Photos of prison DIY tech
I've always found DIY prison culture to be absolutely fascinating. Inmates are makers by necessity. In 1999, photographer Marc Steinmetz created this fascinating series of photographs depicting DIY tech found in prisons. The series is titled "Escape Tools." From the artist's site:
(Above left), Rope Ladder with wooden rungs disguised as chess pieces; found and confiscated in an inmate’s cell in Wolfenbüttel prison, Germany, around 1993.Escape Tools (via Street Use)
(Above right), Immersion Heater made from razor blades; found in a cell in ‘Santa Fu’ jail in Hamburg, Germany. Jailbirds use these tools to distil alcoholic beverages forbidden in prisons. Your typical inmate’s moonshine still includes a plastic can containing fermented fruit mash or juice, an immersion coil of some sort, a rubber hose, and a plastic receptacle for the booze.
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You can make good dice with toilet paper, and a little toothpaste too.
I smell a MAKE special on Prison Tech coming soon, complete with instructions, interviews, and a cost analysis graph for dollars-to-cigarettes conversion.
@2 ill lich: you mean mackerel?
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/03/mackerel-economics-i.html
what about shivs?
That "immersion heater" is going to give me nightmares. Electric shave anyone?
"These examples bear witness to man’s
love of freedom." and his love of hurting other people really badly.
I have made very similar immersion heater when I was in the army as an enlisted man. I am from Central Europe, not far from Germany. We called the heater "the Inmate model".
I did not use it to make alcohol, I was simply brewing coffee.
Later on I replaced it with a very similar model that was manufactured in factory in Soviet Union. Factory manufactured heater was made from two pieces of graphite (very similar to ones used as a brush in electrical motors, for example drills) fixed to the bottom of a plastic cup. On the top of graphite electrodes there was protective plastic disk, so nobody could make a contact using a spoon.
Both models were unbelievably quick
@2 & 3
It's not always mackerel, tends to depend on the prison, another main currency tends to be stamps, generally sold in "books" 20 at a time and worth the amount of about $6.00.
Seems like the foot-high chess pieces would have been a giveaway that something was up. And I'm thinking that giving that "immersion heater" to death row prisoners might be a way to cut down on execution costs.
taser razor
They left off pruno. A different kind of escape tool.
Darn! Now I just hope my guards aren't BB readers!
The immersion heater is here in my country (I am poster #7) also used for making super extra strong tea. Inmates have special name for such tea. You take a boxful of teabags and cook it in small amount of water. The teine content is very high. Teine is a form of caffeine.
Quote from Wikipedia:
"Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that is a psychoactive stimulant drug."
@13 looks like you're talking about chifir.
@14
Exactly. Chifir "Чифи́рь" is Russian name. Czech and Slovakian name is "Magorak" - it could be very loosely translated as "one that will make you mad [crazy, nuts]"
I was on a federal grand jury in a district with a federal maximum security prison. We'd frequently get contraband cases. One of the Assistant US Attorneys had a habit of bring physical evidence when laying out the evidence, which in this case meant shivs.
The shiv I remember was a pencil in a chapstick tube.
BB's posted this before, I think. Prompted me to get the book.
How to make pruno (it's based on that poem posted above):
http://blacktable.com/gillin030901.htm
Re; teh crucifix dagger:
"At that time a lot of crucifixes were fashioned in prison woodshops until jailers finally dug their true purpose."
Now if only the rest of the world would catch on...
Wait - are razors legal items in a prison? Seems silly to take an illegal, valuable contraband as a source for something less illegal, less likely to slit someone's throat at least.