It’s eerily quiet on the cell block and
the doors that morning haven’t been opened as they usually would be. Suddenly the inmates hear the thudding of
footsteps – it’s a shakedown. Some inmates frantically search for the best
hiding places to put their contraband. One of the guards shouts to the prisoners
with an offer…give us the contraband before we find it and you won’t get charged. “Yeah, right,” think most of the men who’ve
spent a few years in prison. There’ll be no amnesty, or at least in the
past some guards didn’t make good on their promise. One particular inmate has a lot to fear. As the guards approach his cell he tries his
darndest to fit half a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum into a small wall crevice
behind the wash basin. He’s in a lot of trouble if they find that
stuff. Like most people you might wonder why prisoners
could get into so much trouble for having some harmless chewing gum. In this case the prisoner – let’s call
him Bill after the founder of Wrigley’s gum – had no intention of just chewing that
stuff merely for enjoyment’s sake. Bill wasn’t concerned about his bad breath,
and he wasn’t a gum chewer because he was suffering from stress… or had a bad habit
of grinding his teeth. What Bill really wanted to do with that gum
was make an impression of a key he thought he could steal and later return. You see, once you have that impression you
have a good chance of replicating the key, and in prison you could say keys are the last
things prison staff want prisoners to get their hands on. Another thing gum can be used for is jamming
door locks, which could be a huge problem for officers when an inmate is intent on self-harming
or causing some serious facial damage to another inmate. Those are the two main reasons that chewing
gum in prison is banned. Now let’s have a look at some other everyday
items that are usually verboten in the penitentiary. Some of them we’re sure will come as a surprise
to you…well…unless you’ve been around the prison blocks yourself. A lot of prisoners pass the time by sketching
or writing diaries or perhaps writing the next great American crime novel, and while
paper is for the most part allowed, one thing prisoners can’t have are Spiral-bound notebooks…you
know, those ones with the rings holding the thing together. You might automatically think that the reason
is because the metal rings can be fashioned into weapons, and you’d be right, but there’s
another reason. That’s because if a prisoner has some smarts
he or she might be able to pick a lock with a device made from those rings. The next one from what we can see only applies
to prisoners in England and Wales. This rule was only introduced in 2013. Some prisoners over there can get through
many hours enclosed within those prison walls by watching movies. There’s not always good movies on TV and
so prisoners might have the choice to watch DVDS. Ok, that’s good for them, and if they want,
they might even re-watch old prison escape movies such as “The Great Escape” or “The
Shawshank Redemption.” But, there’s one kind of DVD they cannot
have and those are movies that have an R-rating. You might think that sounds pretty stupid
when a lot of those men have actually lived R-rated lives, but the back in ’13 the Justice
Secretary said he no longer wanted inmates watching violent movies or films that depict
too clearly how babies are made. Back to the U.S. and censorship there is also
alive and well, but this time we are talking about various books being banned in certain
states. Texas has banned 12,000 books in its prisons,
with some of those being classics written by the likes of William Shakespeare and the
man that penned “Big Brother is Watching”, George Orwell. For a while in Colorado’s prisons you couldn’t
even get their hands on Barack Obama’s two memoirs, because the state said they were,
“potentially detrimental to national security.” That decision was later reversed, but a lot
of activists in the U.S. still say book banning in prisons on such a wide scale defies logic. One of the most popular books in U.S. prisons
and other prisons around the world is called, “The 48 Laws of Power.” In a dog eat dog environment, this could be
said to be essential reading – ask the rapper 50 Cent. It became so popular that a bunch of U.S.
prisons have now banned it. Moving on, getting a good night’s sleep
in prison can be hard because of the noise but also because of the lights. One thing you’d think is that the prison
commissary would sell is sleep masks, but if they aren’t available in the prison store
then technically they are classed as contraband. We found one prisoner whose hustle was making
prison masks, but he was in fact breaking the rules. It seems that earplugs are usually available,
so at least an inmate can block out the noise. As for the next one, some of you will immediately
know why it’s considered contraband while our more innocent viewers may have to think
about it. In prison you’re not allowed to store any
of your bodily fluids, and that goes for ALL fluids that can possibly come out of your
body. We don’t think we need to go into too much
detail. It doesn’t matter if some prisoners have
adopted an alternative health kind of lifestyle and have decided to imbibe their own urine,
you just can’t keep that stuff. The reason is, some crazed or aggrieved inmates
might fashion some kind of squirting device and fire the liquid at the guards. This is something prisoners refer to as “gassing.” One big pain in the exterior for a lot of
prisoners is the fact they are not allowed to take lists into prisons of addresses and
telephone numbers. Some prisoners will just have to remember
the important numbers and addresses and then write them down on the paper they are given. In time they can get more numbers and addresses
from people they call or write to. We found one guy that wrote his numbers down
in a bible he’d been given, but in some prisons you’re only allowed a certain kind
of bible – the soft kind. It differs from prison to prison, but in some
places you might only be able to order a certain number of books, and those books might have
to be softbacks. The reason for this is that those large, hard
backs might make a good hiding place for a prison knife, and while hiding a shank in
the spine of a bible might seem immoral, it’s been done before. Another reason is a thousand-page encyclopedia
with a rigid hard back would hurt a bit if you were hit over the head with it. Sometimes prisoners accidentally find themselves
with contraband and that might be because they have been sent some legal paperwork from
their attorneys. There have actually been cases of prisoners
getting into trouble for having staples and paperclips that were part of a package sent
by an attorney. A staple or two might not make a good weapon,
but one thing staples are good for is making tattoo needles. As for paperclips, those harmless things if
used correctly can help a man to get out of his handcuffs. Basically, anything metal and pointy is not
allowed in prison mainly because it can be used to puncture things or unlock things. You should also know that prisoners can’t
just store lots of certain items. Sure, there are hoarders in prison, but those
guys often find themselves on the wrong side of the guards. It could be something as harmless as toilet
paper, but if you have enough of that stuff and a lot of time on your hands you could
harden it until it became something known as the “toilet paper shank.” This is also the reason prisoners might not
be allowed to have full-length pencils, because they can be used to put a hole in a person. What prisoners are usually given are short
pencils referred to as golf pencils. It depends which prison you are in and what
kind of security unit you are housed in, but often all a prisoner will have to write with
is one of those golf pencils. This is a real pain for some prisoners who
write a lot, and they have been known to modify them and make them longer. Sticking with pencils, if you add enough water
to the graphite you can make something to put on your face. In women’s prisons believe it or not makeup
might be available to buy at the commissary, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes women or men who like to wear makeup
can use the shells of M&Ms and mix them with water. Once a prisoner has the candy and has the
palette, all kinds of colors can be made. While this is hardly the crime of the century,
once those candy shells become makeup they are contraband. As for jewelry in federal prisons in the U.S.,
you can wear wedding rings without stones or engravings in them, and you can get away
with a necklace if it has a religious medallion connected to it, but any jewelry shouldn’t
have a value of over $100. People have actually been killed with jewelry
and if it’s worth too much someone might kill you for it. In 2010 in one U.S. prison an inmate asked
another inmate to try on his religious necklace… after which he strangled him with it. In one prison handbook we found that this
was against the rules: “Manufacturing of dice, dominos, chess sets, cards, or any other
form of games.” Ok, it’s against the rules, but it happens. Prison wouldn’t be prison if inmates didn’t
have dice that they had made out of toilet paper, and some prisoners have been known
to take the time to create an entire chess set. It’s not easy to do, but one prisoner said
he had making such things down to a fine art, and he had a template since when his cell
was shaken down he always lost his instruments for game-playing. He said sometimes things needed to be stuck
together, which wasn’t always easy in prison because glue is hard to come by. There is always an alternative though since
the stickers on shampoo bottles and toothpaste can be used as an adherent. A lot of games are banned simply because they
can lead to gambling. Gambling can lead to sore losers and also
to prison debt, and in turn that can lead to fighting and at the very worst, death. It all depends on where you are and who’s
guarding you, but some staff will turn a blind eye to such activities. If there is a shakedown, well, blind eyes
are not usually turned in those circumstances. We found one prisoner who said while incarcerated
he and other inmates would go to great lengths to create the tools needed to play Dungeons
and Dragons. In the day room you’d find an Aryan brotherhood
table, and a Mexican mafia table, and close by you’d find the Dungeons and Dragons guys. The guards would mostly allow them to play,
but he said the problem was when a newer guard would find an elaborate game map they’d
created and automatically think it was an escape route from the prison. When that happened things turned a little
serious. On one such occasion a young guard was about
to confiscate the map when an older guard approached him and said, “Don’t worry. That’s no escape plan, it’s a Dungeons
and Dragons map.” In response to that, the younger guy just
called him a “nerd.” Ok, so this last one is hardly a household
item unless you include humans being “items.” We found in some prisons when inmates have
gotten lonely they have created…hmmm…how do we say this…they have created a partner,
someone to hold and to love and to cherish during those long hours locked up. Homemade lovers are not on the list of allowed
items, though, and so if you get caught with one you could find yourself having to explain
it to the guards. Now you know what you aren’t allowed to
have in prison, take a look at these shows and imagine how you would survive prison. We present to you, Hell on Earth, in “What
Happens In The H Unit At Federal Supermax Prison?” and "I Spent My Whole Life In Prison".
