Secure toilets in prison are not fiction.
Data publikacji: 1 June 2025
Did Bierut receive as much toilet paper as the current convicts? Could Wladyslaw Silva-Nowicki shower when he wanted and did he have hot water? Where in the bathhouse could weapons be concealed? What are the legal requirements for sanitary corners? How do you design a prison toilet so that the Inmates can’t use it improperly?
Equipment of prison toilets at the turn of the century.
The oldest functioning penitentiary is located in Rawicz, which has been operating as a prison unit since 1819 in the buildings of the abandoned Franciscan Monastery of the Friars Minor. Over the years, the prison has changed its profile ? initially it was intended for political prisoners, later communists such as Bierut, Nowotko, Finder and Buczek were held here. Meanwhile, during the Stalinist period, the prison ?hosted such prominent Poles as Kazimierz Pużak, Stanisław Skalski, Wiesław Chrzanowski, Władysław Bartoszewski, Kazimierz Moczarski, Wojciech Borzobohaty, Władysław Siła-Nowicki and many others.
Changes, changes, changes in toilet facilities in prisons? but are they huge?
- In the 1980s, there was only cold water in prison taps, moreover, by 2012, 9,000 cells (out of an estimated 22,000) were deprived of hot water.
- Since 1990, inmates received one razor per month, this amount only changed in 2014 to 2 per month; as a result of numerous inmate complaints about rust on the cheapest razors just a few days after receiving them.
- In 1973, inmates received 100 grams of gray soap per month, only since 2014 can they count on shampoo ? 100 ml per month.
- In 1990, prisoners began receiving toilet paper ? 1 roll per month, thanks to which they stopped wiping themselves with newspapers, and prison libraries stopped checking by regulation whether all the pages were in the books they turned in.
- In 2014, the number of rolls of paper was raised to 2 per month. This change cost the Government as much as 387,000 annually. According to the Settlers, this amount is still insufficient and only allows for use for a maximum of 3 weeks.
- In 1997, the Executive Criminal Code established Article 110 § 2, and consequently a minimum standard for prison cell space. Interestingly, the standard of 3 m2 is one of the lowest in Europe. For example, it can be pointed out that in Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands, Greece, the area is 10 m2. By contrast, in Italy and Belgium it is 9 m2, Croatia ? 8 m2, Germany ? 7 m2. In Spain, Romania and Bulgaria, on the other hand, it is 6 m2.
- It was not until 2014 that the problem of overcrowding in almost all facilities in Poland was resolved. However, the service could not afford to build in sanitary corners, which in practice meant that the toilet was separated from the rest of the cell only by a curtain.
Note: The Prison Service did not have precise data on the number of cells that had anything more than a piece of cloth, but they estimated that it was less than half. However, they had precise data in the context of installed showers in cells ? there were exactly 509 (out of 22,000 cells).
Prison hygiene and bathroom facilities today.
In Poland, as of December 2018, there were 81 prisons, with an additional 52 external wards subordinate to them. In addition to this, 39 pre-trial detention facilities were also used to enforce imprisonment. They could accommodate slightly more than 80,000 people. The number of inmates (convicts and pretrial detainees), on the other hand, amounted to just over 72 thousand. By law, the minimum area in a residential cell per convict is
3 m2.
In exceptional circumstances, a prisoner may be placed in a cell with an area of less than 2m. Such cells should have a toilet. Unfortunately, prisoners complain that some of the sanitary corners in the cells are still not fully built, and the bathhouses lack individual shower stations, which the European Court of Rights ruling of December 15, 2015 obliges us to have. The matter was looked into by the Ombudsman at the end of 2018. Nevertheless.
The results were alarming. There were still 666 sanitary corners that were not fully enclosed, and 78 bathhouses did not have separate individual shower stalls. Still, therefore, the process of ensuring a minimum of intimacy in maintaining hygiene by persons deprived of liberty has not been completed. The ROP is also critical of solutions when the only washbasin in the cell is located outside the sanitary corner, in a place uncovered from the rest of the cell.
A safe toilet in prison is not a fiction.
Article 110 § 4 of the Executive Penal Code sets forth the basic principles that should guide the placement of a convict in a residential cell. And so, in particular, the need to prevent self-aggression and the commission of crimes while serving a sentence is taken into account. It is this point, therefore, that the selection of bathroom fittings is not so simple and obvious.
2019. The Supreme Audit Office, that is, the supreme and independent state audit body with the mission of guardian of the public penny, published the results of an audit conducted in Polish prisons. From the report we can read that the number of suicides every year since 2017 exceeds 20, while suicide is attempted by more than 150 people per year, and suicide attempts, i.e. situations in which the Inmate performs self-aggression that has the hallmarks of a suicide attempt, but a sham, of a demonstrative nature without a real intention to take their own life in 2019 amounted to almost 200 incidents. In 2017, the number of assaults on an officer was 112 incidents, while already in 2018. ? 148.
The Prison Service, as well as suppliers of furniture for Inmates’ cells and companies producing sanitary equipment for prisons and penitentiaries have, therefore, quite a challenge ? to provide such products that Prisoners will not be able to use for any other purpose than the one for which they were intended.
Faneco vandal-proof set applied to a modern prison cell.
Equipping prison toilets – the ingenuity of convicts knows no bounds.
Life behind bars forces one to adapt to the conditions and laws that govern it, which greatly develops creativity in Inmates. The most obvious ideas for creating weapons each of us is able to imagine ? pieces of glass from a broken mirror, a broken ceramic sink and many others, but did you also know that Prisoners over the years have been able to construct such inventions as:
- A caster made from a piece of wire wrapped with a bathroom curtain,
- A whip created from a wooden stick with razor blades on a string,
- Shotgun made from metal bed legs with bullets made from match heads, AA batteries and broken light bulbs
- ? “Pashtun?” which is a sock filled with debris and stones,Nunczako made from the legs of a stool and a sheet,
- A crossbow constructed from toothbrushes, rubber bands and a piece of string.
One of the tasks of guards is to minimize the creation of opportunities for devastation and the use of, everyday objects for this purpose. With help come solutions from professional companies with items of equipment for prisons, which eliminate the possibility of devastation at the design stage.
Creative weapons created in prison conditions by inmates.
Safety is guaranteed only by monolithic steel accessories for prison toilets!
Creating a weapon is one thing, but concealing it is a completely different subject. Prisoners use all sorts of spaces for this: plumbing elbows, cracks in the plaster or slab, urinals, sinks with holes in them, or bathhouse drains ? they also hide drugs, stimulants and narcotics in such places. One of the preventive measures is to prepare the toilet spaces and bathrooms in prisons so that their destruction or use for contraband is impossible. However, this requires reaching for comprehensive solutions.
How does a vandal-proof collection for prisons work?
Creating a collection of products dedicated to prison cells requires numerous consultations with legal interpretation and prison quartermasters. The greatest knowledge base, however, is contact with former Inmates to see the problem through their eyes. After all, they are the ones who know best what can be a threat in prison toilets and baths.
This is how our vandal-proof steel equipment collection was created.
- Steel mirrors that can’t be broken,
- Turkish steel bowls made of steel with a rounded shape, which makes it impossible to hide something inside. In addition, they have rounded edges and are permanently fixed.
- Steel urinals and toilets,
- Steel bowls for the disabled
- Special sets combining a sink and toilet,
- Touchless fixtures
Faneco stainless steel vandal-proof set dedicated to prisons
Equipping toilets with stainless steel, another step to greater safety.
Inmates who no longer wish to continue their lives also have their ways ? for years Prisoners have been trying to take their own lives by hanging themselves from bathroom hooks and bed frames or by cutting their veins with cell equipment. Manufacturers of specialized equipment are answering these questions by designing new solutions ? how to guarantee safe use in prison cells and bathhouses.
An interesting example is bathroom hangers with an automatic latch that closes like a switch under the influence of weight. A trivial solution that prevents a suicide attempt or the use of equipment to create a weapon. However, there are still not enough such solutions.
The budget is not a brake.
According to research, vandal-resistant equipment made of steel, despite the fact that its price differs from basic ceramic sets, guarantees the safety of inmates and guards. Many facilities have already decided to cooperate with Faneco in the modernization of existing prisons and newly built detention centers at police stations. More projects are already in the plans for next year.
Faneco stainless steel vandal-proof equipment set