Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also poke, poky) a prison, usu. small and local; thus in the pokey, in touble, in solitary confinement (see cite 2001).

1919		C.H. Darling Jargon Book 26: Pokey, a jail.
1931		D. Runyon ‘The Bloodhounds of Broadway’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 93: Lags who escape from the county pokey.
1944		D. Runyon Runyon à la Carte 87: There is nothing left to be done but to clap this Mrs. Bidkar in the pokey.
1949		R. Park Poor Man’s Orange 123: Dolour thought he might be a dope-pedlar, and briskly prophesied a police raid, and Mr Reilly getting hauled off to the pokey.
1952		C. Hamilton Men of the Und. 81: He was pinched on a vag charge and tossed in the pokey.
1953		W. Brown Monkey On My Back (1954) 239: I thought you’d be around as soon as you heard Pepe was in the poke.
1956		(con. 1940s) J. Resko Reprieve 183: You’d be brought to the poky and put in a line-up.
1961		G. Marx letter 5 July in Groucho Letters (1967) 142: The police finally came and hauled him off to the local pokey.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 299: There were hardly ever more than one or two citizens in the local two-story brick pokey.
1981		O’Day & Eells High Times Hard Times 38: Mom stormed around [...] threatening to have everyone hauled off to the pokey.
1990		R.G. Barratt ‘Kill Two Birds’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] [of a police station] [I]f anybody apart from a Koori is caught selling pot, then it’s off to the pokey for some severe questioning.
1990		Tupper & Wortley Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Pokey. A cell or prison generally.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 143/1: pokey n. 2 (the pokey) prison [...] in the pokey in trouble, esp. placed in solitary confinement.
2005		Guardian Rev. 1 Jan. 29: He was openhearted to Molly-O and Steffi [...] who are forever in the pokey for turning a five-dollar trick with the wrong guy.
2012		L. Berney Whiplash River [ebook] ‘Last I heard, you were in prison. In the clink, the pokey’.

2. a turnkey, a jailer.

1949

N. Algren Man with the Golden Arm 7: Sssss — Pokey! You got this door locked good?

3. a prison cell.

1990		see sense 1.
2018		(con. 1963) L. Berney November Road 89: ‘Over there. In the pokey.’ One jail cell. A man lay on a cot, bundled under a wool blanket.