, looks only to emulate his role model. "I ain't afraid of Feltham," he says. "Mick handled it, I can, too."

Later, when Trig is out of earshot, Mick says: "Youngers are like blind people crossing the highway. They can't see what's coming down the track and look to me for guidance." He pauses, shrugs. "Feltham was a good place to go but as you get older, you realise there are better places to go on holiday." He shrugs. "I could tell Trig that, but I doubt he would even listen."

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