Personal experience: top prison life hacks

Mitya Prostomolotov wrote on TJournal a selection of interesting recommendations and convict secrets, relying solely on his experience — in the noughties he served three years in prison.

It so happened that a week before the onset of 2005, I ended up in prison.

I was 23 years old. I did not serve in the army, lived with my parents and was as far as possible from the romance of thieves, not knowing anything about zones and prisons.

Another interesting nuance was that I was convicted for something that I did not commit. Moreover, the office work took place in The Tver region, where life in prisons is quite different from the Moscow casemates. About my adventures in Tver can be written with a dozen longrides. Now I would like to tell you about the most interesting prison inventions that I have met during my 3 years of imprisonment. I'll start with the simplest ones.

Candle-burner

The candle-burner begins our hit parade. An elementary, but extremely useful invention. Such a homemade candle can burn continuously for several hours, maintaining the comfort in the hut and giving joy to the convicts who melt endless babies, tea, sweets and cigarette bandyuki on it in cellophane (from the word zabandyukov-to twist several homogeneous objects into one transportable form).

All plastic products in prisons (for example, rosaries) are melted from toothbrushes and combs of gawking prisoners on such burners.

Classic Prison Rosary Beads

The design is extremely simple: sunflower oil is poured into a container (most often, a jar of vitamins), the cut-off upper part of a metal tube from under a paste or ointment is installed on top. A medical bandage twisted with a sausage is threaded through the hole, the lower part of which rests on the bottom of the container with oil. The bandage does not need to be specially soaked. Just lower it inside, and it will take the amount of oil necessary for gorenje.

Fireproof bottle

It turns out that if necessary, you can boil water in a plastic bottle. No miracles — plastic melts at a temperature of more than 100 degrees. The bottle will only shrink a little and in a few minutes you will have boiling water.

Accounting system

Before the verdict, you are in a pre-trial detention center (SIZO) or just in prison. As long as the investigation lasts, you will be there for as long as possible. When you get the deadline, you will be transferred to the zone.

It is in these pre-trial detention centers that the legendary "50 people in one cell" are located. I happened to sit in a cell where there were 63 people on about 25 square meters.

In such chaos, it's great to understand how many people are around and what day of the week. For this purpose, ropes with foil arrows are stretched over the door and on the side, which indicate these data.

A special person is assigned to these foil arrows, who moves them and is responsible for the accuracy of the data literally with his head. Any discrepancy is punished by a blow to the head with a liter metal mug, which is called a fanych. Some cameras take into account the month and day, but this is rare.

Rope

One of my favorites. In a fairly short time, you can make a strong rope from any sock, sweater or just a coil of thread. I will not tell you how to unravel a sock, let's imagine that you already have a thread. Moreover, it does not necessarily have to be whole, bundles and knots are allowed.

Measure the distance twice the required length of the future rope. Fold the thread or yarn several times into this segment. The more turns of the thread there are, the stronger the rope will turn out.

Call a friend and start spinning the circles in opposite directions from each other, hitting them with the palm of your hand. You can do everything one by one, alternately twirling one mug, then another, but this is much slower, so let's imagine that you have a friend nearby.

It is necessary to tighten until the moment when the rope begins to bend from the tension. Climax: cut the circles without losing the tension of the thread, bring both ends to each other and simply release. All you have to do is cut the loop on the post. You have a strong and beautiful rope in your hands.

Stos. Prison cards

A masterpiece of prison applied art. It will take several days to make a high-quality stos. And every step of production is another life hack.

To make paper, you will need 12 A4 sheets, each will be cut into three longitudinal parts. These parts are glued in three layers on the glass with paste from black bread. All this dries, after which it is put under a press of boards. It is cut with the edge of the glass into rectangles of 5×7 centimeters (this is a camp GOST, another size is unacceptable). Next, we are looking for a master who grinds the corners and levels the deck with fine sandpaper and glass according to a special principle.

The designations of the cards are also unique and do not look like ordinary cards. Many people are simply not able to guess where which card is.

The Lady of the cross

Camp trade unions

It's not just convicts who are resourceful. Once in the zone, I was faced with an epic case of the Ufa "savvy". There are 10 colonies in the Tver Region. Employees of the zones are united in certain collectives, which once a year, or even more often, compete with each other in dexterity and erudition. Moreover, these employees have children who are also united in squads and also compete with each other.

They compete in the following disciplines:

There was something else, I don't remember. So, now evaluate the scale of cynicism. They all — both parents and children-compete with emblems, names, newspapers and mottos that are invented and drawn to them by prisoners of those colonies where their parents work.

Thieves, rapists and drug addicts compete with each other in the person of representatives of the administration of the colonies and their worthless children. In short, my "Owlets" took the third place!

Rifle

Extremely cool stuff

A gun is a tube about one and a half meters long, twisted in a special way from a variety of newspapers. The second part of the gun is the "cartridge" - a paper cone, weighted at the end with a crumb of bread, with a thread mounted inside.

Most often, a gun is used to create a "road through the air" — a stretched fishing line between cameras, hulls and even a will, along which various loads can be transferred.

This cartridge is caught at the other end by those who have driven up to the prison fence and want to transfer something to the cell. After catching the cartridge, they take out a thread from it and tie a thick fishing line to it. They pull it, making it clear that the fishing line is fixed, after which the prisoners begin to carefully drag the thread back to the camera. As soon as the fishing line tied to the thread is in the camera, a signal is given, and everything that needs to be transferred to the camera is tied to this fishing line in the wild. In 100 cases out of 100, these are mobile phones, SIM cards and drugs.

Well, and the last thing: the road

The road is something that it is impossible not to admire. A kind of local Internet that allows prisoners to track all their movements inside the prison and makes it possible to exchange letters and parcels no larger than a block of cigarettes.

Entering any hut (unless it is a rooster or wool), in 10 minutes ALL the prisoners of the prison will know which cell you are in, where you come from and what your name is. There is a round-the-clock notification of movements along the corridors (lengthways) of the prison. If you search any cell, all the prohibited items in it will instantly be at the other end of the building and will be returned back in time.

How it works: there is a thieves ' decree, according to which every decent hut should have a road in one form or another. That is, each camera must have a message with at least one more camera. If there is no such message, the camera is declared wool (goat, garbage). The prisoners sitting in it have problems for the rest of their term — and for all the terms that will happen later.

I will not go into details, only the cockerel is worse, and even that is not a fact. On the Tver central, the main road was kaburi (emphasis on A). These are through holes in the walls and floors between the chambers measuring approximately 10×10 centimeters. The holes are rubbed with soap so as not to scratch your hands — and actually all the logistics happen through them. At each such hole, there are already two people on duty (road workers) on both sides.

The prison administration is unable to do anything. One way or another, these caburas will appear within one or two days, no matter what it costs (even death). If it is impossible to make a cabura purely technically, the road is being adjusted by air or even through the sewer. The prison road is an unshakable symbol of human courage, resourcefulness and endurance. Jokes about it are unacceptable, road workers are always allocated comfortable places in the cells, cigarettes, tea and food are collected for them.