Knives Permitted in This Jail : Palau Inmates Carve a Profitable Niche

Every morning, right after breakfast, they let the murderers, thieves and rapists out of their tiny cells in Palau’s only jail and give them knives and chisels sharp enough to shave with.

Thus armed, the hardened convicts of this tiny and remote corner of the western Pacific get to work.

They select a well-seasoned piece of timber, stroke its grain, and start carving ornate “storyboards” depicting ancient Micronesian legends that have been handed down through the generations on Palau, a group of small islands with a population of 15,000.

Once proudly displayed in traditional island houses, they are now made mainly by 35 long-term prisoners who cram the tiny jail behind the police station, just a few puddles away from the Legislative Assembly in the ramshackle capital.

Sold to Visitors

They are sold to tourists plucky enough to pay a personal visit, or at vastly inflated prices through the stylish Palau Pacific Resort Hotel.

To visit the jail, a caller simply goes up to the scuffed, formica-topped desk at the police station and asks to see the storyboards, the smallest of which would fit comfortably into a suitcase, while the biggest are about six feet long.

“Go right ahead,” one recent visitor was told. “Through that door and follow the passage. They’re out the back.”

The heavy iron door with its barred grill looked imposing but was already open.

The passage went past a series of basic 9-by-9 foot cells--just four walls, a floor, a ceiling and a door.

“Out the back” was a series of rough benches, pitted with gouges and graffiti, under a tin roof festooned with laundry hung out of the way of the tropical rains.

Unsavory Characters

Most available surfaces were covered with pinups and slogans.

“Out the back” were also some of the meanest looking, most heavily tattooed individuals that anyone would try to avoid on a dark night.

They were hanging around sharpening their knives or easing chisels through wood as though it was butter.

Ngiraswong Techur still has 11 years left of the 15-year stretch imposed after the night he “got drunk and stabbed a guy.”

“I only meant to cut him a little bit, but the knife went all the way in,” he said.

Techur learned to handle a knife doing basic carving at school, but his years in prison have honed his skills.

“I like it; it gives me something to do,” he added.

Although a jail built for 21 is holding 70, most of whom are there for alcohol-related offenses, there is little trouble.

The story of how a master carver doing a life term cut off the hand of another prisoner whose skills almost matched his own is said to be apocryphal.

Good Money

In a good month, Techur earns $300 from carving. Recently, a group of prisoners sold a carved table for $1,000 and split the money.

Once a week Techur is allowed back down the passage, out through the front door and across Koror’s main street to the bank.

On Wednesdays, he and the other carvers go out with an escort to select and buy the wood they need.

Escape is a constant option but one which is rarely taken, even though getting through the chicken-wire main fence would challenge an average 12-year-old boy for only a moment or two.

Kaoru Brell, who as director of public safety controls both the police and the prison, remembers one inmate who went on the run for about two weeks.

“We didn’t bother to go and look for him. He came right back in the end because he had nowhere else to go.”

Inmates who don’t carve often work outside the jail. They earn less, so to avoid problems, the carvers put 10% of their earnings into a pool.

There appears to be enough money to go around.

As a reporter was saying goodby, one large inmate who had stared fixedly throughout the visit but had avoided conversation suddenly flip-flopped over in his rubber sandals.

“Can I buy your shoes?” he said. “I’ll give you $20 for them.”