behind bars

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behind bars

1. (figuratively, idiomatic) In jail, in prison.
   • 1905, Upton Sinclair, chapter XXVII, in The Jungle, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 26 February 1906, OCLC 1150866071:

     There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

   • 2001, Margot Roosevelt et al., "The War Against The War On Drugs," Time, 7 May:

     Some 460,000 Americans are behind bars for drug offenses.

   • 2014, Ian Black, "Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis", The Guardian, 27 November 2014:

     Leading Jordanian exponents of the Salafi-jihadi world view, such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, are now behind bars or silent, fearing arrest by the powerful mukhabarat secret police.

• See also Thesaurus:jail

• “behind bars”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.