Talk:Prison uniform

Topic

I think this article should be changed to Prison uniform of the United States and Prison Uniform of Britain or else have more countries added to the list.Remilo (talk) 15:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Name of article

I think this should be inmate or prisoner uniform. "Prison uniform" is to generic and could apply to correction officers who wear uniforms and work in prisons.Paul E. Ester 14:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought this article was about what the Prison officers wear not what the inmates wear, before I read it. Dep. Garcia 20:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The term "prison uniform" is far more widely used than either "inmate uniform" or "prisoner uniform," and it is generally understood to mean the uniform worn by prisoners. Wikipedia policy is to use the common name. —Lowellian (reply) 04:04, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Please clarify

Hi, this article wasn't very clear to me.
I was wondering about the "orange scrubs" and the "working cloths".
Which ones are used, and in which prisons? Do they all look the same, or are there variants?

The Picture in the Britain section.

Why is there a picture of Dutch jews in Buchenwald in the Britain section? Also why is there no mention of the grey/blue uniform that prisoners wore at least into the 80's if not today (seen famously in poridge). The article needs a section at the begining on the philosophy/reasons behind prison uniform. I also think the sections should be renamed United States of America and The United Kingdom respectively.(Morcus (talk) 00:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC))

Actions required

I have now merged the histories to fix the cut and paste move by User:Ozdaren. However, I notice that the page move has left no less than 9 double redirects; Wikipedia:Double redirects refers. Perhaps User:Ozdaren might like to fix those, please? TerriersFan (talk) 21:18, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Dispute about Image Layout

Note correction to my edit summary, "I'm not going to argue with this disruptive editor". Keeps undoing my layout work without reasonable explanation. I told him/her to go ahead on content edits no problem, but compromise doesn't seem possible with this person. Going to look into dispute resolution. SlightSmile 16:31, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Bare feet, sandwiches, and other problems

This article should be about prison uniforms, but it betrayed an extraordinary interest in bare feet. Note (the removal of) this huge paragraph from the lead--a paragraph that in very woolly language tried to make the case that prisoners having bare feet is somehow incredibly important, but the sources attached are an overload of incidental news reports, YouTube videos, and unreliable sources, which do not prove the general point: that's synthesis. So, for instance, that prisoners in Iran get beaten on their bare feet is supposed to verify the claim: it does not.

Many of the images also fetishize bare feet--here were three of them, with the bare feet noted in the captions (and I removed the "left" image, since images shouldn't sandwich the text). Worse, the pre-history of prison uniforms is reduced, in five awful and wordy paragraphs, to "barefoot"--a huge global and historical statement verified by, by what? a news report from a Harare jail. That's original research, unverified content, and unwarranted extrapolation.

Finally, here I removed another slew of "left" images. Personally, I don't care which of these images are better, but they can't sandwich the text, and there were too many of them anyway. Drmies (talk) 15:38, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

• Perhaps the fetish problem is clear enough here: "A conception for a prison uniform can further purposefully exclude items of otherwise standard clothing as a discrete identifier. This often includes a restriction in terms of footwear, hereby forcing prisoners to remain barefoot as a part of their dress code."

  Please note the awful prose, which I think indicates a masking of where it's really at: women in Ravensbruck were barefoot, according to the writer (I don't yet know who this is, not for sure). Looking at the sources reveals that this is only one aspect of the uniform and of the camp experience. The cited book by Saidel mentions bare feet three times in 335 pages, and the most important takeaway is that women performed heavy labor outside barefoot (in summer)--at the exclusion of every other aspect of clothing. That's even more clear in the German publication, the PDF, which has two mentions of bare feet ("barfuss", "mit nackten Füßen")--and at least a dozen examples of prisoner being forced to strip naked. So this isn't just a matter of a lack of balance, it's also a discredit to the topic of the article, and to the very experience described in the source, since it DOES address the actual prison garb: "Besonders erinnern sich die ehemaligen Insassinnen an die Entpersönlichung durch eine aus Flicken zusammengesetzte Häftlingsuniform und den Verlust des eigenen Namens". So I have removed that passage--and the image of the Ravensbruck memorial, which does not very clearly illustrate the "aus Flicken zusammengesetzte Häftlingsuniform": what it does have, of course, is clearly visible bare feet. Drmies (talk) 15:54, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

References

repeated

Prison uniforms in the United States have consisted of a bright orange jumpsuit with short sleeves or set of scrubs with a white T-shirt underneath, as it is difficult for an escaped inmate to avoid recognition and recapture in such distinctive attire. Earlier, a white-and-black, horizontal striped, uniform and hat were used.

Piñanana (talk) 05:07, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

ref search

search: prison clothing history

Piñanana (talk) 05:12, 1 December 2025 (UTC)