How the Key to Safer Prisons Could Rest at the Molecular Level

Inventor Aims to Ensure a Toothbrush Remains Just a Toothbrush

Long-standing challenge: how to keep prison inmates from turning their toothbrushes and shaving razors into weapons.

Unlikely man taking it on: Paul Biermann, an inventor at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, whose work to date has tended more toward fields such as biomechanics and outer space. Now, he proposes toothbrushes and shaving razors with altered molecular properties.

It is no small dilemma. Inmates extract blades from razors, then wedge them into the melted ends of toothbrushes to make slashers. They sharpen the ends of toothbrushes into small daggers by rubbing them against concrete.

"That can go right between your ribs," Biermann, 49, says, holding an altered toothbrush at a lab table outside his Laurel office, where two "Star Wars" figurines stand among stacks of research papers and issues of Plastics Technology magazine.

Biermann is hardly the first inventor to tackle prison toiletries.

Others already make wiggly toothbrushes, three-inch toothbrushes and fingertip toothbrushes held like thimbles. As for razors, companies make ones with teeny handles and blades designed to break apart when removed.

Still, for cost savings and efficacy, many prison officials stick with more traditional products. If they try smaller ones, they can draw criticism.

D.C. corrections Director Devon Brown knows the dangers. Earlier in Brown's career, while he worked at a Maryland prison in Jessup, an inmate slashed a prison psychiatrist's face with a razor-embedded toothbrush. "It's a terrible weapon," he says.

After taking his current post in the District last year, Brown instituted pinky-size toothbrushes. No inmates have assaulted each other or staff members with toothbrushes since, he says.

The small size draws users' fingers into their mouths. "It is dehumanizing to hand a prisoner a three-inch toothbrush," says Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the D.C. Council's Public Safety and Judiciary Committee.

He has questioned Brown about the toothbrushes and plans to continue doing so. He knows the danger of traditional toothbrushes but says the short ones don't seem to be the answer. Told of Biermann's prototypes, which are standard-size, Mendelson asks when the products might be available.

It's a question Biermann has heard throughout his career.