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Shiv Slideshow

February 2nd, 2007

Dangerous Beauty: The Art of the Shiv

This is a fascinating and frightening gallery of prisoner made shivs.

From Wikipedia:

A shiv (from the Romani word chiv) is a slang term for a sharp or pointed implement used as an improvised knife-like weapon. The shiv is the favored weapon of inmates in prisons across the world. It is famous for its versatility - a shiv can be anything from a glass shard with cloth wrapped around one end to form a handle, to a razorblade stuck in the end of a toothbrush, to a sharpened spoon. Some inmates have even sharpened the ends of pork chop bones to make them into weapons.

There are some innovative designs here made from very limited resources. The shivs in this gallery were confiscated more than twenty years ago from New Jersey’s Rahway Prison (now East Jersey State Penitentiary), a maximum-security facility that houses more than 1,500 inmates serving sentences of twenty-five years to life. Prison is a scary place!

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