Living life day to day as an incarcerated individual has a very unique set of challenges. There are innumerable necessities from the modern world that a lot of us take for granted. There are obvious freedoms an inmate no longer has, such as our choices in personal clothing, but others are a little harder to imagine. As the amazingly adaptable creatures we are, nothing brings out the old adage “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” like restricting us to a very small set of items in which to live with for years, if not decades.

I have interviewed several men in my state facility (some of which have been incarcerated since before the turn of the century) to discover some of the simplest and some of the most creative ingenuity that has helped make our lives a little easier. While exploring inmate ingenuity, there is one item that came up more than any other: trash bags.

The flexibility of a sheet of mildly opaque plastic* is pretty much endless.

Screen Mounts: Access to tablets in most state prisons around the country has been a massive blessing and boon, especially for personal rehabilitation. The ability to watch a selection of films and movies on demand has also generated a level of communal enjoyment. With each inmate having access to their own screen, space in the day room can get cramped fairly quickly. This problem is solved by turning the bars themselves into a screen wall.

By stretching out two small trash bags, tying one end to the bars above and two loops on the bottom to slip around the sides of the device, a tablet can comfortably hang and lean against the bars from any preferred height for two inmates to enjoy with minimal distractions.

Laundry Lines: Whether an inmate prefers to do their own laundry (which I will touch on how in a later post), they make a mess out of sync with their facility’s laundry protocols, or those protocols fail entirely, they’re gonna be drying something eventually. As expressed in the first entry, stretching out a trash bag creates a surprisingly sturdy rope that can be tied together, looped, hooked, and strung up basically anywhere. One of the first times I saw this done was to hang wet clothing and linen all around a cell, regardless of the space available.

Curtains: Within our personal space, we are allowed minimal privacy, even within individual “wet” cells that feature a suite of complete plumbing. This can be partially alleviated with make shift, low trash bag curtains, which enables staff to still guarantee security. These could also be hung over windows to minimize the intensity of natural light, also with the added effect of not creating security concerns.

Insulation: Most prison facilities are built straight from cement with basic ventilation and acoustics, prioritizing functionality over any aesthetic, though a lot of state facilities still lack any air conditioning.

Our rooms feature small vents in each cell which have varying degrees of success at keeping us comfortable. This can be adjusted for personal preference blocking some or all of the vent with trash bags.

Heating ovens: For my state, higher security facilities are not allowed access to microwaves, but some do have faucets that supply near boiling water. Keeping a packaged snack or meal in it’s container, they can fill a small trash bag with hot water and let any sealed food heat up while submerged.

In the next post, I’ll go over what some inmates do in compromise for one of the most valuable tools of the modern age; Adhesives!

• Size: The small ones are about two feet long for our cells, and there are  industrial sized ones for the trash bin in the day rooms.

Image by Yamu_Jay on Pixabay.