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

Stephen Richards Hard Bastards Jimmy Holland Scotland Crime Scottish Crime Stephen Richards Stephen Richards Author Street Crime Scotland

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

Stephen Richards Hard Bastards Jimmy Holland Scotland Crime Scottish Crime Stephen Richards Stephen Richards Author Street Crime Scotland

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

Stephen Richards Hard Bastards James Crosbie Jimmy Holland Scotland Crime Scottish Crime Stephen Richards Stephen Richards Author Street Crime Scotland

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

Stephen Richards Aids Hard Bastards Hiv Virus Jimmy Holland Prison Scotland Crime Scottish Crime Scottish Penal System Stephen Richards Stephen Richards Author Street Crime Scotland

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

Stephen Richards Hard Bastards Jimmy Holland Peterhead Prison Scotland Crime Scottish Crime Scottish Penal System Stephen Richards Stephen Richards Author Street Crime Scotland

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

Stephen Richards Hard Bastards Jimmy Holland Sas Scotland Crime Scottish Crime Scottish Prison Siege Stephen Richards Stephen Richards Author Street Crime Scotland