Tracy soon learned why inmates referred to a term in the penitentiary as "going to college." Prison was an educational experience, but what the prisoners learned was unorthodox.
The prison was filled with experts in every conceivable type of crime. They exchanged methods of grifting, shoplifting, and rolling drunks. They brought one another up to date on badger games and exchanged information on snitches and undercover cops.
In the recreation yard one morning, Tracy listened to an older inmate give a seminar on pickpocketing to a fascinated young group.
"The real pros come from Colombia. They got a school in Bogotá, called the school of the ten bells, where you pay twenty-five hundred bucks to learn to be a pickpocket. They hang a dummy from the ceilin', dressed in a suit with ten pockets, filled with money and jewelry."
"What's the gimmick?"
"The gimmick is that each pocket has a belt on it. You don't graduate till you kin empty every damn pocket without ringin' the bell."
Lola sighed, "I used to go with a guy who walked through crowds dressed in an overcoat, with both his hands out in the open, while he picked everybody's pockets like crazy."
"How the hell could he do that?"
technical analysis
personeelsfeest Noord Holland
