Prisoners’ Inventions

By Angelo, in collaboration with Temporary Services. Published by Half Letter Press, 2020.

From the Publisher:

At long last, a reprint of our book Prisoners' Inventions—a collaboration with our late friend Angelo about the many things he observed during the course of his long incarceration in California. It has been over 15 years since this book was last in print. The original book was published by WhiteWalls, and we've taken on the printing of this new edition.

From the back cover:

In 2001, the group Temporary Services invited their friend Angelo, a prisoner in California, to write about and draw the different things he had seen other prisoners invent.

Angelo illustrated everything from immersion heaters with electrical plugs made from razor blades, paper clips, and popsicle sticks, to cooking methods for bologna jerky on built-in cell light fixtures. These drawings and writings became the book and widely exhibited project Prisoners’ Inventions, first published in 2003.

This redesigned and expanded edition of Prisoners’ Inventions includes many pages of additional drawings and writings that Angelo produced after the last printing, as well as a new introduction by Temporary Services that details the origins and life of the project. Prisoners’ Inventions reveals an often-neglected side of prison existence: the need to create those objects and experiences that allow the most basic human desires to be satisfied.

200 pages | perfect bound, 8.5” x 5.5”, digitally printed