Brazil Uses Prisoners on Bicycles to Power Street Lamps!

Brazil Uses Pedaling Inmates To Power Street Lamps

Bicycles are useful for all sorts of things — namely transportation and exercise. But in Brazil, enterprising prison officials have figured out a way to use them for electric power production.

Stealing the name conEdison would be apropos, as the prison uses four inmate powered bicycles to light up a riverfront promenade in the nearby town. Best of all they're using a carrot-on-stick approach to getting inmates interested in playing along.

Inmates in the medium security prison near Santa Rita do Sapucai, a small city a couple hours north of São Paulo, have the option of early release if they spend enough time in the saddle, pedaling to recharge a car battery. Three eight hour shifts equals one day off of a sentence.

It's not a complicated system. The power-generating bikes, donated by the municipal police department from its stock of lost and found bicycles, juice the car battery, which is then driven into town by a guard at sundown and connected to the promenade's 10 street lamps through a converter donated by local businesses. Another guard drives the battery back to the prison in the morning.

Source

Sounds good to me! If I was in prison and got offered this I'd definitely go for it. Get fit, stay healthy and knock some time off of your sentence?

Brilliant idea in my opinion and I reckon it could actually help rehabilitate inmates as well! Keeping fit and healthy is essential to mental wellbeing and someone who is better in the mind may be less likely to re offend.

Thats my opinion anyway..

This is stupid though. They likely spend more money to drive the battery back and forth than they save on electricty. Now when they get out a prison the police won't be fast enough to catch them.

reply to post by TechUnique


I really didn't even need to open this thread.
The title alone, was more than enough to crack me up.

Ok, I take that back. The 'carrot-on-stick' part was even funnier than the title.

Absolutely brilliant

Its a good exercise and keeps them busy and healthy

reply to post by sligtlyskeptical

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical

This is stupid though. They likely spend more money to drive the battery back and forth than they save on electricty. Now when they get out a prison the police won't be fast enough to catch them.

Probably not.

There is a good possibility that the evening guard drops it off on his way home, back to town. Then in the morning, another guard picks it up on his way into work.

reply to post by BrokenCircles


Think the guard gets paid for doing that work? I just don't see this as a good use of manpower.

did you watch the little teaser for tom hanks' Electric City? The prisoners in his mini series don't serve "time" in prison. Instead, prisoners are sentenced to energy "regeneration" via stationary bikes.

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical
reply to post by BrokenCircles

 

Think the guard gets paid for doing that work? I just don't see this as a good use of manpower.

I have no idea, but it is possible. Maybe he gets to leave 30 minutes before his shift ends, but still gets paid for a full shift. Maybe it is part of his daily commute anyways.

I have been saying for years we should be putting criminals to better use here in the US...this is great! Maybe they could do this here and help with property taxes. So many ideas!