Cummines began a criminal career at the age of 16, as Britain's youngest armed robber. He expanded into leading a group of contract killers 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 utilised a brutal method common in the underworld, filling his shotgun with salt rocks instead of shells - doing less damage but causing serious pain. Cummines claims that he did not think about anyone he killed, 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. Cummines was sentenced to 18 years when an arms dealer informed and told the authorities almost everything Cummines and his gang had done. Ernie worked with the police to entrap Cummines, telling him he had an Uzisub-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 caused him to be designated as a class "A" prisoner, causing him to be frequently moved from one prison to another. In his autobiography, Cummines details how he met a broad range of people, from members of the Irish Republican Army to lavishly-living American Mafiosi. Cummines turned his life around in prison after a conversation with Charlie Richardson of the South London "Torture Gang", 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 Cummines had experienced. Cummines has criticised the system of high-security prisons, which places a lot of brilliant criminal minds in one location and thus enables them to teach each other tricks and connections. He has said that if he had not wanted to escape criminal life he would have utilised these techniques, such as bomb building or smuggling illicit goods. He then studied for a degree with the Open University whilst in prison. Cummines was awarded the OBE by Queen Elizabeth II in June 2011 in recognition of his services to reformed offenders. His autobiography, I Am Not A Gangster,, was published 15 May 2014 by Random House's Ebury Press imprint.
