Jailers worry about dental floss as a weapon

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Dental floss may prevent toothaches, but it's given jailers plenty of headaches.

When a group of New York prisoners sued last month to demand access to dental floss, officials said they had to consider "security issues." As it turns out, jail — and jailbreak — history is tightly tangled with the stringy decay fighter.

In Texas, officials believe a prisoner used floss to cut his way out of his cell, then jumped a fellow inmate and knifed him to death.

In Maryland, Illinois, West Virginia and Wisconsin, inmates collected enough floss to braid it into ropes and escape, or try to, over prison walls.

A group of escaped prisoners on the run in Texas used floss to sew up their gunshot wounds.

And a man in an Illinois jail used floss to stitch together the dummy he left in his bed when he took off.

Experts say floss, or the plastic holder it sometimes comes in, has been used to strangle enemies, to escape, to saw through bars, to pick handcuffs, to make a hand grip on a shank and to hoist contraband from one level of cells to another.