50 Fun Facts About Prisons

Which gym machine did English engineer William Cubitt introduce in 1818 as hard labor for convicts?

The treadmill began after Cubitt saw idle inmates at Bury St Edmunds jail. Convicts climbed its turning steps like an endless staircase, and an 1865 law made it standard hard labor.

Where off the coast of Cape Town did Nelson Mandela spend 18 of his 27 years as a prisoner?

Robben Island later sent two more former inmates to South Africa's presidency, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma. Before apartheid it had served as a leper colony.

Which California prison, the subject of a 1955 Johnny Cash song, hosted his 1968 live album?

Folsom hosted two shows on January 13, 1968, with June Carter and Carl Perkins backing Cash. The album reached number one on the country chart despite little promotion.

Which 1994 film shot most of its scenes at the Ohio State Reformatory, closed four years earlier?

The Shawshank Redemption made the reformatory famous, and fans gathered there for a 30th anniversary celebration in 2024. The prison itself was built between 1886 and 1910.

Which gangster jailed for tax evasion played banjo in the Rock Islanders, an Alcatraz inmate band?

Al Capone earned his place in the band through good behavior, and it gave Sunday concerts for other inmates. He had arrived on the island in 1934.

Where did Britain send about 162,000 convicts, beginning with the First Fleet's arrival in 1788?

Australia took mostly petty offenders: thieves made up about 80% of those transported. The last convict ship reached Western Australia in 1868.

In Les Misérables, what did Jean Valjean steal that led to nineteen years as a convict?

A loaf of bread, taken through a baker's broken window to feed his sister's starving children, put Valjean in chains. Failed breakouts stretched the sentence to nineteen years.

Which New York prison on the Hudson gave rise to the phrase 'up the river' for being sent to jail?

Sing Sing sits about 30 miles up the Hudson from Midtown Manhattan, where city courts sentenced their convicts. Inmates quarried marble on the site to build it.

Which fortress held Anne Boleyn before her 1536 beheading and Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in 1941?

The Tower of London also saw its last execution in 1941, when German spy Josef Jakobs was shot there. Hess was the last state prisoner held in the castle.

Which lifestyle mogul served five months at a federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia?

Martha Stewart had asked to serve her time in Connecticut or Florida but was assigned to Alderson. She was convicted of making false statements about a stock sale and released in March 2005.

What did Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers leave in their beds during the 1962 Alcatraz breakout?

Papier-mâché heads, sculpted from soap, toothpaste, concrete dust and toilet paper and topped with barbershop hair, hid their absence. The three left on a hand-stitched raft and were never found.

Which Paris fortress prison held only seven inmates when a crowd stormed it on 14 July 1789?

The Bastille was already scheduled for demolition, and four of its seven prisoners were forgers. Lafayette later gave its key to George Washington.

In which Alabama city's jail did Martin Luther King Jr. write his famous open letter of April 1963?

Birmingham was where King began his reply in the margins of a smuggled newspaper, the one that printed eight clergymen's statement against him. He continued on scraps of writing paper.

In which Dublin jail, now a museum, were Patrick Pearse and other leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising executed?

Kilmainham opened in 1796 as the New Gaol and was closed by the Irish Free State in 1924. Its yard also saw the Free State's first executions of the Irish Civil War.

Which East River island, sold to New York City in 1884 for $180,000, became home to its main jail complex?

Rikers is named for Abraham Rycken, a Dutch settler who took possession in 1664 and whose descendants owned it until the sale. Convicts hauling in ashes for landfill then enlarged it.

What did Jeremy Bentham call his prison design in which one unseen guard could watch every inmate?

The Panopticon worked because inmates could never tell when they were being watched, so they behaved as if they always were. Bentham thought the plan would suit hospitals and schools too.

Which execution method was first used on murderer William Kemmler at New York's Auburn Prison in 1890?

The electric chair replaced hanging under a new state law, though power pioneer George Westinghouse did not want his product used that way. Kemmler's lawyer argued it was cruel and unusual.

Which Netflix series is based on Piper Kerman's memoir of thirteen months in Danbury federal prison?

Orange Is the New Black ran for seven seasons from 2013 and was Netflix's most-watched original as of 2016. Kerman had served time for laundering money for a drug operation.

Which future US senator was held in Hanoi's Hỏa Lò Prison after being shot down in October 1967?

John McCain refused an early release offered ahead of men captured before him, and endured episodes of torture. He had been shot down by a missile on his 23rd bombing mission.

Which penal colony off French Guiana, open until 1953, held the wrongly convicted Captain Alfred Dreyfus?

Devil's Island took its first convicts in 1852, after 3,000 prisoners volunteered to leave France's prison hulks for the new colony. It operated for a hundred years.

Which Irish playwright served two years' hard labor from 1895, then wrote a ballad about Reading Gaol?

Oscar Wilde began the poem in exile at Berneval-le-Grand in France and finished it in Naples, months after his release in May 1897.

Which novelist's father was sent to the Marshalsea debtors' prison in 1824 over a debt to a baker?

Charles Dickens was 12 and was put to work in a factory while his father was inside. He later made the Marshalsea the setting of Little Dorrit.

Which singer played convict Vince Everett in a 1957 musical whose title song topped the US charts?

Elvis Presley starred in Jailhouse Rock as a convict who learns guitar behind bars and becomes a star. Its title track, by Leiber and Stoller, spent seven weeks at number one.

At which university did Philip Zimbardo run a 1971 mock prison in a psychology building basement?

Stanford students played guards and prisoners until Zimbardo ended the study on day six. Psychologist Christina Maslach's objections and the guards' growing brutality forced the decision.

Which enclosed Venetian crossing links the Doge's Palace to the New Prison over the Rio di Palazzo?

The Bridge of Sighs got its English name from Lord Byron, translating the Italian. It gave prisoners a secure walk from the interrogation rooms to their cells.

In Monopoly, what dice result frees a player from Jail without paying the $50 fine or using a card?

Rolling doubles opens the cell, yet three doubles in a row on ordinary turns send a player straight to Jail. After three failed tries inside, the fine or a card is the only way out.

Which drug lord built his own prison, La Catedral, with a football pitch, jacuzzi and waterfall?

Pablo Escobar even chose his own guards under a 1991 surrender deal with Colombia, and the place was nicknamed Hotel Escobar. He went on the run again after one year and one month.

Which 1963 Steve McQueen film is based on a mass tunnel breakout from the German camp Stalag Luft III?

The Great Escape is heavily fictionalized: the tunnels really were named Tom, Dick and Harry, but only one man from the United States took part, not the three the film shows.

Which New York prison's 1971 uprising left 43 dead after Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered it retaken?

Attica inmates held 42 staff hostage through four days of talks, but the state refused their demand for amnesty. Nearly all the deaths came from police gunfire on the final day.

Which prison, California's oldest, was established in 1852 on a point in Marin County north of San Francisco?

San Quentin followed the Waban, a 268-ton wooden ship anchored in the bay that served as the state's first prison in 1851. It went on to hold the largest death row in the United States.

What is the Louisiana State Penitentiary nicknamed, after the slave plantation once on its land?

Angola covers 28 square miles once owned by slave trader Isaac Franklin, and is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. Blues singer Lead Belly was recorded there by Alan Lomax.

At which federal prison did Robert Stroud, the 'Birdman of Alcatraz', actually raise his canaries?

Leavenworth, in Kansas, is where Stroud bred canaries and wrote two books on bird diseases. He was moved to Alcatraz in 1942 after using his research equipment to make alcohol.

Which Philadelphia penitentiary, opened in 1829 with a wagon wheel layout, held every inmate in isolation?

Eastern State is considered the world's first true penitentiary, with seven corridors of heated, skylit cells for 500 convicts. Its separate system aimed to reform inmates rather than punish them.

Which bank robber broke out of Indiana's Crown Point jail in 1934, reputedly with a pistol carved from wood?

John Dillinger's jailers had boasted to newspapers that the place could not be beaten and posted extra guards. A trustee he took hostage believed he whittled the gun from shelving with a razor.

Which amendment to the US Constitution ended slavery but left an exception for punishment of a crime?

The Thirteenth, ratified in December 1865, bars slavery and forced labor except for people duly convicted. Convict leasing in the South later let plantations rent cheap prisoner labor.

Which elected county official typically runs the local jail in most of the United States?

The sheriff is chosen by voters in more than 95% of cases, and the office also guards courthouses and protects judges and juries. Hawaii and Rhode Island appoint theirs instead.

Which US naval base, leased since 1903, has held terrorism suspects in a camp opened in January 2002?

Guantanamo began holding detainees in a temporary compound called Camp X-Ray. The base itself rests on a lease agreement with Cuba that has no expiration date.

Which island fortress off Marseille is the prison of Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo?

Château d'If was built for King Francis I between 1524 and 1531 to guard the coast, and dangerous currents made it an ideal prison. The 1844 novel by Alexandre Dumas made it famous.

Which Venetian adventurer broke out of the Leads, cells atop the Doge's Palace, alongside a renegade priest?

Giacomo Casanova climbed out through the ceiling after Father Balbi broke into his cell from next door. He left behind a note quoting a psalm.

What reason does the Bureau of Prisons give for closing Alcatraz as a federal penitentiary in 1963?

It cost too much: Alcatraz was nearly three times more expensive to operate than any other federal prison. The decision to close came long before the famous 1962 breakout.

Which group occupied the abandoned Alcatraz for 19 months from November 1969?

Native Americans calling themselves Indians of All Tribes argued that the Treaty of Fort Laramie promised unused federal land back to Indigenous peoples. The first landing party numbered 89.

Which country opened Halden Prison in 2010, with unbarred windows, private showers and a music studio?

Norway built Halden to simulate life outside, with unarmed staff who mix with inmates to create a sense of community. Critics have called it too liberal.

Which Soviet acronym for a Main Directorate of labor camps became the name of the whole camp system?

Gulag entered English through Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived eight years in the camps and published The Gulag Archipelago in 1973.

Which Berlin prison held seven Nazi leaders after Nuremberg and was razed in 1987 when its last inmate died?

Spandau was demolished and replaced by a shopping centre so that it could not become a neo-Nazi shrine. From 1966 until his death, Rudolf Hess was its only prisoner.

Which civil rights figure joined the Nation of Islam while serving a burglary sentence that began in 1946?

Malcolm X took the X to stand for his unknown African family name. Paroled in 1952, he quickly became one of the Nation's most influential leaders.

Which Colorado supermax, opened in 1995, has held the Unabomber, Ramzi Yousef and El Chapo?

ADX Florence, nicknamed the Alcatraz of the Rockies, keeps its highest-risk inmates in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. Its model was Marion, a prison run in permanent lockdown for 23 years.

Which Illinois prison, open from 1858 to 2002, releases Jake in the opening of The Blues Brothers?

Joliet gave the character his nickname, and its exterior later stood in for the prison in the first seasons of Prison Break. The limestone for its walls was quarried on the site.

Which Confederate prison camp, also called Camp Sumter, saw nearly 13,000 of its 45,000 Union captives die?

Andersonville operated for only the last fourteen months of the Civil War. Its commander, Captain Wirz, was tried and executed for war crimes afterward.

What nickname stuck to Manhattan's Halls of Justice jail, built in 1838 in the Egyptian Revival style?

The Tombs was built in a form similar to a mastaba, an ancient Egyptian burial structure. The nickname outlived that building and passed to three later Manhattan jails.

In which German castle, the wartime camp Oflag IV-C, did British prisoners secretly build a glider?

Colditz inmates were encouraged to build it to fight boredom, since Allied command had discouraged breakouts after 50 recaptured prisoners from another camp were executed. Lieutenant Tony Rolt had the idea.