When people are forced to go without, they get creative. In prison, where inmates are prohibited from owning a laundry list of items for various reasons, they come up with some pretty artful facsimiles. And when they need money for their commissary accounts, the really entrepreneurial ones have someone on the outside sell their creations online.
Materials: Bread and oatmeal
Made by a U.S. prisoner, location unknown. Sold on eBay. Gambling is, for obvious reasons, against the rules in prison, so inmates make their own supplies from scratch. Most jailhouse dice are made from toilet paper that is soaked in water, shaped into cubes, and dried, after which the pips are drawn on with a marker. However, doing it that way gives the dice an unnaturally light feel in the hand. These dice, formed from wet bread and oatmeal left to dry and harden, have a nice, solid heft to them.
Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
Ship in a Light Bulb
Materials: Bulb; wood; paper clip; magic marker.
Made by a Texas prisoner, sold for him by a family friend on eBay to get commissary money for snacks and toiletries.
“That ship in the bulb is the sum total of a wasted life,” the seller told me. “He was acting like a fool and killed a man. He was 17 at the time and will be 47 before he comes up for parole. 30 years of making ships in a bulb. Very sad.”
Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
Materials: Piece of a cardboard box, paper clip, rubber bands, inside unknown.
Made by a California state prisoner and sold on eBay by his mother for commissary money. The mom did time for growing marijuana in her home, and now the son is doing time for an unspecified drug crime. She also sells artwork made by her son’s friends on the inside.
Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
Materials: Cardboard, wood, electrical tape, drywall screw
The words “shank” and “shiv” are often used interchangeably. However, those who split hairs about such things would argue that a shiv is for slicing and a shank is for stabbing, making this jailhouse weapon a shank. It’s hard to imagine anyone smuggling something like this out of a prison, but the seller — the California convict’s mom selling this stuff on eBay — guaranteed its provenance (though she refused to provide identifying details that could get her son in trouble with the guards).
Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
Materials: Playing card, a piece of wire, two AA batteries
Made by an inmate in Chino State Prison from a nine of diamonds, known as the “Curse of Scotland” and historically considered to be the unluckiest card in the deck. Referred to as a “stinger” by inmates and staff and the protection it offers against shocking oneself is nil. Obtained from a prison employee, sold on eBay for commissary money. (It’s worth mentioning that smoking has been banned in California prisons since 2005.)
Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
Materials: Tooled leather, plastic lacing, white paint
Prison can be a spectacularly boring place, and many institutions offer programs that inmates can use to pass the time. This lighter case — a redundant object in all aspects, really — was made by a North Dakota convict in his leatherworking class. The debossed, slightly misshapen Playboy bunny on the front of the case is filled in with either white paint or correction fluid (one of the last surviving typewriter markets happens to be prisons, where inmates are forbidden from accessing the Internet). The lighter was sold on eBay by an inmate’s friend on the outside.
Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
