A story in the local paper tonight tells of a prisoner at the nearby U.S. penitentiary who got two years added to his sentence for possessing a knife made from a "7-inch long animal rib bone that had been sharpened and had a handle attached". People's ingenuity is amazing!

On a side note, I recall in the movie Midnight Express (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0077928) the assertion that in Turkish prisons it was common to exact revenge by stabbing people in the buttocks as stabbing above the waist was considered a much more serious crime. Can anyone comment on the veracity of this statement?

you would be totally amazed at some of the stuff inmates can come up with when it comes to bladed weapons... my uncle is a sherriff in east tennessee and has a huge collection of makeshift blades he has confiscated from inmates... one was made from the rubber sole of a pair of tennis shoes... designed more for slicing than stabbing... one was a tooth brush with a razor blade melted onto the end where the bristles were... one was just a nail that a guy picked up and wrapped a ball of tape around the head to give him more surface area for stabbing with it.... he must have had probably 25 different types of these in a display case in his office.. sorry dont know anything about the midnight express thing althought that is a great movie

Meat cleaver:
http://www.houmatoday.com/news/stories/15604001003n6.html

Knives vs. bird:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/breaking_news/4003435.htm?

An inmate talked to our law class (or rather a previous class and we watched a tape of it) and the impresion I got was that a screw driver was a very common weapon in prisons.

Screwdrivers are bad news.
And I was, um, impressed with what one of my instructors was able to pull off with a section of deer antler.
Chad