A couple of months ago, while scrolling lazily down Instagram's Explore section, I found myself on an account called 187gangstersz. The bio part stated: "prisonlife The one and only Gangster acc on instagram! We post real vidz from jail on FB and 187gangsters.com Are u in jail? Send trough Dm, or App 06-84628398."
The page was as great as its bio promised. It was packed with footage recorded within prison walls around the world. My mind couldn't really grasp what I was looking at. When did it become customary to have an iPhone in your cell? Who was behind this account? I got in touch with the account managers and after a couple of really long calls, I received permission to interview the only Dutch manager,because I'm Dutch. I'll keep his identity hidden for obvious reasons.
VICE: I must admit that I'm amazed by the amount of smartphones in all these prisons around the world and by how openly inmates seem to be using them.
187gangstersz: Everybody knows we live in a corrupt world, my friend. These days, you can bribe pretty much anybody to let you smuggle all kinds of things into jails.
A couple of years ago, I read a New York Times article stating that inmates with cell phones are a major problem in the United States. Phones apparently could be considered more dangerous than shanks or drugs, because prisoners can supposedly organize serious crimes inside and outside of the penitentiary.
That's complete bullshit. Do you really think that criminals do business with their iPhones? Nobody is that stupid. If you need to do business from prison, there are other ways to do that.
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Like what?
PGP phones are one example—you can't hack those things. They're extremely secure Blackberries that don't even have a microphone and can only communicate with other PGP phones. So you can't call or text with them. The only thing you can do is send emails to other PGPs. But believe me, not everybody has one in jail. You have to be a big fish to own one.
Why?
They're expensive and buying just one is useless. You have to buy one for everybody in your operation, which makes it a big investment.
So all these smartphones in prisons are harmless?
Definitely. People use them to stay in touch with their wives and children or to fight the boredom that comes with being incarcerated.
Belgium
Are you the only admin for this account?
No, there are eight of us scattered all over the world. I'm the only Dutch person. Some of us are still locked up and some of us are out. We work on a tight schedule to make sure that the account is updated around the clock.
Why did you guys start this account?
One afternoon while surfing online, I thought that it was amazing how much dumb shit gets web traffic these days. I mean, you have all these vloggers filming themselves washing their boxer shorts and generating millions of views. We thought that if this bullshit could get popular, then real life could have the potential to really blow up. And it worked. We wanted to show people what prison is like, and in just a few weeks we managed to get more than 40,000 followers—without doing much to promote the page.
Can you explain the success of 187gangstersz?
People have always been fascinated by the criminal world. Knowing what crooks are up to and seeing what prison life is like is exciting for even the most innocent of souls. And there are no other pages like ours. We can't be copied.
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