So you've been nicked. Your life on the lamb is over, and you're
finally going to pay for your evil ways. On the first day of your court case you were
judged so evil and vile that the jury decided they didn't even want to hear any further
evidence, and now you've been sentenced to a life sentence in prison. Life in prison really cramps up your plans
though, and you've decided that you'd rather not sit in prison until you die. How are you going to get out of this one? Hello and welcome to another episode of The
Infographics Show- today we're going to show you how to escape from prison. To help us with this episode we've gotten
the expert advice of an actual working prison guard with the Nevada Corrections Department,
because who best to teach you how to break out of prison then one of the guys who's job
is to make sure you don't. Before we begin he gives us this piece of
sage advice, when it comes to breaking out of prison his advice is: don't. You won't succeed, and in the incredibly low
chance that you actually do, you'll be very quickly re-apprehended. Of all the escaped convicts in the last sixty
years in America, there exists less than a dozen who've managed to remain free. Not only are you probably not going to succeed,
you're only going to add more time to your sentence, ruin your chance for parole, or
if already serving a life sentence, be locked up in solitary for months, maybe even years
at a time. Our prison guard expert tells us that solitary
should be enough of a threat to anyone, he's seen the biggest, baddest inmates break down
into a sobbing mess after just a few weeks locked up all alone for twenty three hours
a day. If you think solitary is a joke, consider
that you'll be locked up all day and all night long with bright lighting that never dims,
a single blanket to cover yourself with, extremely restricted personal materials to include two
or three books and a pad of paper to write with, and almost no phone calls or family
visits. We're going to go ahead and disregard our
expert's advice and plot our prison escape anyways though, because if Jenny McCarthy
can convince us all not to vaccinate our kids, we don't need any expert telling us what we
should or shouldn't do! Prison escape strategy 1: Fake gun John Dillinger was one of America's most notorious
bank robbers, and at one point he was famously locked up in a jail which the local Sheriff
had bragged was escape-proof. This was after Dillinger had escaped from
a previous jail, so the Sheriff had posted extra guards just to make sure there would
not be a repeat. Yet while the guards were on the lookout for
threats from the outside- last prison escape Dillinger had been busted out by friends-
Dillinger was working on an internal plot to earn his freedom. Sources differ, but most agree that Dillinger
used a wooden gun that he had carved from a block of wood and then painted black with
shoe polish in order to force his way out of his cell. Then he seized a submachine gun and armed
with a real weapon, went on to steal the Sheriff's car and drive himself to freedom. Other sources claim the gun was made from
a potato, while even others say that the fake gun was actually smuggled in by one of his
attorneys. So what does our expert say about fashioning
a fake weapon in order to escape with? First, he doubts that Dillinger fashioned
the weapon himself, asking: what are the odds Dillinger was a skilled enough craftsman to
make a believable gun from a block of wood? He suspects that the fake gun was smuggled
in, but then wonders why not just give him a real gun? There were no metal detectors in jails or
prison back then, so the only reason he can think of is that perhaps the attorney believed
he would get in less trouble if discovered with a fake gun. On the prospect of doing this today though,
our expert is extremely skeptical. First of all, very few prison guards are actually
armed, and those that are carry rifles and are separated from the general population. Guards may carry sidearms but only when escorting
a prisoner outside of the prison grounds. So if you were to believably fashion a gun
for yourself, you'd have to make sure it looked exactly like a 9 millimeter Beretta or a .45
caliber pistol, which would require a pretty well developed artistic talent to make it
look real. Dillinger got off easy as he likely just recreated
a .38 special, a small and relatively easy gun to recreate. The second problem you'd face is acquiring
the materials and tools in the first place. Inmates are regularly searched for contraband,
as are their cells, and making an accurate looking modern pistol is going to take a long
time. While things such as shanks are typically
easy to hide because of their general shape, a pistol is altogether a different matter
and will stick out like a sore thumb. There's also the fact that shanks tend to
be very crudely made, because it's difficult to find good materials to work with, but your
pistol will have to pass the smell test in front of a guard who's been trained to handle
one their entire life. Our expert doesn't buy the fake pistol strategy,
but does point out that if Dillinger made the gun himself, he likely carved it out of
a potato, as that would be easier to get a hold of and work with. Prison escape strategy 2: tunnel out of cell
and paddle to safety Our next strategy comes straight from the
annals of criminal history. On June 11, 1962, Alcatraz inmates Frank Lee
Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin managed the impossible, escaping from what
was thought to be the most inescapable prison in America. The trio used handmade tools to dig a tunnel
through their cell walls over the course of a year, and from there managed to get into
a ventilation shaft and reach the roof. Once there they climbed down and scaled a
fence, then assembled a raft that they had made out of raincoats and rubber cement that
they had stolen. Pumping the raft up with a modified accordion,
the men took off into the icy waters of the San Francisco Bay and into the pages of history. So, all you have to do is tunnel through your
cell's walls to hit an access corridor or ventilation shaft and then ride a homemade
raft to sweet, sweet freedom- or more than likely an icy death. What does our expert say? First our expert points out that Alcatraz
used to be an old military fort, and was not designed to be an actual prison, just converted
to one. This meant that there were several vulnerabilities
to the facility that inmates could have used to escape, and this included the weak cement
around the cell ventilation shafts. Modern prisons however are built from the
ground up to be escape proof, with each cell often being pre-fabricated as a single solid
steel enclosure with small openings for attaching water and ventilation pipes. Modern ventilation pipes however are just
a few inches, and impossible for a man to squeeze through. Enclosed by a steel shell, you won't be tunneling
your way through anything without the aid of some heavy duty power tools, let alone
the homemade picks that the Alcatraz trio had fashioned. Then there's also the fact that regular inspections
check each cell for any signs of tampering, not just contraband, so you can forget the
Shawshank fantasy of hiding your escape tunnel behind a poster on the wall. As far as fashioning an entire raft and lifejackets
from stolen materials, our expert tells us that that's actually the most achievable part
of this prison escape plan. Inmates are incredibly sneaky and incredibly
patient, and with enough time and patience it's remarkable how much raw material you
can get your hands on if you just steal a few scraps at a time. Finding a place to actually hide all that
contraband inside your modern, ultra-sleek prison cell though is a different matter altogether. Sadly, it seems that this escape plan is dead
on arrival in the modern age. Prison escape plan 3: Fake It Till You Make
It In 1971 notorious con man Frank Abagnale,
of Catch Me If You Can fame, managed to con his way out of jail. Upon being transferred to the Federal Detention
Center in Atlanta, Georgia in 1971, Frank discovered that the US Marshall assigned to
him had forgotten his detention commitment papers as they arrived. Taking advantage of the confusion caused by
the lack of documentation, Frank was able to convince local guards that the reason the
papers were missing was because he was actually a prison inspector and not a prisoner. He did this with the help of an outside accomplice
who pretended to be a federal agent, yet Frank didn't immediately try to get the guards to
let him out, but rather grew their confidence by dragging out the con for weeks, pretending
to be gathering intelligence on the prison and its operations. Then he finally earned enough of the guard's
trust that they actually allowed him to meet his accomplice outside of the prison walls
inside a parked car, and from there, Frank disappeared. So forget tunneling or making fake guns, let's
try some diplomacy and smooth talking. What does our expert say about this plan? This one is the most realistic of our prison
escape plans, he says. People can be incredibly gullible, even prison
staff, and some inmates can be incredibly charming or persuasive. Then there's also the fact that most ground-floor
prison staff simply isn't privy to big overarching administrative operations, such as the insertion
of an undercover agent posing as a prisoner- which does happen from time to time but typically
in order to monitor or bust up gang activity. So our expert tells us that the odds of fooling
prison guards into believing you are actually an undercover agent is pretty high if you're
a smooth enough talker, let alone if you have outside help to verify it. However, back in the day the prison system
was pretty patchwork and each prison acted largely independently, without much communication
between them and certainly not with the federal government. Since then though the prison system has become
deeply entangled bureaucratically, and the invention of the internet lets wardens be
in constant and easy communication with any federal agency. Trying to pull this stunt in the modern age
is simply impossible, as not only would a prison warden be notified of any undercover
agents inserted into his prison, but even if he wasn't verifying the credentials of
a possible agent would be as easy as sending an email. Unless your outside contact works directly
with the FBI or other major government organization, convincing a warden in the modern age that
you're an undercover agent is next to impossible. There's just too many ways to disprove your
story. It turns out escaping from a modern prison
is way harder than we thought, and though we thought we could outsmart the man and bust
you out of jail, it looks like you're stuck serving your full sentence. As our expert tells us, the best way to bust
out of prison is to simply never get sent to it in the first place, or to have a really,
really good lawyer. But as far as getting out on your own, it's
just not gonna happen, though he does admit that it still happens from time to time. Each time though federal agents coordinate
with state agents to discuss the specific escape strategy that the last inmate or inmates
used, and then work to close those loopholes at their facilities. So each time someone successfully escapes,
they make it that much harder for the next guy. Sorry, but it looks like you're on your own
for this one. Just don't drop the soap. How would you try to escape prison? Also, be sure to check out our other video
What The Last 24 Hours of Death Row Prisoner Look Like . Thanks for watching, and as always,
don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
