JAIL SPEAK
JAIL SPEAK
Ben Langston
SWALLOW PRESS / OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS, OHIO
Swallow Press
An imprint of Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2020 by Ben Langston
All rights reserved
To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Swallow Press / Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).
Printed in the United States of America
Swallow Press / Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Langston, Ben, 1976- author.
Title: Jail speak / Ben Langston.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Swallow Press/Ohio Univeristy Press, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020001361 | ISBN 9780804012256 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780804041096 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Langston, Ben, 1976- | State Correctional Institution at Rockview (Pa.) | Correctional personnel--Pennsylvania--Biography. | Prisoners--Pennsylvania. | Prisons--Pennsylvania.
Classification: LCC HV9475.P42 S725 2020 | DDC 365/.92 [B]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001361
For the squad.
The fam.
Life is hard inside.
Because it’s life.
This book is honest about jail. So it’s graphic.
There is obscenity, racism, sadism, sexism, rape, suicide, violence, and despair.
I hope the obscenity doesn’t offend anyone.
Contents
How to Stop Being Too Poor to Propose
Without Control, It Could Get Criminal
A Jailcop’s Glossary of Terms for Jail Copulation
Preface
I didn’t take a jail job to write a book. I didn’t even want a jail job. But the TV factory in town turned me down and I was broke and unskilled and mad about being broke and unskilled and the jail was doing something enchanting: it was hiring.
The jail was the State Correctional
