Caption
The everyday items issued to incarcerated people over a century ago echo closely resemble those still issued today. So too do the protracted debates over what prisoners need and how they should care for those items. Annotations to the guidance circulated by the Prison Commission show that knives were removed from this list in 1914. National Archives, PCOM 7 367: Sanitation, Cleaning of Prisoners’ Eating Utensils (1914)