"A job is a job" - products from jail

At 7 a.m. every morning, the inmates of Hameln prison start to work. Metal racks pile up in one corner of the workshop area.

Wolfgang Kraske, Division Manager for vocational education at Hameln prison, explains "we - that is our inmates - produce chairs that can be ordered by all prisons in Lower Saxony. First of all there are no tubes and secondly they weigh more than one would expect at first sight." The tubes could be used to hide things and a heavy chair cannot be thrown around easily.

Kraske states that the Hameln prison does not produce goods for their online-shop and explains why, "Our focus lies on educating these young men, less on the production." This is why they do accept orders by local businesses, but mostly concentrate on single pieces or small series. One example for such a small series was the production of flashlights for the equestrian police officers of the regional capital Hanover.

Currently, furniture for prison cells is being produced in the carpenter's factory.