Fashion
May 20, 2024

SANTA FU - fashion from prison

It looks like a prison Prison Glasmoor not at the gates of Hamburg. It is green here. Instead of barbed wire and gray bars there are lovingly tended front gardens. No body search, no hours of completing complicated forms. Just a smiling official with white teeth, who wants to see the identity card for a moment. A fat, grinning man with a red lumberjack shirt wipes the floor, always one and the same place, and whistles.

171 convicts live and work here in Glasmoor in open execution, including twelve women. From murder to dodgy driving everything is included, which has in the Federal Code section and section. Abandoned in the classic, closed execution most offenders already have their offenses. The open execution should prepare for a life after the jail.

On the next page: And so it is made, the hot commodity from prison

And so it is made, the hot commodity from prison

Through a picturesque courtyard, past heritage-protected farm buildings, we go to the workshop where convicts make fashion. Fifty to one hundred T-shirts Here, an average of four to six prisoners a week are refined. On the walls there are posters with naked women, in the background the radio is running.

Today, three prisoners are working here, two of them are printing on the shirts, each one of them hand-crafted, another is sitting on the sewing machine. Seko *, 40 years old, has been here for four months. "I enjoy the work, it's just something else," says the skilled locksmith. He liked best the printing of the shirts. "You have to concentrate and not make mistakes." His pal Patrick *, 33, has been released for three months. He likes to come to work in the prison. Until he has a "real" job in real life, but that would be difficult.

* Names changed by the editor

The man at the sewing machine is Oscar *, 47 years old, With practiced manipulations he proudly demonstrates the special folding technique: First fold the pages in the middle, smooth them out. Then fold four times from bottom to top, creating a narrow strip with barely more than the lettering visible. Then Oscar sews the wrapped shirts with the help of the machine. Like Seko and Patrick he is here for "BTM". Aha. In other words, they all violated the Narcotics Act. He has six months left, no clearance. His family is waiting for him. "More people should buy our shirts", he says.

* Name changed by the editor

On the next page: Graduation and education are here no recruitment criteria

Karl-Heinz Becker, Head of the Institution in Glasmoor, is proud to be part of such a well-known project. "I am very pleased that this project has received so much positive feedback from both detainees and the public", In addition to the online shop, the Glasmoor prison now supplies 50 stores in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with their hot goods. Also the dispatch is coordinated from here under the supervision of the prison officer Wolfgang Mücke. Part of the proceeds will be donated to the white ring, a non-profit association that looks after victims of crime.

The inmates can apply to Mücke for a job in the fashionable workshop. A high school diploma or an apprenticeship is not a recruitment criteria here. "Much more, our employees have to be ambitious, and of course they should bring a little craftsmanship with them", so institution manager Becker.

On the next page: "Everyone has to be able to do everything here."

Everyone has to be able to do everything here

"Everyone in the team has to be able to do everything"explains Mücke. In addition to printing the shirts, the convicts learn the special folding technique, the handling of the sewing machine for sewing the shirts in the specially, also printed in the JVA, packaging and shipping. But usually the semi-skilled prisoners only stay in operation for about three to six months.

Mücke and Becker, together with several advertising agencies, have been developing new product ideas over the years. So there are next to those with always new sayings like "I want to get out of here" or "Free-roaming" printed T-shirts also a cookbook, board games, a diary, towels, a jail-CD and the original "keep-clean" -Pflegeset, which also get the "real" convicts in this form when the arrest: soap, toothpaste, Shaving brush and shaving soap.

"Sometimes I secretly wish that the good workers would stay a bit longer," says Mücke. But the aim of the fashionable project is and remains the preparation for the dismissal and the Life in freedom.

More information about the project SANTA FU you get HERE!