Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a large, portable tape-recorder-cum-radio.

1990

S. Morgan Homeboy 18: He cranked up his San Quentin briefcase, reawaking its raging rhymes.

(US prison) blackmail of one inmate by another, who desires homosexual favours.

1977

E. Bunker Animal Factory 95: There’s also the San Quentin cross. . . First you get a friend. He doesn’t make advances. Then you get pressure from somewhere else, maybe a gang. They want to start trouble with you so you think you’ve got a violent situation. You can’t come to [the authorities], you think, so you go to your friend and he comes in like a knight in shining armour. . . Now he puts it to you – drop your drawers or he’ll throw you to the gang.

(US) a girl still under the age of consent who sleeps with an older man.

1939		‘Hotel Sl.’ in AS XIV:3 Oct. 240/2: san quentin quail Girl below the age of consent.
1945		C. Himes ‘Make with the Shape’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 113: Lulu was not bird liver by any stretch of the imagination, nor even San Quentin Quail.
1954		‘Curt Cannon’ ‘Deadlier Than the Mail’ in I Like ’Em Tough (1958) 133: [I’m] nineteen, if you’re worried about Quentin Quail.
1966		Trimble 5000 Adult Sex Words and Phrases.
1973		C. Himes ‘Baby Sister’ [screenplay] in Black on Black 12: This is BABY SISTER, Sing Sing quail, a lecher’s dream, enough to make a preacher lay his Bible down.
1975		L. Dills CB Slanguage 93: San Quentin: desirable girl under the legal age of consent.

(US prison) beans.

1959

(ref. to 1919) G. Duffy Warden’s Wife 98: In 1919, people spoke about ‘San Quentin strawberries’ – beans ladled out of big buckets on to tin plates.