Monday, Jun. 17, 1974
Prison Patois
To set themselves apart from the "straight" world that incarcerated them, prisoners have developed an argot that few outside of jail could hope to understand. Thus, for new volunteers who work with prisoners, the New York State Department of Correctional Services recently compiled a pamphlet that included half a dozen pages of current "inmate jargon." A sampling of some of the more colorful terms:
Bug juice: medicine
Cop a mope: get away from me
Ding him: swing sneakily at him
Doing a pound: serving a five-year sentence
Feeb: low on the inmate social scale
Flat bit: definite sentence (a "split bit" is a sentence with a set minimum and maximum)
Godfather: prison superintendent
Habe: writ of habeas corpus
Hit: rejection for parole
Home boy or homie: from same home town
Ice short ice: movies with lots of sex
Jacket: to label someone
Jailhouse punk: made a homosexual in prison
Jitterbug: young gang fighter
Jockers: aggressive homosexuals
Jones: habit
Main squeeze: wife, girl friend
Max out: complete maximum sentence
Mother's Day: day when welfare check arrives at inmate's home
Play chickee: to be a lookout
On tape: to know by heart
On the erie: eavesdropping
Rollies: handmade cigarettes
Skinners: plastic surgery
Tip: to leave
Yam: a black (derogatory)
Zex: careful, someone's coming
Many of those terms will soon be outdated, of course, if they are not already. The very existence of the pamphlet threatens them. If every volunteer understands what convicts are saying, the inmate neologist will simply invent new jargon to remain different from the straights. For some prisoners, that's a number one Jones they do not want to kick.
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