Prison…the final frontier for some folks,
and a very bad gap year for others.
What happens inside those prison walls often
stays within those walls, but the horrors
and harsh facts do creep out from time to
time.
We sent our intrepid team of researchers out
to find the craziest things that have happened
and are happening inside prisons, and what
they came back with blew our minds.
Welcome to the insane world of the penitentiary.
50.
It’s a fact that anyone who goes to prison
has a higher chance of dying than people on
the outside, a 50 percent higher chance.
And think about it for a second, aren’t
there more ways to die on the outside?
Maybe, but prisoners in some lockups face
mistreatment by guards and the wrath of other
inmates on a daily basis.
There are also the issues of poor nutrition,
not great healthcare packages, stress, and
depression.
49.
It’s well known that the USA locks up more
people per capita than any other country,
but did you know that in 2019 a staggering
2.3 million Americans were doing time.
Over a fifth of the entire world’s prison
population is in the USA.
48.
Some other countries also seem to enjoy putting
a lot of people in prison.
After the U.S., next on the list for the most
prisoners per 100,000 is El Salvador.
After that country comes Turkmenistan.
47.
An investigation in 2014 found that the portions
of food were so small at Gordon County Jail
in Calhoun, Georgia, that some prisoners resorted
to eating toothpaste.
46.
He’s a sadist to some and a savior to others,
but one thing’s for sure and that’s the
fact that Sheriff Joe Arpaio is proud of how
little to eat he gives his prisoners in Arizona.
He gleefully wrote in his biography that his
15-40 cent prisoner meals were the cheapest
meals in America.
45.
We can tell you that this one blew us away,
and that’s the fact that there are more
jails in the U.S. than there are colleges.
44.
In 2013 in California around 10,000 people
were released early, but not for good behavior.
They were let out because prisons in the state
were overcrowded.
But here’s the punchline, some people doing
time for violent offenses came out, when folks
convicted of nonviolent drug offenses went
in.
43.
Those people serving time for non-violent
drug offenses make up about half the U.S.’s
federal prison population.
Those offenses are the reason the prison population
has quadrupled since the early 1980s.
42.
Brazilian prisons were getting so full the
country said enough is enough, let’s come
up with a way to reduce the number of people
doing time.
The government introduced the “Redemption
through Reading” program which meant that
prisoners could get up to 48 days off their
sentence if they read a book.
We know what you’re thinking, that lots
of prisoners could just cheat and skim the
book.
Well, that wasn’t possible because each
prisoner had to write a comprehensive book
report.
This initiative worked in two ways, because
the books were giving the prisoners an education
as well as an early release date.
41.
An American guy named Richard Lee McNair escaped
prison a whopping three times, and he got
pretty creative about how he did it.
In 2006, he actually got into a crate and
mailed himself out of prison.
It didn’t end well for this guy since he’s
now doing time in the maximum security facility
ADX Florence.
40.
The Aryan Brotherhood gang in the U.S. is
bloodthirsty to say the least.
At one point they were responsible for something
like 18-25% of homicides that took place inside
federal prisons.
This gang was founded back in 1964 by a bunch
of Irish-American bikers and right now there
are about 20,000 of them serving time in prisons.
If you want to know how these guys think listen
to this bit of their pledge:
“An Aryan brother is without a care.
He walks where the weak and heartless won’t
dare.
And if by chance he should stumble and lose
control, his brothers will be there to help
reach his goal.”
39.
In 1971 a guy named Joel Kaplan was sitting
in cell 10 of the Santa Maria Acatitla prison
in Mexico City when a helicopter noisily landed
in the prison yard.
The guards thought some dignitary from the
government had come to visit, but Joel knew
better.
Some guys came out of the helicopter, collected
Joel, and then flew him out of the prison.
This story gets much weirder since after Joel
made his way back to the USA he claimed that
what he had done was entirely legal.
He said no one got hurt and even the helicopter
was paid for and met FAA standards.
The Mexican authorities might have disagreed
with that, but they never asked for extradition.
38.
Oklahoma can be proud of being the prison
capital of the world.
In this state there are 1,079 prisoners for
every 100,000 people.
That might not mean much to you, so consider
the fact that in the country of Germany there
are 78 people locked up in every 100,000.
37.
Here’s the very sad story about a man named
Jonathan Magbie.
When he was just four years old he was hit
by a car and after that was paralyzed from
the neck down.
Since he couldn’t use his body, a nurse
had to care for him and she basically was
at his side each and every day.
But get this, Jonathan smoked weed now and
again because that helped with his condition.
The cops didn’t much like that, and when
Jonathan was 27 he was jailed for 10 days
for marijuana possession.
If that’s not bad enough, his carers told
officials that this guy needed constant care
and he needed a ventilator, which he didn’t
get when he was behind bars.
The awful end to this story is that Jonathan
died on his fourth day in jail.
By serving and protecting him, they killed
him.
Yep, we are guessing that you think we haven’t
found more insane stories than that…well,
you’d be wrong.
It’s going to get worse.
36.
There is a woman in Thailand who holds the
record for being sentenced to the most time
for a female criminal.
Her name is Chamoy Thipyaso and after being
found guilty of ripping off thousands of Thais
in a pyramid scheme she was handed down 141,078
years.
Hmm, you might wonder, is there any chance
this woman could do the time?
Well, it turned out that she only ended up
serving eight of those years.
35.
Here at the Infographics Show we like nothing
more than to tell you stories about the infamous
Alcatraz prison, “The Rock” as it was
fondly known.
Back in the day, when The Rock was home to
the likes of Al Capone and other criminals
the U.S. didn’t want to escape, the prison
had a policy to give every prisoner the availability
of hot showers.
Wow, you might now be thinking, how humanitarian
of the authorities.
Well, a bleeding heart is not the reason those
prisoners got hot steamy showers.
The reasoning was that if they enjoyed hot
water showers they’d more easily freeze
to death if they tried to escape and swam
in the cold waters of San Francisco Bay.
34.
There once was a man named Troy Leon Gregg
and he committed the heinous crime of murdering
two people.
He was eventually arrested for that and told
that he was going to get the death penalty.
Fast forward to 1980 and death row at Georgia
State Prison.
On a warm July night Troy and some other guys
made American history when they escaped from
death row.
The thing is, Troy’s freedom didn’t last
long.
One of the things he did on his first night
was to go to a bar, but there he got into
a fight with a biker and was beaten to death.
As for those other escapees, they were all
eventually caught and sent back to prison.
33.
In 2019 the Netherlands was having a problem
that the U.S. hasn’t experienced for a long
time.
That was the fact that the crime rate was
so low it had to start closing down lots of
its prisons.
32.
In 1992 there was riot at Carandiru Penitentiary
in Brazil after a fight in a soccer game got
out of hand.
The military police were called because the
15 guards had no chance of controlling the
more than 2000 prisoners.
What happened next has simply been called
a massacre, and that’s because those cops
just started shooting anyone they saw, even
if the prisoners were surrendering.
This resulted in the death of 111 prisoners...
and not even one injury to a cop.
In 2013, for their actions that day, 23 of
those cops were sentenced to a total of 156
years.
31.
This is the story about an esteemed cancer
doctor named Chester Milton Southam.
Much of Chester’s life was concerned with
finding a cure for this terrible disease,
but you could say this man might have skipped
some of his ethic’s classes.
That’s because old Chester injected cancer
cells into prisoners at Ohio Penitentiary.
Did he get the prisoners consent before he
did this, you might wonder, and the short
answer is, like hell he did.
Don’t worry, his ethics or lack thereof
were later criticised.
30.
We’ll stick with this Ohio prison and tell
you that in 1930 a terrible fire raged through
the building, and you can only imagine the
terror of that happening when you are locked
in a cell.
The guards didn’t even unlock the doors…those
guys were so fearful of what might happen
to them.
There’s both a happy and sad ending to this
story because even though 322 inmates died
in the fire, many more escaped after some
inmates overpowered the guards and started
running around opening doors.
29.
We just know you’re going to think we are
making things up now, but we can assure you
that this is 100 percent the truth.
In Canada they have a polar bear jail.
Yep, you heard that right.
When those great beasts start causing trouble
up in Churchill, Manitoba, they get sent to
the “Polar Bear Holding Facility.”
The bears do anything from two to thirty days
behind bars and then get relocated to the
wild.
If you’re thinking that no bears actually
serve time, then think again, because lately
the 20 cell facility had to add on another
eight cells.
The polar bear crime rate has skyrocketed
of late because of what you might call poverty
in their natural environment.
28.
Louisiana State Penitentiary has sometimes
been called “The Alcatraz of the South”
and even worse, “The Bloodiest Prison in
America.”
Back in the day it was a hellhole and that’s
no exaggeration.
At one point one in every ten prisoners had
a stab wound and if a knife didn’t get them
then harsh work would.
Things got so bad in the 1950s that 31 inmates
completely slashed their Achilles' tendons
just to bring some attention to the injustices
they were suffering.
We’d like to tell you that things got better,
although just recently the place has been
in headlines for its corrupt guards.
27.
When Hurricane Katrina happened you’d think
that prisoners in New Orleans would have been
taken from their cells.
That’s what should have happened, but in
actuality hundreds of prisoners were left
up to their necks in water in their cells
without food or water.
The inmates were eventually evacuated after
a few days, but they let it be known that
when things got bad the correctional officers
just left the facility.
26.
In the 1980s a British drug-smuggler David
McMillan almost escaped from Melbourne's high-security
Pentridge Prison by helicopter, but that plan
didn’t exactly work out for him.
You just can’t hold a bad man down, and
years later McMillian would find himself locked
up in Thailand’s notorious Klong Prem Central
Prison.
Things were looking bad for the smuggler and
he knew he had to get out, but how to do that
when not one person had ever escaped from
that place.
Well, this guy had one thing on his side and
that’s the fact he was very smart.
He became the first man ever to escape that
prison, and you know what he credits for his
successful escape?
An umbrella.
That’s right, he later said he walked off
with an umbrella simply for the fact that
”escapees don’t carry umbrellas.”
25.
There’s a place sometimes called the “Most
Notorious Medieval Prison in the World”
and that was, “The Clink.”
This English prison was opened in 1144 and
you might say doing time there wasn’t a
walk in the park.
Some prisoners got 24 hour a day solitary
confinement and a diet that consisted of bread
and water.
Quite a few of them experienced that and then
could look forward to being burned at the
stake.
24.
If you think you’ve seen some bad overcrowding
in prisons then you have to see the leaked
security footage that came from a jail in
Thailand in 2019.
We can’t tell you exactly how many guys
there were in the cell, but it could be something
like 80 or even 100.
The only way you could get more people in
that cell would be if you started piling the
bodies on top of each other.
23.
In the 1800s a British man was sent to Australia
on a transport ship to serve time on a penal
colony.
There he got the name of Moondyne Joe.
He turned to crime again committing robberies
and then hiding out in the bush, and for that
the authorities hated him.
His luck ran out when he was caught and this
time the authorities made sure he wasn’t
going to escape.
He had to serve his sentence in a nice pair
of leg irons, but Moondyne Joe still managed
to escape.
His plan now was to walk through that bushland
and virtually cross Australia, but the cops
once again got their man.
Ok, so they had him and this time he definitely
wasn’t going to escape because the warden
had built a cell especially for Joe.
It was basically a concrete box, so how could
Joe get out of that?
The local governor even said to him, “If
you get out again, I'll forgive you.”
Guess what?
He got out.
Joe made a hole in one of the walls and off
he went into the sunset.
After that he tried not to commit any more
crimes, but after a few years he started robbing
again.
He was captured again of course, but that
governor was true to his word and had Joe
removed from prison.
22.
You could say that no one on this planet has
been as adept at escaping from prison as Moondyne
Joe, but that’s when a Japanese man named
Yoshie Shiratori steps up and says, “Hold
my beer.”
Shiratori is famous for four successful prison
escapes.
21.
Back in the 1960s one guy whose name you saw
a lot was Timothy Leary, and that’s because
he became a kind of guru in the hippie counter-culture.
Leary believed that psychedelic drugs held
powers that could help mankind, and he wanted
to prove it.
He got his chance when he took part in something
called the “Concord Prison Experiment.”
This involved Leary giving consenting prisoners
doses of psilocybin, aka, magic mushrooms.
The question was, would those guys who did
the mushrooms quit crime when they got out
of prison?
The answer was that 20 percent of the guys
who took part in the project went back to
crime after prison, while 60 percent of other
American criminals at the time did the same.
20.
When you’re doing time in Iceland’s Kvíabryggja
prison you can enjoy rooms with exceptional
views and even get out now and again to do
some shopping in the market.
The rooms all have internet and the guys,
not the guards, have the keys to those rooms.
You might also be surprised to hear that it’s
a diverse kind of joint, with women, men,
the old and young all mixed together and helping
each other do their time.
19.
In the USA around 75 percent of prisoners
will end up back in prison within five years
after their release.
18.
In Norway only around 20 percent of released
criminals will end up back in prison.
17.
Not so many people know this, but Senator
John McCain actually did time behind bars.
The senator was flying a plane in the Vietnam
War and that plane was shot down.
He ejected out of the thing, but doing so
he broke both arms and a leg.
McCain was captured and sent to Hỏa Lò
Prison, aka, The Hanoi Hilton.
He was beaten, and you can imagine how that
felt when he already had some bad injuries.
He did eventually get some treatment, but
after a few weeks the poor guy had lost 50
pounds (23 kg).
If that wasn’t bad enough, he later did
a two-year stretch in solitary confinement.
Could it possibly get any worse, you might
wonder?
The answer is a resounding yes.
He was interrogated a few times a week and
during those sessions he was bound and savagely
beaten.
The man spent five and a half years as a prisoner
of war, and because of his injuries until
the day he died he still couldn’t lift his
arms above his head.
16.
Perhaps the worst kind of prison might be
one with no doors.
Yes, you heard that right, a prison you are
just left to die in.
This is a form of punishment called “immurement”
and it basically involves having a cell built
around you.
This happened to a Moroccan serial killer
in 1906.
He was walled up and he screamed for days
on end.
Since he had no water to drink, those screams
didn’t last long.
15.
If you’ve ever visited the city of Phnom
Penh in Cambodia you might have walked down
a quiet back street and found a former prison.
It’s now called the Tuol Sleng Genocide
Museum.
Before this place was a prison used by the
Communist Khmer Rouge during their bloody
takeover of the country, it was just a school.
When the soldiers of the uprising got hold
of the place they turned it into a torture
and execution center and called it, “Security
Prison 21 (S-21).”
Walking from room to room you see numerous
torture devices and photos of all the families
that were killed there.
Another room is filled with their skulls.
Tuol Sleng was a prison where people were
sent to be tortured and killed... women, children,
and of course men.
They’d been accused of...err...not being
on the right side of politics.
They were just your average student, teacher,
doctor, engineer, soldier, sailor.
We won’t talk about the horrific devices
used to torture and ultimately kill them,
but needless to say, imprisonment there was
worse than you can imagine.
Our researchers at the Infographics Show have
been in this place, and we can assure a visit
is absolutely heartbreaking.
14.
When Alcatraz was up and running as a prison
there was a rumor that the waters around the
island were full of man-eating sharks.
That’s not exactly the truth, but it probably
prevented a few men from trying to escape.
A great white has been spotted there in the
past, but that was very unusual.
Certain kinds of sharks might swim in that
water, but not the kind that will munch down
on a man.
We’re getting close to the top ten now,
so expect to see something special.
13.
Japanese prisons are well-known for being
really, really strict.
An American man who was sent there in the
90s said he got ten days in solitary just
because he looked up before eating.
That was a big no no, of course.
12.
What you are about to hear is possibly one
of the most outrageous prison stories ever.
In 2017 at an Ohio prison an investigation
revealed that some very clever inmates had
made two computers and hid them in the ceiling.
A computer by itself wasn't very useful, but
the guys connected the devices to the state's
Department of Rehabilitation and Correction's
network.
The only reason those guys got caught was
because the prison realized that daily internet
usage was exceeding the threshold.
The good news is that those men had obviously
learned a lot in their prison electronics
classes.
11.
What’s called “the most violent prison
riot in American history” happened in 1980
at the New Mexico State Penitentiary.
In short, the prison was taken over by the
prisoners, and guards and inmates were taken
hostage.
None of the guards were killed, but we can’t
say that for the captured inmates.
What happened is some of the gangs that were
leading the riot, took over the prison.
They rampaged through the cell blocks and
if they couldn’t get through a door they
used a blowtorch to get through it.
On the other side there were guys who were
in protective custody, and some of those people
ended up being tortured, hanged, dismembered
and killed in other terrible ways.
We hate to tell you this, but that blowtorch
they had was used on the faces of men deemed
“snitches.”
33 people in the end were killed.
10.
There was a special dungeon in the tower of
London called “Little Ease,” and the thing
was, when you were sent there you got little
ease.
That’s because it was so small a person
couldn’t lie down.
It was a tiny little box and must have driven
prisoners mad.
9.
In every prison you have a guy that makes
hooch…well…you have a lot of guys that
do that.
They make the alcohol drink from juice, bread
and bits of fruit, but might throw in all
kinds of things.
We found one guy who considered himself a
“hooch master” when he was doing time,
but one thing he got wrong one time was when
he didn’t “burp” the bottle enough.
That means letting out some gas.
He didn’t do that and the thing blew up
in his face.
If you ever decide to become a hooch master
then we suggest you get down with burping
your brew.
8.
After a study was conducted about the giant
Los Angeles jail, it was found that 800 people
did 200 days in that jail before they were
found innocent or guilty.
7.
You might think that there is just no way
that you’d ever end up in jail, but listen
to how some people got there.
Ok, so not paying a parking ticket can land
you in jail, but it gets much worse than that.
A few years ago a 19-year old man in Michigan
did three days behind bars because he had
not paid a fine for catching a fish.
What!
You’re thinking, so we should tell you that
he wasn’t supposed to catch that kind of
fish at that time of year.
His crime was out of season fishing.
We found an 82-year old in Maryland whose
beloved Chihuahuas kept getting out of the
house.
How’s an old woman supposed to keep those
little things under control?
She got fined, couldn’t pay, and went straight
to jail.
She served two days.
So, don’t think that you could never end
up in jail.
6.
In 2011, death row inmates in Texas no longer
had the option to have a “last meal” before
their execution.
You might wonder why?
The answer is because a senator in the state
got quite upset when one prisoner ordered
a massive meal and then ate none of it.
The guy ordered two chicken fried steaks,
some fried okra, about a pound of barbecue,
three fajitas, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger,
a meat lover's pizza, a cheese omelet with
ground beef, tomatoes, onions, and bell and
jalapeno peppers, and lastly a pint of ice
cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with
crushed peanuts.
All that came and the prisoner said he no
longer felt hungry.
That was enough to make some officials angry
and last meals became a thing of the past.
5.
In 2007 a lady named Lucille Keppen was released
from a U.S. prison and it made the news.
That’s because she was the oldest female
in the country before her release.
The 93-year old had served 5-years for shooting
her neighbor.
4.
In 1926, an Australian man named Bill Wallace
shot a guy because that guy started smoking
near Wallace.
Smoking indoors was all the norm back then,
but Bill really didn’t like the smell.
He went to prison and never came out again,
but guess how old he was when he finally passed
away within those walls?
The answer is 107 and 11 months.
He did a total of 63 years.
3.
In 2019, at a prison in Arkansas the officers
were a bit embarrassed when a prisoner just
seemed to disappear.
Where is this guy, they wondered, one minute
he was there and the next just gone.
A manhunt was soon underway.
Those red-faced officers took dogs into the
nearby rural area, knowing the guy couldn’t
have gotten far.
They found him in the end, but not outside
the prison.
He was found hiding on the roof.
2.
You won’t be surprised to hear that life
aint easy for some folks on Death Row.
They sit in solitary confinement and just
wait and wait until it’s time to lay down
on that gurney and take that toxic potion
into their veins.
This waiting can cause something called “death
row syndrome”, which basically means they
go mad.
One guy who said death row was like “living
in a submarine or cave” had his execution
delayed because he was in no fit state to
die.
Others might start talking to themselves or
even have psychotic delusions.
You can sure get low, on death row.
1.
It’s a rough estimate, but it’s thought
that 46,000 to 230,000 people in U.S. prisons
are actually innocent.
Since 1992, 20 people in the U.S. have been
exonerated from death row because of DNA evidence.
The records show that there have been 2,551
exonerations in America and those guys in
total did 22,540 years behind bars for something
they didn’t do.
Now that might be the most insane fact we
have for you.
Are you hooked on facts?
Do you want some more?
If so, these shows will be a great education
for you.
Head over to “50 Insane Fighter Jets Facts
That Will Shock You!” or “50 Insane Facts
About Vietnam War You Didn't Know.”
