Prison made tools

And some just make day-to-day prison life easier. Inspired by an article about correctional facilities in Germany's Der Spiegel news magazine, Steinmetz sought to gain access to German prisons to photograph items from informal collections harbored by guards. Then you make an appointment and get ushered through multiple security checkpoints until they take you to some room or other where you can take your pictures safely, with no contact to inmates at all," Steinmetz told The Huffington Post in an email.

Some objects even had little labels attached to them. However, prison officers transfer or retire, much knowledge is lost, there is no official record. I wrote down all the information I could get," he said.

Main Menu U. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes. Follow Us. Shotgun made from iron bedposts; charge made of pieces of lead from curtain tape and match-heads, to be ignited by AA batteries and a broken light bulb. Marc Steinmetz. Sometime in the seventies an inmate of Ludwigsburg prison, Germany, built this radio receiver on the sly and hid it inside an encyclopedia, probably on behalf of another inmate who had no electronic expertise himself.

Piecing together the stories behind the items took work. Prisoners' efforts present an eerie picture of life behind bars:. But unlike when Dillinger made his crude toy, modern prisoners have access to modern woodworking equipment and tools. It was never used, but if it had been, it almost certainly would have worked. Chair Leg Nunchucks - St. Louis Workhouse inmate Lorenzo Pollard fought off a dozen armed guards and facilitated his escape using nunchucks he made out of two chair legs and a bedsheet.

He broke through a window, squeezed through a homemade escape hatch and scaled two razor-wire walls, all while swinging his custom weapon around. Coffee Creamer Flamethrower - The animal fat in common powdered coffee creamer can be lit on fire and funneled through a tube to create a crude but very effective flamethrower. Prison commissaries stopped carrying the stuff because so many inmate were torching their foes. Make Corrections1 your homepage.

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Email Print. All images and captions, Marc Steinmetz photography SHOTGUN - made from iron bedposts; charge made of pieces of lead from curtain tape and match-heads, to be ignited by AA batteries and a broken light bulb.

That includes duty belts, uniforms, target practice posters, and Although the Golden Arch Empire doesn't directly employ inmates, one of the companies they contracted to produce uniforms for their employees hired low-cost prison labor in Oregon to stitch and sew them.

Furniture actually accounts for some of Unicor's biggest business, and inmates all around the country get paid to make everything from office chairs and bookshelves to desks and filing cabinets for federal office buildings. Back in the '90s, it was even reported that Tipper Gore and Janet Reno prominently displayed chairs and tables that had been re-upholstered at a federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia.

Mother Jones reports that Exmark, one of the companies subcontracted by Microsoft in the '90s, hired inmates to package computer mice and software for the tech giant.

Two bucks may sound low, but considering the average for behind-bars work, it's actually a very good wage. In the '90s, a subcontractor for the the Angel-making lingerie and leisure-wear brand hired 25 female inmates in South Carolina to stitch unmentionables. In Kansas and elsewhere , select inmates receive highly specialized dental technician training, and even make dentures that are given out to patients at safety net dental clinics.

In the past, subcontractors for both JCPenney and K-Mart used labor at prisons at Tennessee to fashion blue jeans for rock bottom wages. When they aren't busy making things for other people, prisoners are also tasked with producing the uniforms, brooms, mattresses, and even toilets for themselves in the big house. While manufacturing work keeps most of Unicor's fleet of 13, prisoners busy, there are a growing number of inmate-staffed call centers helping to lessen the customer service burden for both government and private sector businesses.