Prison. The final frontier for some, a place where
they end their days. Others will get to leave, but wish they’d
never step foot inside. Here’s 50 things nobody tells you about
prison. 50. We’ll start with the USA, the country that
can claim to lock more of its citizens up than any other, and by a long way, too. According to 2020 data, there were 2.3 million
US citizens behind bars, but when we say bars, that included federal and state prisons, jails,
juvenile correctional facilities, and immigration detention facilities. Just so you know, these numbers are not exactly
stable, but close. People enter and leave facilities all the
time. 49. It works out at around 639 people behind bars
for every 100,000 people. The US is still number one in per capita terms. Here are the countries that follow in the
top ten. The number is per 100,000:
El Salvador, 562. Turkmenistan, 552. Palau, 552. Rwanda, 511. Cuba, 510. Maldives, 449. Virgin Islands (UK), 447. Thailand, 443. The Bahamas, 442. Let’s stick with numbers for now. We’ll get around to the messed-up stories
soon, we promise. 48. According to the Prison Policy Initiative,
in the US, 600,000 people enter prison each year. But that’s nothing compared to jail. Around 10.6 million Americans enter jail every
year. If you’re wondering why that number is so
high, it’s because many people get out of jail very quickly, once they’ve got bail. Some of them have already been convicted for
small crimes, so stay there for a while. They number about 160,000 people a year. One-quarter of people who go to jail will
be there again after release within a year. Another reason for staying in jail is the
simple fact that many poor people can’t afford to make bail. In 2019, the Chicago Tribune wrote that of
the 5,736 inmates in Cook County Jail, 5,390 were waiting for a trial. Half of them couldn’t afford to pay bail,
or they didn’t have a place to stay where they could be electronically monitored. That begs the question, how many are innocent? 47. It’s hard to say, because statistics tell
us that a person is nine times more likely to say they are guilty of a misdemeanor crime
if they can’t make bail. They just want to move things on, even if
they are innocent. In fact, 95 percent of cases never go to trial. People take plea bargains, sometimes if they’re
innocent. That doesn’t mean prisons are teeming with
innocent people, but quite a few people have been wrongly convicted of a crime. The Innocence Project says it’s between
2.3 percent and 5 percent of prisoners in the US. Other sources put it as high as 10 percent. But why? 46. The answer is for many reasons. Some innocent people take a plea, especially
if they think they have a less-than-great lawyer and they’ve been convinced that if
the case goes to trial, they are looking at a hefty prison sentence. In court, an innocent person could lose because
of prosecutorial misconduct, or because a witness lied, or even a cop lied. Maybe during the interrogation, the police
were somewhat heavy-handed, and the victim was overwhelmed. Let’s now look at an extreme case when this
happened. 45. We’ve picked on the US enough, so now we’ll
sail across the pond to the UK. In 1974, a 17-year old council worker named
Stephen Downing confessed to murdering a 32-year-old woman named Wendy Sewell. The case would become known as the greatest
miscarriage of justice the UK had ever seen, although that’s questionable given witches
were burned there. Anyway, this young lad first told cops he’d
found the woman at the cemetery where he was working as a groundskeeper. He said he moved her body, and that’s why
he got blood on him. He was interrogated for nine long hours. He also had learning difficulties, and there
wasn’t any lawyer with him during the questioning. Guess what? At the end of the grueling interrogation,
he said he’d done it. He was given a long sentence, with the condition
that he could meet with a parole board after ten years. Inmates believed this guy had hurt a woman,
so he was beaten badly and had to change prisons eight times. Later he was caught in something called the
“Innocent prisoner's dilemma”. He couldn’t be paroled because he refused
to say he’d committed the crime. Talk about a Catch-22. It’s actually not that uncommon. We won’t get too much into it, but the whole
case was a shambles. He should never have been sent to prison. The cops knew this. One journalist that tried to help Downing
told the BBC that police harassed him. He said, “They made my life absolute hell
for five or six years. I was pulled up for speeding, stopped and
searched, victimized…I was very worried for my family.” Downing got out after 27 years, and subsequent
investigations found that the police in the past had done some very sketchy work indeed. On release, he received around $1 million
in compensation and became a chef. He told the press, “I never allowed myself
to feel angry or bitter. Who could I have taken it out on anyway? I still refuse to.” 44. The vast majority of prisoners in the US are
not in for violent offenses. We looked at the latest 2021 data from the
US Bureau of Prisons and saw that 46.2 percent of prisoners were in for drug offenses. No other crime came close, although offenses
relating to Weapons, Explosives, and Arson accounted for 20.2 percent of prisoners. Every 25 seconds, someone is arrested for
drug possession in the US, although they don’t all end up in prison, of course. 43. We looked into drug possession offenses, and
it is a very, very contentious issue. One reason is that drugs are widely available
in prisons. In fact, there are reports stating that people
have gone in for possessing soft drugs and got addicted to hard drugs inside to deal
with the mental issues they faced. The vast majority of prisoners in for drugs
are not trafficking drug kingpins, they are merely addicts. Research shows that importers or high-level
suppliers only amount to 11 percent of drug offenders doing hard time. On top of that, there is ample data to suggest
that more poor people get stopped by cops, and more of them go to prison for drug offenses
than the middle class or wealthy people. As the Marshall Project said, “Rich drug
abusers go to treatment, not prison.” The UK Guardian echoed that, saying, “The
wealthy 'make mistakes', the poor go to jail.” The story said you’re much more likely to
have a drug problem if you have suffered trauma growing up or grown up poor. Prison is like a double-whammy. Pew Research said this, “More Imprisonment
Does Not Reduce State Drug Problems.” Pew discovered that the deterrent of prison
hasn’t and doesn’t stop people from taking drugs. This is why this is one very big hot potato
of a subject. Ok, enough of that. Who’s served the most time ever? 42. We found a few names. Paul Geidel served 68 years in the US after
being convicted of second-degree murder in 1911. The weird thing is, it was looking like a
parole board might have released him in 1926 because of his good behavior, but then he
was found to be legally insane. He could have gotten out after 63 years, but
by then he was so institutionalized he chose to stay in another for five years. He died a free man in 1987, aged 93. 41. Francis Clifford Smith served over 71 years
in prison for the murder of a nightwatchman in 1950 in Connecticut. In 2020, he was moved to a nursing home. Now you’ll see how innocent men can spend
many years behind bars. 40. In 1972, aged 26, Richard Phillips went to
prison as an innocent man. He was released 46 years later. He wrote this poem a few years into his incarceration:
“Ain’t it a crime. When you don’t have a dime. To buy back the freedom you’ve lost? Ain’t it odd. That when you pray to God. Your prayers don’t seem to be heard? Ain’t it sad. When you’ve never had. The freedom of a soaring bird?” He was finally exonerated in 2018, and later
told he’d receive $1.5 million in compensation. He told the media, “I just want to keep
a low profile, travel, and enjoy life. That’s what I wanted to do in the first
place.” 39. In a paper titled, “Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences,” it was said that four percent of people in the US on death row are
probably innocent in the past and right now. 38. Eighteen people in the US have gotten off
death row after DNA testing proved that they were innocent. They had collectively served 229 years. Sometimes innocent people get executed, too,
as you’ll now see. 37. US man Cameron Todd Willingham was executed
in 2004 and later his innocence was proved after the case was said to have been heavily
flawed. His last words were, “The only statement
I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit.” This is what an investigator later said, “The
whole case was based on the purest form of junk science.” Johnny Garrett was executed in the US in 1992,
and later DNA evidence proved he was innocent. It’s said he didn’t want to share any
last words, although some sources say he said, “I'd like to thank my family for loving
me and taking care of me. The rest of the world can kiss my…” We omitted one word. When innocent Florida man Jesse Tafero was
executed in 1990, “Old Sparky” malfunctioned, and witnesses said what they saw was pure
horror. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel wrote, “flames
and smoke erupted from his head.” Now you’ll see that executions of innocent
people don’t only happen in the USA. 36. In Russia in 1983, a man named Aleksandr Kravchenko
was executed for murder. It turned out that the killer was none other
than “the Butcher of Rostov”, Andrei Chikatilo. In 1950, a man named George Kelly was hanged
in the UK for murder. There had been unbelievable police corruption
in the case. The cops basically set him up. In fact, police had the confession of another
man, but since they’d made a mess of the case, they held that information back. In 1989, a man named Teng Xingshan was executed
in China for the murder of a woman.That woman later turned up to the surprise of everyone. Xingshan had committed no crime at all. 35. Prisoners get drunk while locked up on alcohol
they make themselves. It’s sometimes called hooch, or pruno, or
prison wine. The best brewers can earn ok money from selling
it. One former prisoner said, “You can sell
half a gallon of wine for $25. Each pant leg makes two and a half gallons,
so you do the math. It's a good hustle.” He said he cut pant legs and sewed the bottoms,
and lined them with plastic bags. Then he filled them with water. After that, he threw in five pounds of sugar,
a load of diced tomatoes, and tomato paste. He then let all that ferment. Other prisoners have used bread for yeast. As for the sweetness, any kind of fruit works,
but you can also add candy. It’s important to “burp” the bag. We saw a guy on a podcast who said he’d
forgotten to do that, and he got covered in the stuff when it exploded. 34. Another thing prisoners will pay good money
for is mobile phones. It’s not easy getting them in. Sometimes an officer can be tempted with cash,
or even threatened. Other times the phones are “plugged” in
the rear, which you can imagine can be quite uncomfortable. For a run-of-the-mill phone, you might be
able to charge US$1000 inside prison. 33. In 2015, Brazilian prison officers discovered
a unique way prisoners were getting phones inside. They used cats. One cat that frequently went in and outside
of the prison was found with four mobile phones, four chargers, and seven cards attached to
it. 32. Just how much a man can plug is anyone’s
guess, but we saw a documentary where an officer showed how a prisoner had plugged a foldable
knife. The British Prime Minister was recently given
a lesson on such acts, when he learned some British prisoners were hiding “Kinder eggs”
in themselves filled with drugs. 31. Why would people go to such an effort, you
might ask? The answer is the mark-up. Drugs in prison are way more expensive than
on the outside, so much so, officers might sometimes get in on the dealing. It is a license to print money, and there
is no shortage of prisoners wanting something to take the monotony away. In fact, because opiates can’t be detected
in urine after around 2-3 days, some prisoners get into them even though they just want to
smoke weed. Weed can be detected up to 21 days after ingestion. One podcast we watched said he took opiates
in prison, but every so often, he got caught out. He said then he went back to the first floor,
where he had no privileges. He’d slowly get back to the upper floor,
where he’d do more opiates. Then he got caught again and was sent back
down. He called it the merry-go-round. 30. Even tobacco is expensive inside. One prisoner said he was getting stuff brought
in, and then he charged two or three dollars for just one small, rolled cigarette. That meant one pouch, cheap outside prison,
was worth a lot of money. In 2020, in an Irish prison, officers discovered
one haul that included mobiles phones, 800 grams of weed, two grams of cocaine, and 10,000
pills. To give you an idea of how much that is worth,
we will go to another news story that said in the UK, just in 2017, 15,000 phones and
a massive 189 kilos of drugs were confiscated. A phone in a UK prison might go from $300
to $1300. And those are low-quality devices. The same article said the synthetic drug called
“spice” can cost over 30 times more in prison than on the outside. Cocaine, depending on quality, might cost
$100 on the outside for a gram. That might go for $1,000 on the inside. The mark-up was even higher for a gram of
heroin. This is why some people put eggs in their
behind. 29. Another way to get stuff in is when violent
cons groom officers. That happened to a man named Lee Davies in
England. He was on incredibly low pay for such a stressful
job, and then he helped some gang members get phones and drugs inside. His money problems were over. He was told to wait in a car park some place,
then a car would pull up and throw something into his car. He then smuggled the package inside, and he
kept doing that for months. He was eventually caught. He said later, “There’s no excuse for
what I did, but I have deep sympathy for people working in that environment.” He believes he was partly groomed by the prisoners. 28. He started on twenty thousand pounds a year,
or $27,000. That is a very low wage, but the job has got
to be one of the hardest you could do. According to job websites, a starting prison
officer’s wage might be $31,740 a year in the US. Overstressed and underpaid is what you hear
from most officers. They are dealing with violence and outrage,
and sometimes severe mental issues, almost on a daily basis. 27. Then there’s what’s called the prison
industrial complex. Mass incarceration has become a business,
one that is booming in the US. The American Civil Liberties Union says mandatory
minimum sentences helped create the US’s bursting prisons, and on top of that, there
was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This led to more mass incarceration and massive
profits for the private prison industry. There are many kinds of businesses that make
money, not just the private prisons. You have the food services, handcuff makers,
clothes services, the ones earning from cheap prison labor, and much more. This is how one person put it, “The 'prison-industrial
complex' is not only a set of interest groups and institutions; it is also a state of mind. The lure of big money is corrupting the nation's
criminal-justice system, replacing notions of safety and public service with a drive
for higher profits.” 26. These are some companies benefiting or that
benefited from cheap prison labor in the US: McDonald’s, Wal-Mart. Microsoft, IBM, Target, Intel, Victoria’s
Secret (yep, they make lingerie), Honda, Starbucks, Nike, Nintendo. 25. If you want to know how much the prisoners
make, NPR interviewed a guy that worked at Omaha Correctional Center after getting eight
to sixteen years for theft and forgery. He was paid $2.25 a day for a 12-hour shift. But he also said one phone call cost him $5
and a bag of chips also cost him $5. 24. For some regular prison work in some prisons,
you get nothing. Just getting out of your cell is payment. Prison Policy said in Florida, if you are
laboring for state-owned industries, you can earn between $0.20 and $0.55 an hour. That seems to be about the going wage. Now for some more prison violence. 23. Not surprisingly, prisoners get killed in
prison. Gang violence is usually to blame, or at times
people are killed for a certain crime they committed on the outside, or someone just
gets killed over an argument. In 2008, there were only 40 homicides in US
prisons. That number pretty much increased every year. In 2020, the last data we could find, the
number was 120. As you’ll now see, violence inside prison
is much worse in other countries. 22. We looked at prisons and jails in Ecuador
and what’s been going on in 2021. In February, the BBC reported that 79 people
were murdered in four different Ecuadorian jails, although they were related to the same
gang squabbles. In April, the BBC reported five men were murdered
and 16 injured in just one Ecuadorian prison, again, gang-related. In July, Aljazeera wrote that 22 men were
murdered, and many others were injured in two prisons in that country. Gang rivalry was to blame, but overcrowding
and bad conditions was also mentioned. After that, Ecuador's president declared a
state of emergency. 21. Ok, so you’ve all seen the movies that suggest
in some US prisons, you have to join a gang, or you’ll either get beaten or exploited. Really, do convicted accountants end up putting
work in for the Sureños? It’s actually a complex question, but we
guess the best people to answer it are folks who’ve done a lot of prison time. There is no shortage of these people who now
have their own YouTube channel. People say it depends on where you are doing
your time, but it still might not mean you have to get involved with a gang. Most prisoners give the advice, “Just keep
your head down and do your time.” They usually agree on one thing, though, and
that is, you will likely at least need alliances. A British stockbroker agreed. He had the bad idea of starting an ecstasy
empire after moving to the US. After being locked up in Arizona, he said
the first thing that happened scared the hell out of him. Gang members came into his cell and asked
for his papers. He didn’t know what that meant. They actually wanted to see what he’d been
convicted of to make sure he hadn’t hurt society’s most vulnerable. In some prisons, that could mean KOS, or Kill
On Sight. It’s why some prisoners are housed in protective
custody. After he was deemed ok, he said he didn’t
join a gang, but he also said he made some friends. That made his life much, much easier. One former prisoner in the US said this, “The
commonly held belief that joining a gang is the only way to survive prison is one that
I sincerely wish would forever go the way of the DooDoo. I honestly think it's the gangs themselves
that try their hardest to propagate this false notion.” Another guy agreed, but he said hanging with
your own race in some prisons is a must. He also said this, “In the yard, all the
races hang with their own, with the gangs and shot callers. They may take advantage of the weaker ones,
making them pay 'rent' and such .. but once you stand up for yourself, they will usually
stop and often ask you to join the gang . If you say no, they usually accept it.” So, no, you won’t have to join a gang. But as you’ll now see, you also won’t
be completely independent. 20. There’s the dining room, or “chow hall.” If you don’t get told where to sit by officers,
you’ll sit with your own race. This is where it helps to have made friends. You certainly have to show respect, so just
plonking your behind down without thinking about it will lead to you getting a bust head. One prisoner said at his prison, there were
what he called “short bus” tables. These were the tables where anyone could sit,
but he said they were reserved for the less respected prisoners. Most former prisoners agree on one thing;
it’s in the chow hall where you see alliances. Even if you are a fiercely independent person,
some former prisoners say going it alone is not recommended. 19. In the UK, race doesn’t matter all that
much. You usually hook up with friends, and if you’re
a long-time criminal, you’ll likely have some. If there are gang rivalries, it’s not about
the color of your skin, but where you come from. In London, or Liverpool, there have been what
the media called post-code wars. In some podcasts, former British prisoners
from the south said they didn’t like getting sent to the northern part of the country,
and vice versa. 18. If you do get attacked in prison, it is sometimes
with a homemade knife, or shiv. Sometimes it’s just with a razor blade. Other times, the instrument will have a few
razor blades attached close to each other. This is so the wound is almost impossible
to stitch. The British media has reported a lot on this. Apparently, the wound leaves a really big
scar. That’s bad, but this is worse. 17. One of the most horrendous things prisoners
do, and it seems it’s not all that uncommon, is throw boiling water in someone’s face. They usually fill the water with sugar because
that makes the water caramelized and sticky. In the past, in the UK, this has been referred
to as “napalm.” After that, you need some good advice. 16. Prisoners often talk about the prison code,
which, to be frank, sounds hypocritical or nonsensical a lot of the time. Still, there are some dos and don’ts prisoners
talk about. DO
Keep your head down. Be polite and respectful as much as possible. If you are picked on or attacked, fight back
even if you're the lamest fighter in the world. Develop an exercise routine. Study the lay of the land. Educate yourself when something is available. Choose your friends carefully. Maintain good personal hygiene. DON’T
Act tough. Now you’re nobody. Gamble. Take drugs. Borrow stuff, even if someone seems really
kind. Judge people. Steal. Stare. Talk to everyone about your crime. Fart, if you can help it. Snitch. 15. Sometimes inmates locked in their cells create
what are called biological projectile weapons. These are to spray officers with urine, feces
or even bile. Just in California at three prisons there
were 111 gassing attacks in 2017. In that state, you can get five years in segregation
for gassing an officer. 14. Prisoners sometimes use coded letters to get
messages to each other, which might look innocuous, but if you can decode the message, something
darker lurks between the words. In 2018, a letter sent from a prisoner to
the outside that didn’t say anything out of the ordinary, was an order to kill a staff
member in the Atlanta jail. You just had to read between the lines. Other times prisoners create their own ciphers,
with symbols designating a letter of the alphabet. A gang expert who specializes in breaking
codes said about this, “Not knowing what a code says can give us nightmares. We need to know what these gang codes say,
but sometimes we need to know ‘what they don't say’ even more.” 13. Perhaps one of the strangest things to happen
in a woman’s prison is someone gets pregnant when they have never had a conjugal visit,
i.e., a private visit with a lover or spouse. That happened in 2019. A woman had been behind bars for a year and
a half, waiting to be sentenced for a capital murder, when she had a baby. She’d been charged with being the getaway
driver when an elderly man was shot and killed. It later transpired that she’d somehow “conspired
to get pregnant” by sleeping with a male inmate working at the prison. News reports say she hoped having a new child
might sway the judge to grant her some leniency. This next one is heartbreaking. 12. The youngest person ever to sit on death row
was George Junius Stinney Jr. This African American boy was arrested in
June 1944, charged with killing two people. In June, he was executed in the electric chair. He was so small that a bible had to be propped
under him on the chair. The investigation was an absolute travesty
of justice, and the jury that sentenced him was all white. The grave he was buried in was unmarked. In 2014, the Civil Rights and Restorative
Justice Project, said this, “There is compelling evidence that George Stinney was innocent
of the crimes for which he was executed in 1944.” There wasn’t any substantial evidence to
support his guilt and his defense lawyer was less than useless. In fact, he had no support at all. It was a kid against the racist cops and indeed,
the racist justice system. The real murderer of Betty June Binnicker
and Mary Emma Thames got away. His conviction was overturned in 2014. 11. The oldest person executed was Walter Moody. He died by lethal injection in Alabama in
2018. He’d been convicted of killing a judge with
a mail bomb in 1989. 10. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate. That’s why it’s there, but often those
that go in, go in again. Officers sometimes call the prison gates a
revolving door. It’s hard to compare recidivism rates worldwide
because you have to choose certain years to conduct a study, and there is lots of data
from all over the world. The US National Institutes of Health did a
study, but the data was from different years regarding different countries. Nonetheless, it found that the percentage
of released prisoners that were arrested for another crime within two years in England
and Wales was 48 percent. In France, it was 40 percent. In Finland, it was 36 percent. In Norway, it was 20 percent. In Australia, it was 53 percent, and in the
US, it was 60 percent. 9. The US Supreme court in 2011 called California’s
recidivism rates “stratospherically high.” It was said then that a whopping 70 percent
of released prisoners in that state were back behind bars within three years. The state’s prisons were accused of not
rehabilitating but producing “additional criminal behavior.” That’s why prisons are sometimes called
“crime school”. It’s hard to fully understand why people
end up back in prison, but parole violations and habitual drug use, as well as falling
back into poverty and hopelessness, count for something. Critics have said US and other countries’
prisons focus a lot more on punishment rather than rehab, which is the opposite of the Norwegian
model. As you know, that country has very low recidivism
rates. Ok, we think you need to hear some good news. Well, it’s kind of positive. 8. A British guy named Stephen Akpabio-Klementowski
was locked up in England in 2002. While serving his 16-year sentence for drugs
offenses, he earned a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees. He had zero qualifications when he went in
and started with his GCSEs and A levels. That’s equivalent to junior and senior high
school. He worked in the kitchens all day and studied
on the toilet at night, where he said it was quiet. He told The Guardian, “Sometimes I wonder
how I did it. The idea that you can study in an environment
designed for punishment is ridiculous.” He said it wasn’t easy, studying in what
he described as a hellish place. “I still have nightmares, 10 years after
leaving. It’s a really damaging environment,” he
said. He’s now a lecturer and a regional manager
and spends a lot of time going back into prisons to help prisoners. While he did well locked up, he is still very
critical of British justice. He doesn’t believe prison acts as a deterrent
to crime. He said, “People aren’t being deterred
– the number of people in prison has increased by 69% over the past 30 years – and they’re
not being rehabilitated.” 7. Anthony Ray Hinton spent close to three decades
in isolation on death row in Alabama. He was exonerated in 2015. He’s since written an award-winning book,
“The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row” and was awarded an
honorary degree. Now you’ll hear about a man who’s more
locked up than anyone else. 6. The British man who’s spent the longest
time in prison is Robert Maudsley. He’s been locked away since 1974, but for
the last 25 years, he’s been in the worst prison cell in the whole of England. He killed three men while in prison, and one
of those murders earned him the name, “The British Hannibal the Cannibal.” It was a brutal murder, but not as bad as
those British tabloids made it out to be. Now he’s in a special cell which is underneath
the prison. It has thick doors with bulletproof glass. Even when you open those doors, he is actually
in a cage within the cell. He is allowed no contact at all with other
prisoners. He gets out once a day for an hour, but has
to have six guards around him at all times. They try not to make eye contact with him
or speak to him. He once said, “I am left to stagnate, vegetate
and to regress; left to confront my solitary head-on with people who have eyes but don't
see and who have ears but don't hear, who have mouths but don't speak.” Many people have called this inhumane. They know his story and feel sorry for him,
given his childhood and the nature of the offenses of the people he killed. We won’t go into details, but we think you
can work it out. He is possibly the most locked-up man in the
world. He once said, “I feel like I’m buried
alive.” The prison wouldn’t even allow him to have
a pet budgie. 5. The polar opposite of this is Bolivia’s
San Pedro prison. It’s more like a village than a prison. There are cells to rent, markets to shop in,
and even tourists can visit. Prisoners make cash by selling cocaine paste
to them. Wives and children can live with the prisoner. There’s also a prison hotel, a soccer pitch,
a few churches, and a hospital. Officers work there, but the prisoners themselves
ensure bad things don’t happen inside. If a prisoner does commit a crime, they are
disciplined in let’s say a very stern way. If they commit a serious violent crime, they
are likely dead soon after. 4. We think the biggest prison in the world has
to be Turkey’s Silivri Prison. It spans over 250 acres and is home to more
than 10,000 prisoners. Are Turkish prisons bad? Maybe they were in the 70s when 100s of US
citizens occupied them, mostly for smuggling that quality hashish they so loved. When Billy Hayes was a student. he was sent to one. He wrote a book on his release, and it became
the harrowing movie, Midnight Express. He actually escaped in the end. He also said the movie exaggerated a fair
few things. The next country’s prisons are bad, and
no one denies it. 3. One prison with lots of westerners serving
hard time within its walls is Bangkok’s Klong Prem prison. Many smugglers have lived there and felt what
it’s like to sleep with 60-odd men in a cell, packed like sardines. One man actually holds a record there to this
day. He’s a British guy named David McMillan,
a former big-time drug smuggler with a rather posh accent. He’s the only westerner ever to have escaped
the prison. In prisons such as this, if you have money,
you can live well. There’s a kind of anarchy in there and the
guards take a piece of everything. McMillan had a personal cook, someone to do
his laundry, and he had a cell with few people in it that had a TV. He even had a little office area. But when he heard that he would be transferred
to Bang Kwang Central Prison, aka, the Bangkok Hilton, he made a plan to escape. The Thais call this prison the Big Tiger,
because it eats men. Many that go in, die there. McMillan successfully escaped, but the funny
part is once he got to the street, he opened an umbrella he’d taken with him. When asked why he did that, he said, “escaping
prisoners don't carry umbrellas.” 2. One of the worst prison disasters we could
find happened in the US at Ohio state prison in 1930. There was a huge fire, except the guards wouldn’t
open the cell doors. One person described it like this:
“There was nothing to do but scream for God to open the doors. And when the doors didn't open, all that was
left was to stand still and let the fire burn the meat off and hope it wouldn't be too long
about it.” Some prisoners managed to overpower the guards,
but outside the cells, they were given orders to shoot to kill. One prisoner later said, “Naturally all
of those men were in there and hollering and screaming for help and some of the men was
praying and some of them was cussing and some of them were raving. It was a question to do what you could do
to help them.” 322 inmates died from the fire or smoke inhalation,
and another 230 had to be hospitalized. Ok, let’s finish on a positive note. 1. There’s a prison in Finland called Suomenlinna
Prison. The prison walls are actually just a small
fence. In the past it’s has problems with prisoners
not trying to break out, but people trying to sneak in. The cells are like nice dorm rooms, and the
shared kitchens have all the modern appliances you could ask for. Some prisoners are in for the most serious
offenses, but they go to this prison when their term is close to the end. It’s kind of like finishing school, the
halfway house before prisoners enter society at large. Still, they do their last few years there
even though they could easily just walk out. Why, you might wonder? A prison official said this, “The main idea
here is to prepare the inmates for release into the community. It doesn’t make sense for an inmate to be
in a closed prison for, say, six years and to suddenly enter civilian life. We also offer rehabilitation for people who
have had problems related to alcohol, drugs, or mental illness.” Now you need to watch, “50 Insane Facts
About North Korea You Didn't Know.” Or, have a look at...
