10 unnecessary ridiculous facts about prison

The slammer. The joint. The clink. The cell. It is the place where on one hand you never want to end up and on the other hand you become intrigued. Did you know this already?

1. Believe it or not, but it is completely legal in the Netherlands to escape from prison. Because the desire to be free is so ingrained in humans, an escape is seen as ‘an expression of the natural urge for freedom’ and that expression cannot be punished. Whuut.

2. Cutting your ankle monitor is also not considered a criminal offense. You are only guilty of vandalism. If you knock out a guard on the way? Then you have a problem.

3. Approximately 14,000 people are held in prison in the Netherlands each year. Additionally, we have 11 juvenile detention centers, where about 5,000 young people are housed annually.

4. The series Prison Break is banned in 13 American prisons. The adventures of Michael Scofield and his posse cannot be shown to the inmates here to avoid putting them in the wrong mindset, so they are not inspired to escape themselves. Ahh.

5. Oh and, another Prison Break fact: actor Stacey Keach (whom we know as prison warden Henry Pope) once spent a few months in jail for possession of cocaine. After half a year in a British cell, he was extradited to America, where he promised to teach others about the dangers of drugs. When he got a role in Prison Break, he based his character on the warden of the prison where he once was.

6. The Dutch Tottie Kiel (convicted in 2007 for double attempted murder) escaped from prison De Koepel in Breda in 2010. During carnival, she ended up in the city center through a paving stone in the sidewalk. She was ‘free’ for a month but was eventually caught again.

7. In Japan, people who are sentenced to death are only informed a few hours before the execution about their impending death. And their families are informed after some time...

8. And speaking of Japan: Japanese boxer Iwao Hakamada spent the maximum time in death row (according to the Guinness Book of Records). He was there for 46 years for killing four people before being released in 2014 after DNA tests.

9. In some private prisons, management believes that offering prisoners televisions is much cheaper than hiring more guards.

10. Nelson Mandela secretly passed messages to his fellow inmates in prison. By hiding notes in empty matchboxes and under piles of dirty dishes, Mandela managed to organize a hunger strike to improve living conditions on Robben Island. What a boss.