(law enforcement) An armed person working to provide order, security, discipline, punishment, and prevent escapes of prisoners in a jail that answers to a warden.
1997, Gary Indiana, Resentment: A comedy[1], New York: Anchor Books, published 1998, →ISBN, →OL, page 170:
And Tietelbaum has been bought and sold so many times by the dark Republican powers that be, look at the prisonguard beating trial and the Ventura County sewer fiasco.
During his services as a praetorian, Caesium Verus was twice promoted, first to tubicen (trumpeter), then to optio carceris (camp prisonguard): ordinatus tubicem item optio at carcarem factus est.
2011, Marc Ian Barasc, The Compassionate Life: Walking the Path of Kindness[3], San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, →ISBN:
The Telfaire Prisonguard towers rise miragelike in the swampy sunlight like giant mushroom caps on grey concrete stalks.