WASHINGTON - Long-standing challenge: how to keep prison inmates from turning their toothbrushes and shaving razors into weapons.
Unlikely man taking it on: Paul Biermann, an inventor at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, whose work to date has tended more toward fields such as biomechanics and outer space. Now, he proposes toothbrushes and shaving razors with altered molecular properties.
It is no small problem. Inmates extract blades from razors, then wedge them into the melted ends of toothbrushes to make slashers. They sharpen the ends of toothbrushes into small daggers by rubbing them against concrete.
“That can go right between your ribs,” Biermann, 49, says, holding an altered toothbrush at a lab table outside his Laurel, Md., office, where two “Star Wars” figurines stand among stacks of research papers and issues of Plastics Technology magazine.
Biermann is hardly the first inventor to tackle prison toiletries.
Others already make wiggly toothbrushes, three-inch toothbrushes and fingertip toothbrushes held like thimbles. As for razors, companies make ones with teeny handles and blades designed to break apart when removed.
Still, for cost savings and efficacy, many prison officials stick with more traditional products. If they try smaller ones, they can draw criticism.
District of Columbia Corrections Director Devon Brown knows the dangers. Earlier in Brown's career, while he worked at a Maryland prison, an inmate slashed a prison psychiatrist's face with a razor-embedded toothbrush. “It's a terrible weapon,” he says.
After taking his current post in the District last year, Brown instituted pinky-size toothbrushes. No inmates have assaulted each other or staff members with toothbrushes since, he says.
“It is dehumanizing to hand a prisoner a three-inch toothbrush,” says Phil Mendelson, chairman of the D.C. Council's Public Safety and Judiciary Committee.
He has questioned Brown about the toothbrushes and plans to continue doing so. He knows the danger of traditional toothbrushes but says the short ones don't seem to be the answer. Told of Biermann's prototypes, which are standard-size, Mendelson asks when the products might be available.
It's a question Biermann has heard throughout his career.
For all his success - the Applied Physics Laboratory recently accorded him “master inventor” status by virtue of 11 patents - none of his ideas has gone commercial. “I've just learned to be very reserved,” he says.
Hopkins officials are discussing his new ideas with a corrections supply company. “Is this the greatest invention since sliced bread? No,” Biermann says. “But it's a real start towards an engineering solution.”
Biermann grew up in Upland, Ind., the son of the food services manager at a small Christian college. At 5, he followed the exploits of the first U.S. astronauts. His senior class voted him Most Likely to Work for NASA.
He never got there, but after earning a materials engineering degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., he eventually landed at Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory. The 400-acre complex is teeming with scientists and engineers. A spacecraft they built is en route to Pluto.
In 2002, Biermann met Sarah Hart, then-director of the U.S. Department of Justice's research arm and the daughter of a polymer chemist. She encouraged him to look into prison weapons.
Biermann did and soon found himself touring Maryland and Pennsylvania institutions. He and his Hopkins colleagues collected data from prisons nationwide, learning how convicts weaponized seemingly anything - a bucket handle, plastic wrap, a padlock encased in the end of a whirling sock.
Biermann focused on products that lent themselves to substitute materials: shaving razors, the second-most-confiscated weapon behind “miscellaneous metal,” and toothbrushes, which showed up as daggers and slasher handles.
Both products had a violent past. In 1990, California death-row inmate William Kirkpatrick rammed a sharpened toothbrush 22 times into his attorney's head and neck, leaving him with hearing damage. Years later, a federal inmate in Colorado, William Sablan, slit his cellmate's throat 60 times with a razor. Then he reportedly cut open the dead man's abdomen and removed some of his organs, spreading them around their cell, according to testimony.
Suicide also is a risk. In 2000, an Oregon inmate filed his toothbrush with a pencil sharpener and shoved it up his nostril, eventually dying of a brain hemorrhage.
Back in their lab, Biermann and his colleagues strived to make normal-size replacement products. The group tested new materials and designs, including one with a pressurized handle that deflated when tampered with. Biermann settled on a urethane material, reinforcing the interiors with rods made of a paper-based product. As the urethane cured, its molecular chains linked to those closest to each other - rendering the resulting products resistant to reshaping.
Biermann used the same material for his shaver handles. He also used an electric discharge machine to cut seven serrations perpendicular to the blade's edge but stopping just short of it - allowing smooth shaving with a significantly weakened blade. He bonded the blades in place, making it even more likely they would break into tiny pieces if removed.
A team of corrections people reviewed the work. “Creative and sensible,” said one, Alex Fox, director of security technologies at the Massachusetts Department of Correction and chairman of a 14-state group that reviews prison gizmos. Fox believes Biermann's products can work if a manufacturer can produce them inexpensively enough.
In prisons in the Northeast, Fox estimates, fewer than 20 percent of shaving razors and fewer than 10 percent of toothbrushes in use are the small, safety types. Fox says the devices don't work as well as bigger ones. And maintaining hygiene, he says, reduces medical costs and makes prisons safer.
The Virginia Department of Corrections appears to use the safety products broadly. Officials distribute “anti-shank” razors at their highest-security facilities and use “security” toothbrushes. A department spokesman says serious attacks are rare, noting that in 2005, the Virginia system had 19 reports of inmate-on-inmate aggravated assaults and two reports of inmate-on-staff aggravated assaults. Those statistics don't give details on weapons.
The District's Brown says, for now, his prison issues standard shaving razors to the basic prison population. Some inmates - those on the mental health unit or those on “special management” status - are observed while shaving or receive clipper cuts by barbers. Told of Biermann's work 30 miles north, which could lead to regular-size razors that perhaps all inmates could use, Brown agreed with his toothbrush critic Mendelson: “I'd love to take a look at it.”
It is no small problem. Inmates extract blades from razors, then wedge them into the melted ends of toothbrushes to make slashers. They sharpen the ends of toothbrushes into small daggers by rubbing them against concrete.
“That can go right between your ribs,” Biermann, 49, says, holding an altered toothbrush at a lab table outside his Laurel, Md., office, where two “Star Wars” figurines stand among stacks of research papers and issues of Plastics Technology magazine.
Biermann is hardly the first inventor to tackle prison toiletries.
Others already make wiggly toothbrushes, three-inch toothbrushes and fingertip toothbrushes held like thimbles. As for razors, companies make ones with teeny handles and blades designed to break apart when removed.
Still, for cost savings and efficacy, many prison officials stick with more traditional products. If they try smaller ones, they can draw criticism.
District of Columbia Corrections Director Devon Brown knows the dangers. Earlier in Brown's career, while he worked at a Maryland prison, an inmate slashed a prison psychiatrist's face with a razor-embedded toothbrush. “It's a terrible weapon,” he says.
After taking his current post in the District last year, Brown instituted pinky-size toothbrushes. No inmates have assaulted each other or staff members with toothbrushes since, he says.
“It is dehumanizing to hand a prisoner a three-inch toothbrush,” says Phil Mendelson, chairman of the D.C. Council's Public Safety and Judiciary Committee.
He has questioned Brown about the toothbrushes and plans to continue doing so. He knows the danger of traditional toothbrushes but says the short ones don't seem to be the answer. Told of Biermann's prototypes, which are standard-size, Mendelson asks when the products might be available.
It's a question Biermann has heard throughout his career.
For all his success - the Applied Physics Laboratory recently accorded him “master inventor” status by virtue of 11 patents - none of his ideas has gone commercial. “I've just learned to be very reserved,” he says.
Hopkins officials are discussing his new ideas with a corrections supply company. “Is this the greatest invention since sliced bread? No,” Biermann says. “But it's a real start towards an engineering solution.”
Biermann grew up in Upland, Ind., the son of the food services manager at a small Christian college. At 5, he followed the exploits of the first U.S. astronauts. His senior class voted him Most Likely to Work for NASA.
He never got there, but after earning a materials engineering degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., he eventually landed at Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory. The 400-acre complex is teeming with scientists and engineers. A spacecraft they built is en route to Pluto.
In 2002, Biermann met Sarah Hart, then-director of the U.S. Department of Justice's research arm and the daughter of a polymer chemist. She encouraged him to look into prison weapons.
Biermann did and soon found himself touring Maryland and Pennsylvania institutions. He and his Hopkins colleagues collected data from prisons nationwide, learning how convicts weaponized seemingly anything - a bucket handle, plastic wrap, a padlock encased in the end of a whirling sock.
Biermann focused on products that lent themselves to substitute materials: shaving razors, the second-most-confiscated weapon behind “miscellaneous metal,” and toothbrushes, which showed up as daggers and slasher handles.
Both products had a violent past. In 1990, California death-row inmate William Kirkpatrick rammed a sharpened toothbrush 22 times into his attorney's head and neck, leaving him with hearing damage. Years later, a federal inmate in Colorado, William Sablan, slit his cellmate's throat 60 times with a razor. Then he reportedly cut open the dead man's abdomen and removed some of his organs, spreading them around their cell, according to testimony.
Suicide also is a risk. In 2000, an Oregon inmate filed his toothbrush with a pencil sharpener and shoved it up his nostril, eventually dying of a brain hemorrhage.
Back in their lab, Biermann and his colleagues strived to make normal-size replacement products. The group tested new materials and designs, including one with a pressurized handle that deflated when tampered with. Biermann settled on a urethane material, reinforcing the interiors with rods made of a paper-based product. As the urethane cured, its molecular chains linked to those closest to each other - rendering the resulting products resistant to reshaping.
Biermann used the same material for his shaver handles. He also used an electric discharge machine to cut seven serrations perpendicular to the blade's edge but stopping just short of it - allowing smooth shaving with a significantly weakened blade. He bonded the blades in place, making it even more likely they would break into tiny pieces if removed.
A team of corrections people reviewed the work. “Creative and sensible,” said one, Alex Fox, director of security technologies at the Massachusetts Department of Correction and chairman of a 14-state group that reviews prison gizmos. Fox believes Biermann's products can work if a manufacturer can produce them inexpensively enough.
In prisons in the Northeast, Fox estimates, fewer than 20 percent of shaving razors and fewer than 10 percent of toothbrushes in use are the small, safety types. Fox says the devices don't work as well as bigger ones. And maintaining hygiene, he says, reduces medical costs and makes prisons safer.
The Virginia Department of Corrections appears to use the safety products broadly. Officials distribute “anti-shank” razors at their highest-security facilities and use “security” toothbrushes. A department spokesman says serious attacks are rare, noting that in 2005, the Virginia system had 19 reports of inmate-on-inmate aggravated assaults and two reports of inmate-on-staff aggravated assaults. Those statistics don't give details on weapons.
The District's Brown says, for now, his prison issues standard shaving razors to the basic prison population. Some inmates - those on the mental health unit or those on “special management” status - are observed while shaving or receive clipper cuts by barbers. Told of Biermann's work 30 miles north, which could lead to regular-size razors that perhaps all inmates could use, Brown agreed with his toothbrush critic Mendelson: “I'd love to take a look at it.”
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