3. DANGEROUS CONTRABAND:
By: Lex Sectator
Tags: DIY, Crime, Prison, Prisoners, True Crime

3.1 Making, transferring or having possession of a firearm, knife, razor blade, bludgeon or other weapon, instrument, material or substance which is readily capable of causing or inducing fear of death or physical injury

You got caught with a knife, huh?

Major violation, 1 year in maximum security, 1–3 months generally below that. Possible state weapons charge, but they won’t give you more than about seven years for it. You can probably parole it in one or two, or get it run concurrent with your existing sentence and then it doesn’t matter at all. Well, if you had a significant sentence to begin with. If you didn’t, why the fuck did you have a knife?

Your best knife is made of 1/8th inch steel, the kind they make the bunk beds with. Someone makes themselves some strong string (or thin rope, depending how you want to see it) and coats it with sand so that it’s an abrasive. Gradually over time they manage to saw off a chunk of eigth-inch steel from a bunk, then they sharpen it by dragging it along concrete or cinderblock. Wrap some rags around the other end for a handle and voila, you have your premium knife.

This is tricky because at some point some guard might notice the chunk that’s been cut out of the bunk, but people definitely had those knives so someone was getting away with doing that. Generally knives are kept buried on the yard. Periodically guards sweep the yard with metal detectors looking for them, but inmates do all the landscaping and have nothing but time to plan. Bury them deep, or bury them next to something metal (e.g., any structure with rebar in it) so the detector’s expected to go off.

There are a few other ways to make a good or good-ish knife. There are various machine shops around that someone can make a knife out of scrap metal in. Structures are made of rebar and are often crumbling, and rebar can be made into a knife but it’s gonna come back kind of like an ice-pick; less likely to have an edge, more likely a good point. Usually you’re gonna be using the knife for stabbing anyway, not cutting, so it doesn’t matter too much. Fencing makes a pretty decent ice pick knife, just unravel about six to ten inches of your standard steel cyclone fence and sharpen the end.

There’s something called a stinger that they still sell to inmates last I knew. It’s a small heater coil for boiling water. You can straighten it and make it into a knife. You can make a knife out of a lighter by melting the plastic into a block and then putting an edge on it. You can make a knife out of a plastic tray similarly. Plastic hangars, too. Safety glass. You can make a knife by breaking down the razor blades we used for shaving and melting something around it as a handle. You can’t really use toothbrushes for this any more, because the toothbrushes they give you in prison now are only a couple of inches long.

Since a loose razor blade from a safety razor alone qualifies you for this violation, you can get in trouble because someone sometime in the past left a tiny razor blade hidden in an air vent or between the steel parts of your bunk bed. You can frame someone this way too; they’re tiny and concealable, and you can just toss one into someone’s cell or behind a table or locker and then tell the cops it’s there so they’ll find it. Instant consequences. If you’re high profile and this happens to you, it’s entirely likely that some guard will go tell the media about it as soon as shift change happens.

Nobody remembers this now, but someone who has since been exonerated for the murder he was in prison for had that happen to him. I think the year he spent in solitary for a razor blade he couldn’t have known was there might’ve increased the settlement he got when he sued the city for framing him. If you’re not him and you’re rightfully convicted, being wrongfully thrown in the hole for a razor blade you didn’t know about isn’t considered a meaningful a violation of your rights, though.

Other weapons are novelties. I knew a couple of old convicts who said they had guns hidden at one of the old prisons before it closed. I knew someone who tried to have a guard who’d been smuggling drugs for him smuggle in a gun, but when the guard saw the latest package had a gun in it he panicked and turned himself in rather than bring a firearm in to a gaggle of convicted murderers with life sentences.

You can make a spear or a billy club out of newspaper. Think of it as papier mache. I know how to do this but didn’t know anyone who had actually gone to the trouble, they just kept knives.

This is what it was like when I was in: a few people had knives, and they kept them hidden generally, or they made them as they needed them to use but didn’t generally hold them and especially didn’t carry them. Nobody really carried them unless they were on their way to stab someone, and they tried to have them hidden so well they’d never be found, which usually meant they were buried.

More than a decade or two ago, apparently everyone had knives. People I know said they kept them in their belts, their shoes. Boone, who you might remember from such hits as “FIFTEEN YEARS LATER”, broke his regimen down like this. He’d fight you for small points of pride or for no reason at all, just because. If there was a serious problem that came up by surprise, that was what the medium-sized knife he wore on a string around his neck was for. If it didn’t come up by surprise, he had a tomahawk made of sheet metal he could go get to kill you with. And he had a third, thin knife for wrapping in his towel to go to the shower.

Was he extreme? Slightly, but not very. Oh, and there was one guy (nickname Mountain, have no idea his real name and cannot look him up) who held the knives for a lot of the white guys at the old good prison. So, if you were one of the dudes who didn’t carry a knife and you wanted one you could just go get one from him. The only snag is apparently he loved drama, so he’d give you a knife but he’d also get really hyped up and ask if he could come with you. He didn’t even have to know who you were stabbing or why.

Mountain’s in solitary confinement and not allowed to have a cellmate until he dies, nowadays. He was before I even started doing prison time. He’s a weird legend, extreme and blatantly psychopathic even for prison, even when prison was much more violent than it is now. We’ll meet him again when we get to rule 5, HOSTAGE/RESTRAINT.