jail fodder

• jailfodder

From jail + fodder (food for livestock), i.e. food to be fed to jails. Probably by analogy with cannon fodder.

jail fodder (uncountable)

1. People considered to be expendable, worth nothing more than to fill jails.
   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked, London: Hutchinson, Chapter 4,

     Philos grew redly truculent. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t need the advice of a lump of Jewish jailfodder—’

   • 2001, Alan Taylor, American Colonies, Penguin, 2002, Chapter 14, p. 315,

     Between 1718 and 1775, the empire transported about fifty thousand felons, more than half of all English emigrants to America during that period. The transported were overwhelmingly young, unmarried men with little or no economic skill: the cannon fodder of war and the jail fodder of peace.

   • 2016, Vickie Roach, quoted in Elle Hunt, “Safe space,” The Guardian, 24 November, 2016,

     The history of Australia since colonisation has been telling us that we’re stupid, dumb, we’re drunks, we’re just jail fodder, we’re all criminals, we’re dirty, we can’t look after our kids, we all sniff petrol, now we do ice.