prison slang!

October 18, 2005 12:55 PM

I'm looking for a slang word/phrase used to describe a false bar in a prison cell. The idea is that when a prison was built/expanded by inmate labor, workers would loosen one bar before it'd set too solidly in cement to make a potential escape hatch. What would inmates call this?

If it's any help, I first heard the term in the Marge Piercy novel Gone to Soldiers, in a chapter in which a French resistance fighter is caught & jailed (now I don't have the book to refer back to).

posted by soviet sleepover to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

I don't have time to look through the whole thing, but A Prisoner's Dictionary probably knows.
posted by togdon at 1:08 PM on October 18, 2005

You could use Amazon's Search Inside function to refer back to the book.
posted by o2b at 1:09 PM on October 18, 2005

Best answer: I searched, and found reference to a "bar of freedom." Is that it?
posted by o2b at 1:10 PM on October 18, 2005

Response by poster: o2b, that must be it, but I'd misremembered it as something much more romantic-sounding!
posted by soviet sleepover at 1:32 PM on October 18, 2005

"False Tooth" sounds cooler, though...
posted by interrobang at 5:53 PM on October 18, 2005

I swear I've heard it referred to as a "falsie" somewhere. Maybe Papillion?
posted by loquax at 5:56 PM on October 18, 2005