In 1972, a group of prisoners at Parramatta Jail in Sydney put together a glossary of prison words and phrases. It is a list of 362 words with definitions.

Many of the terms describe life in the prison, including punishments, the psychological effects of incarceration, and male to male sex. Others come from the prisoners' encounters with police and the legal system or from the prisoners' place in a wider underworld or criminal culture.

The book examines the social functions of underworld and prison slang, especially its role in creating a world that stands in opposition to the 'ordinary' world that most of us inhabit. It shows that prison language is the cement that holds together the structure of the prisoners' alternative reality.

The major part of the book is a detailed edition of the words and phrases that make up the Parramatta Jail Glossary. It explains what the words mean and where they came from. There are extensive quotations from texts such as newspapers, novels, and autobiographies that illustrate how the words in the glossary are used in speech and writing. They bring to life the social world of the prisoners.