- Around 11 million people around the world are behind bars. But depending on where they are, their circumstances are very different. In China, for instance, wealthy lawbreakers can hire body doubles to serve their sentences for them. The practice even has a name: ding zui, which loosely translates to ‘take the blame for someone else.’
- The world’s smallest jail is on Sark, a self-governing island in the English Channel. Sark Prison has just two cells, but crime on the island is rare. Most of the jail’s temporary residents are intoxicated seasonal workers and tourists who spend the night in one of the cells until they sober up.
- As for the biggest prisons (in terms of population), Marmara Prison, formerly called Silivri Penitentiary Campus, in Istanbul, Turkey, holds the official Guinness World Record with more than 22,000 inmates. However, a newly built facility in Tecoluca, El Salvador, has a capacity of 40,000. Of course, one could argue that Australia was the world’s largest prison: More than 1,60,000 convicts were transported there during the 80 years the island serve as a British penal colony.
- Sao Pedro de Alcantara penitentiary, located on the southern state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, uses geese of guard dogs. Officials switched to geese about 15 years ago, citing lower costs: Hounds require training and visits to the vet, whereas geese don’t. “It’s never happened, but if someone tried to escape, the geese would go crazy. They would get our attention without a doubt.”
- One of the most unbelievable prison escapes ever took place at a police in Daegu, South Korea, in 2012. The escapee, Choi Gap-bok, a slender yoga master who was being held in a detention cell on charges of robbery, managed to squeeze himself through a narrow food slot while the officers on duty were asleep. The opening was not even15 centimeters high by 45 centimeters wide. Though he was later recaptured, his escaped earned him the nickname ‘Korean Houdini’ in the press.
- Alcatraz, The famed American penitentiary in San Francisco, was one of the first prisons to feature hot water. This was security disguised as a luxury: Hot showers made it harder for the prisoners to acclimate to the cold San Francisco Bay water surrounding Alcatraz, theoretically deterring them from trying to escape by swimming away.
- However, the daring prison break depicted in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz, starring Clint Eastwood as criminal Frank Morris, really took place. In 1962, Morris and two other prisoners crawled out through a ventilation duct after making many small holes around the duct so they could remove the vent. Meanwhile, the dummies the three left in their beds tricked guards into thinking they were still asleep in their cells. After years of investigation, the FBI closed its case in 1979 and legally declared the men dead. Still, the US Marshals Service continues to investigate — just in case the trio is still alive.
- Another trio executed an escape from HM Prison Parkhurst on the UK’s Isle of Wight in 1995. Two of the men worked in the prison’s sheet metal shop, where they fashioned a copy of a guard’s master key after roughly memorizing its shape. That key essentially allowed them to open any door during their escape. But their plan beyond the prison walls wasn’t as solid, and they were caught just a few days later.
- A man serving a month long sentence in 2013 reportedly broke out of Ostragard prison in southwest Sweden the day before he was due to be released. The reason: a toothache. He had been complaining about it to officials for days and just couldn’t stand the pain any longer. After seeing a dentist, the man voluntarily turned himself in and police returned him to the jail to serve an extra day to make up the time.
- Norway’s Halden Prison, located southeast of Oslo, only minutes away from the Swedish border, is considered among the most humane maximum -security prisons in the world. Amenities such as a grocery store and houses for weekends visits with family are in keeping with the prison’s commitment to ‘normalcy’ for the inmates. “The best meal I had in Norway was made by an inmate who had spent almost half of his 40 years in prison.”
- The Clink is an English charity that trains prisoners to work in the service industry after their release. As precautions, the walls of their restaurants are lined with panic buttons, all their cutlery is plastic, and patrons can’t bring their phones inside. The food is so good that three of the charity’s restaurants have been rated number one in their area on Trip Advisor.
- Prison Blues, a large garment factory in Pendleton, Oregon, employs inmates serving time at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution to manufacture denim work apparel. Inmates earn wages that go toward paying their own incarceration costs or, in some cases, their child support. “Made on the inside to be worn on the outside.”
- Don’t know anyone who’s been to prison? You certainly know of celebrities who have: Tim Allen, the actor behind wholesome roles such as Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story movies, served time for drug trafficking. A teenage Stephen Fry, the British intellect and comedian found himself behind bars for a few months for committing credit card fraud. And former Beatle Paul McCartney served a little more than a week on drug smuggling charges, though he was facing a possible seven-year sentence.
