NCJ Number
176022
Date Published
1996
Length
128 pages
Annotation
This is a dictionary of prison words and slang from English prisons.
Abstract
The book contains 2,500 entries collected from serving prisoners. The starting point for including a word or expression was whether it occurred especially, even if not uniquely, in the world of the prison. Derivations and explanations are included when they could be determined. The book includes rhyming slang (a two- or three-word expression the last word of which rhymes with the true meaning) and backslang (in which a word, sometimes itself a slang word, is reversed). Nothing dates faster than drug slang, whose purpose is to create a secret code, but terms are included as they were used at the time the book was compiled. Prison officers' expressions, used perhaps to distance those in authority from the individuals in their care, have also been included. The book presents brief scenes from prison life, short outlines of the usual procedures whereby people come into jail and explanations of the average prison regime from reception to release.