A prison ring is a type of plastic

jewelry Jewellery ( UK) or jewelry ( U.S.) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a w ...

fashioned by hand in prisons, by working scrap plastic material, commonly

celluloid Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary ...

items such as a toothbrush or a pen. Celluloid was historically a popular material since it could be heat bonded and glues were often less available. A common feature of prison rings were small photos mounted on the bezel. The rings were produced as early as the 1920s.

Rainey Bethea Rainey Bethea ( – August 14, 1936) was the last person publicly executed in the United States. Bethea, who confessed to the rape and killing of a 70-year-old woman named Lischia Edwards, was convicted of her rape and publicly hanged in Owensb ...

, the last person to be publicly executed in the United States, was caught after a 1936 rape and murder because he left a distinctive prison ring at the murder scene.

References

Jewellery components Penal imprisonment Folk art {{prison-stub