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 Institute at Rockview, located in central Pennsylvania, five miles from Penn State University. The area’s name: Happy Valley. The jail held two thousand inmates of all security levels and handled the state’s executions. It still does. Its purpose and problems are universal to the judicial system. I ended up wearing a corrections officer uniform there for three years.
I call Rockview a “jail” because that’s what the guards and inmates called it. The word “prison” is often used for places where guys do sentences of a year or more. “Jails” are typically places where guys do less than a year. So, technically, Rockview would be considered a prison. But really, call it what you want—jail, prison, big house, pokey—it’s a place where people are kept against their will. Some of those people make the worst of it. Others, the best. And call me what you want—corrections officer, CO, guard, jailcop—I helped keep people there against their will. For this, the jail rewarded me with paychecks, jail food, and, eventually, a concrete desire to escape.
Jail can be an anywhere, anytime. Bars exist everywhere. The woman who can’t leave her abusive husband because she has two lovely freckled children, no job, and no family to take her in, yes, she’s in jail. Jail can also be a high-interest loan, a wall between countries, a nightclub for an introvert, or a job that makes you wake up, put on a uniform, and act only according to