So you've been nicked.
Your life on the lamb is over, and you're finally going to pay for your evil ways.
On the first day of your court case you were judged so evil and vile that the jury decided
they didn't even want to hear any further evidence, and now you've been sentenced to
a life sentence in prison.
Life in prison really cramps up your plans though, and you've decided that you'd rather
not sit in prison until you die.
How are you going to get out of this one?
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show- today we're going to show
you how to escape from prison.
To help us with this episode we've gotten the expert advice of an actual working prison
guard with the Nevada Corrections Department, because who best to teach you how to break
out of prison then one of the guys who's job is to make sure you don't.
Before we begin he gives us this piece of sage advice, when it comes to breaking out
of prison his advice is: don't.
You won't succeed, and in the incredibly low chance that you actually do, you'll be very
quickly re-apprehended.
Of all the escaped convicts in the last sixty years in America, there exists less than a
dozen who've managed to remain free.
Not only are you probably not going to succeed, you're only going to add more time to your
sentence, ruin your chance for parole, or if already serving a life sentence, be locked
up in solitary for months, maybe even years at a time.
Our prison guard expert tells us that solitary should be enough of a threat to anyone, he's
seen the biggest, baddest inmates break down into a sobbing mess after just a few weeks
locked up all alone for twenty three hours a day.
If you think solitary is a joke, consider that you'll be locked up all day and all night
long with bright lighting that never dims, a single blanket to cover yourself with, extremely
restricted personal materials to include two or three books and a pad of paper to write
with, and almost no phone calls or family visits.
We're going to go ahead and disregard our expert's advice and plot our prison escape
anyways though, because if Jenny McCarthy can convince us all not to vaccinate our kids,
we don't need any expert telling us what we should or shouldn't do!
Prison escape strategy 1: Fake gun
John Dillinger was one of America's most notorious bank robbers, and at one point he was famously
locked up in a jail which the local Sheriff had bragged was escape-proof.
This was after Dillinger had escaped from a previous jail, so the Sheriff had posted
extra guards just to make sure there would not be a repeat.
Yet while the guards were on the lookout for threats from the outside- last prison escape
Dillinger had been busted out by friends- Dillinger was working on an internal plot
to earn his freedom.
Sources differ, but most agree that Dillinger used a wooden gun that he had carved from
a block of wood and then painted black with shoe polish in order to force his way out
of his cell.
Then he seized a submachine gun and armed with a real weapon, went on to steal the Sheriff's
car and drive himself to freedom.
Other sources claim the gun was made from a potato, while even others say that the fake
gun was actually smuggled in by one of his attorneys.
So what does our expert say about fashioning a fake weapon in order to escape with?
First, he doubts that Dillinger fashioned the weapon himself, asking: what are the odds
Dillinger was a skilled enough craftsman to make a believable gun from a block of wood?
He suspects that the fake gun was smuggled in, but then wonders why not just give him
a real gun?
There were no metal detectors in jails or prison back then, so the only reason he can
think of is that perhaps the attorney believed he would get in less trouble if discovered
with a fake gun.
On the prospect of doing this today though, our expert is extremely skeptical.
First of all, very few prison guards are actually armed, and those that are carry rifles and
are separated from the general population.
Guards may carry sidearms but only when escorting a prisoner outside of the prison grounds.
So if you were to believably fashion a gun for yourself, you'd have to make sure it looked
exactly like a 9 millimeter Beretta or a .45 caliber pistol, which would require a pretty
well developed artistic talent to make it look real.
Dillinger got off easy as he likely just recreated a .38 special, a small and relatively easy
gun to recreate.
The second problem you'd face is acquiring the materials and tools in the first place.
Inmates are regularly searched for contraband, as are their cells, and making an accurate
looking modern pistol is going to take a long time.
While things such as shanks are typically easy to hide because of their general shape,
a pistol is altogether a different matter and will stick out like a sore thumb.
There's also the fact that shanks tend to be very crudely made, because it's difficult
to find good materials to work with, but your pistol will have to pass the smell test in
front of a guard who's been trained to handle one their entire life.
Our expert doesn't buy the fake pistol strategy, but does point out that if Dillinger made
the gun himself, he likely carved it out of a potato, as that would be easier to get a
hold of and work with.
Prison escape strategy 2: tunnel out of cell and paddle to safety
Our next strategy comes straight from the annals of criminal history.
On June 11, 1962, Alcatraz inmates Frank Lee Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin
managed the impossible, escaping from what was thought to be the most inescapable prison
in America.
The trio used handmade tools to dig a tunnel through their cell walls over the course of
a year, and from there managed to get into a ventilation shaft and reach the roof.
Once there they climbed down and scaled a fence, then assembled a raft that they had
made out of raincoats and rubber cement that they had stolen.
Pumping the raft up with a modified accordion, the men took off into the icy waters of the
San Francisco Bay and into the pages of history.
So, all you have to do is tunnel through your cell's walls to hit an access corridor or
ventilation shaft and then ride a homemade raft to sweet, sweet freedom- or more than
likely an icy death.
What does our expert say?
First our expert points out that Alcatraz used to be an old military fort, and was not
designed to be an actual prison, just converted to one.
This meant that there were several vulnerabilities to the facility that inmates could have used
to escape, and this included the weak cement around the cell ventilation shafts.
Modern prisons however are built from the ground up to be escape proof, with each cell
often being pre-fabricated as a single solid steel enclosure with small openings for attaching
water and ventilation pipes.
Modern ventilation pipes however are just a few inches, and impossible for a man to
squeeze through.
Enclosed by a steel shell, you won't be tunneling your way through anything without the aid
of some heavy duty power tools, let alone the homemade picks that the Alcatraz trio
had fashioned.
Then there's also the fact that regular inspections check each cell for any signs of tampering,
not just contraband, so you can forget the Shawshank fantasy of hiding your escape tunnel
behind a poster on the wall.
As far as fashioning an entire raft and lifejackets from stolen materials, our expert tells us
that that's actually the most achievable part of this prison escape plan.
Inmates are incredibly sneaky and incredibly patient, and with enough time and patience
it's remarkable how much raw material you can get your hands on if you just steal a
few scraps at a time.
Finding a place to actually hide all that contraband inside your modern, ultra-sleek
prison cell though is a different matter altogether.
Sadly, it seems that this escape plan is dead on arrival in the modern age.
Prison escape plan 3: Fake It Till You Make It
In 1971 notorious con man Frank Abagnale, of Catch Me If You Can fame, managed to con
his way out of jail.
Upon being transferred to the Federal Detention Center in Atlanta, Georgia in 1971, Frank
discovered that the US Marshall assigned to him had forgotten his detention commitment
papers as they arrived.
Taking advantage of the confusion caused by the lack of documentation, Frank was able
to convince local guards that the reason the papers were missing was because he was actually
a prison inspector and not a prisoner.
He did this with the help of an outside accomplice who pretended to be a federal agent, yet Frank
didn't immediately try to get the guards to let him out, but rather grew their confidence
by dragging out the con for weeks, pretending to be gathering intelligence on the prison
and its operations.
Then he finally earned enough of the guard's trust that they actually allowed him to meet
his accomplice outside of the prison walls inside a parked car, and from there, Frank
disappeared.
So forget tunneling or making fake guns, let's try some diplomacy and smooth talking.
What does our expert say about this plan?
This one is the most realistic of our prison escape plans, he says.
People can be incredibly gullible, even prison staff, and some inmates can be incredibly
charming or persuasive.
Then there's also the fact that most ground-floor prison staff simply isn't privy to big overarching
administrative operations, such as the insertion of an undercover agent posing as a prisoner-
which does happen from time to time but typically in order to monitor or bust up gang activity.
So our expert tells us that the odds of fooling prison guards into believing you are actually
an undercover agent is pretty high if you're a smooth enough talker, let alone if you have
outside help to verify it.
However, back in the day the prison system was pretty patchwork and each prison acted
largely independently, without much communication between them and certainly not with the federal
government.
Since then though the prison system has become deeply entangled bureaucratically, and the
invention of the internet lets wardens be in constant and easy communication with any
federal agency.
Trying to pull this stunt in the modern age is simply impossible, as not only would a
prison warden be notified of any undercover agents inserted into his prison, but even
if he wasn't verifying the credentials of a possible agent would be as easy as sending
an email.
Unless your outside contact works directly with the FBI or other major government organization,
convincing a warden in the modern age that you're an undercover agent is next to impossible.
There's just too many ways to disprove your story.
It turns out escaping from a modern prison is way harder than we thought, and though
we thought we could outsmart the man and bust you out of jail, it looks like you're stuck
serving your full sentence.
As our expert tells us, the best way to bust out of prison is to simply never get sent
to it in the first place, or to have a really, really good lawyer.
But as far as getting out on your own, it's just not gonna happen, though he does admit
that it still happens from time to time.
Each time though federal agents coordinate with state agents to discuss the specific
escape strategy that the last inmate or inmates used, and then work to close those loopholes
at their facilities.
So each time someone successfully escapes, they make it that much harder for the next
guy.
Sorry, but it looks like you're on your own for this one.
Just don't drop the soap.
How would you try to escape prison?
Also, be sure to check out our other video What The Last 24 Hours of Death Row Prisoner
Look Like . Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.