Museum Receives Corrections-related Collection from Grand Traverse County (MI) Sheriff's Office

As we celebrate National Correctional Officers and Employees Week (May 6-12), we’d like to share some interesting corrections-related artifacts the Museum recently acquired.

Last week, the Grand Traverse County (MI) Sheriff’s Office donated a unique collection, which includes a handcrafted contraband weapon confiscated from an inmate at the Grand Traverse County Correctional Facility in 1971; a makeshift bullet; other accessories and design sketches; and a print magazine with a bullet hole.

At the correctional facility, these items were voluntarily given up to corrections officers after an inmate test-fired the weapon into a magazine (an issue of Argosy, an American pulp magazine published from 1882-1978). After drawing up plans on scrap paper, the inmate crafted the body of the weapon out of paper, including cigarette paper and gum wrappers. A piece of his bed frame made the weapon’s barrel. The bullet is the metal, eraser-end of a pencil, and match-heads were smashed up to provide gunpowder. The bullet could be loaded into the barrel using a paper casing like a wad, similar to the way muzzles are loaded. When the inmate test-fired the “gun,” the “bullet” nearly punctured all the way through the magazine.

R0291.2 Pistol; handmade contraband weapon made mainly of paper 

R0291.3 Bullet; metal eraser-end of a pencil used as bullet in handmade weapon

R0291.1 Sketches; pencil drawings of weapon design

R0291.6 Serial: Argosy with partial bullet-hole at center

Officers tossed the weapon and related materials into a drawer where they remained until rediscovered in the 1990s. The items were then put on display in their academy training room, used to inform officers about how inmates may create contraband weapons using whatever time, tools, and materials they can get.

It is interesting to note that Grand Traverse County Correctional facility became a non-smoking facility in 2000; matches and cigarettes are no longer allowed.

This fascinating collection is one example of how the corrections profession will be highlighted in the National Law Enforcement Museum.

Contraband Weapons—Shivs and Shanks at the NLEM

In 2007, Louisiana State University (LSU) donated a collection of contraband weapons to the National Law Enforcement Museum. According to Barry Cowan, LSU Archivist, the weapons originally formed a display used by LSU’s Law Enforcement Training Program, which ran from 1953 through 2006. He says, “The LETP offered training for corrections officers, and I was told the display was designed to show students the types of weapons to look for when searching prisoners and their cells.”

The term “shiv” is slang for any sharp, pointed object that is used as a knife, and can be created out of anything from a shard of glass to a hardened, sharpened toothbrush handle. Similarly, “shank” refers to a makeshift, knife-like weapon, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. The weapons seen here were all created from materials gleaned opportunistically; they show careful preparation and have been painstakingly sharpened, probably against a concrete floor or wall.


Contraband prison weapons, ca. 1960-1980. 2007.70. Collection of the NLEM, Washington, D.C.

Mundane, easily available prison items are prime sources for contraband weapons. Dining utensils, machine- and wood-shop parts, and even meat bones left over from prisoner meals have been fashioned into lethal shivs and shanks. Toothpaste has been known to be used as a hardening agent when combined with paper, and thread pulled from prison uniforms or bedding is useful for “fishing” underneath doors or passing notes and other objects from cell to cell. The type of materials used, such as thread, cloth scraps, foil, etc., make contraband easy to hide, and corrections officers are carefully trained to control access to potentially dangerous materials and effectively search prisoner cells and common areas for hidden contraband and caches.

One commonly made contraband weapon was a slashing razor, assembled by melting a razor blade into the plastic handle of a toothbrush. The correctional system has introduced the use of safety items like the “no-shank toothbrush” (seen in the lower left of the safety items image, above the flexible pencil) and specially-designed disposable razors such as those produced by Bob Barker Company, a corrections supply firm who donated these items to us.

Correctional safety hygiene products, ca. 2008. Prop Collection of the NLEM. Shown is clear toothpaste, flexible handled toothbrush, “no-shank toothbrush,” disposable razor, unsharpened safety orange flexible pencil.

These items demonstrate the wide variety of objects in our collection. They document both the dangers that corrections officers face—there are close to 600 corrections officers on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial—and their response to those dangers. We will incorporate these objects into exhibits in the Museum and preserve them for future study.