Robert "Bobby" *mines OBE, FRSA (born 23 November 1951) is an English former gangster, protection racketeer, armed robber, and criminal enforcer who was chief executive of UNLOCK, The National *ociation of Reformed Offenders until March 2012.

Career

*mines began a criminal career at the age of 16, as Britain's youngest armed robber. He expanded into leading a group of criminal enforcers and racketeers, employing extreme violence in 1970s North London with his fearsome reputation and a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun named "Kennedy" after JFK. He also used a brutal method common in the underworld, filling his shotgun with rock salt instead of shot–doing less damage but causing serious pain. *mines claims he was taught to dehumanize anyone he killed, to think of them as vermin, saying that if you did think about it then you would think of their families and guilt. He did, however, feel sorry for one death; a hostage in a routine bank heist died due to suffering a serious panic attack, where he vomited and choked on a gag.

*mines was sentenced to 18 years when an arms dealer (referred to as "Ernie" in his autobiography) informed and told the authorities almost everything *mines and his gang had done. Ernie worked with the police to entrap *mines, telling him he had an Uzi sub-machine gun for sale, allowing multiple armed police to ambush and arrest him. He went to prison and within the first few months he had taken a governor hostage for being "unreasonable". This led authorities to designate him as a cl* "A" prisoner, causing him to be frequently moved from one prison to another. In his autobiography, *mines details how he met a broad range of people, from members of the Irish Republican Army to lavish-living American gangsters.

*mines turned his life around in prison after a conversation with Charlie Richardson, who urged him to become educated and earn money without hurting anyone. He began writing poetry and got into contact with Tony Benn, a government minister at the time who was willing to help him and contributed a foreword to his published poems, as well as changing rules so that the aim of prisons was stated to be to "rehabilitate and educate" rather than the free-for-all ethos that *mines had experienced.

*mines has criticised the system of high-security prisons, which places many brilliant criminal minds in one location and thus enables them to teach each other tricks and establish connections. He has said that if he had not wanted to escape criminal life he would have used these techniques, such as building bombs or smuggling illicit goods. He then studied for a degree with the Open University whilst in prison.

Queen Elizabeth II awarded *mines the OBE in June 2011 in recognition of his services to reformed offenders.

His autobiography, I Am Not A Gangster, ISBN:9780091958589, was published 15 May 2014 by Random House's Ebury Press imprint.

References

External links

• MIDAS website