Hello,
Just ran into it while watching Law And Order
Detective: Who told you to keep tabs on Hall
Crook: I tell you, what am I in for?
Detective: Facilitation. You do a bullet, can be back here folding sheets (the crook is working at the laundromat)
Are you familiar with the term “bullet”? How many years is it?
Thanks!
I found this in the Urban Dictionary, but it can’t always be trusted:
bullet
One year in county jail
Hello MM,
Thanks for your help,
Actually so did I, but I was wondering if lay people knew it (and that definition in the Urban Dictionary didn’t create much confidence in my mind) and as I can see this term is not very popular, so I’d rather not use it =)
No, I’m not familiar with it. I don’t even understand much of the rest of that dialog.
Thank goodness for that! i thought it was just me!
But how come?
I’m not concocting anything, the dialog was uttered by native speakers in the movie!
Maybe you haven’t been filled in on the plot, that’s why you can’t make heads or tails of it.
I can catch you up on the plot, “facilitation” means “criminal facilitation”, like somebody helped somebody else commit a crime. That guy is in for facilitation if he spills the beans and will do a bullet (a year in the county jail, as MM has figured out)
In context, I could probably infer the meaning, but I couldn’t analyse the various terms, or follow the logic of why the 2nd speaker’s dialogue follows on from the 1st speaker’s question.
A one year prison sentence seems to be the correct interpretation. This is the sort of term that would only be used amongst career criminals (both in and out of prison), and rarely by law enforcement or correctional officers. Since career criminals treat prison sentences like badges of honor, doing “a bullet” does little to impress, thus accounting for the rarity of its use. Unless you are writing a gritty crime drama, this is a colloquialism you don’t need to retain.