Concealing possessions or contraband inside the body is a practice with a long history in prisons and other places of confinement. Today, one term commonly used for it is keestering.

For most people outside the correctional system, the idea may be difficult to comprehend. Inside an institution, however, where rooms, clothing and possessions can be searched and access to ordinary items tightly controlled, the body can become one of the few places where something might be hidden.

Reggie’s Jail Diary provides a striking example. In a June 15 entry, while preparing to be removed from his room, he casually described concealing tobacco and a lighter inside his rectum.

What makes the passage particularly revealing is not simply what Reggie did, but how little explanation he thought it required.

In Reggie’s Own Words

In his June 15 Jail Diary entry, Reggie described what happened:

“Being as it was so silly, I asked him for an hour to get it done and proceeded to use this hour to shave half my face, smear toothpaste all over myself and stick toilet paper to myself, stuff a lighter and tobacco up my arse…”

Reggie then wrote that he took his four T3s.

T3 most likely refers to Tylenol No. 3, a prescription medication containing acetaminophen and codeine.

The half-shaved face, toothpaste and toilet paper appear to have been an act of defiance or ridicule. The lighter and tobacco seem to have served a more practical purpose: Reggie was about to lose access to his room and possessions, and these were things he apparently wanted to take with him.

To Reggie, at least by the time he wrote this diary entry, hiding them inside his body apparently required little further explanation.

What Is Keestering?

Keestering is a slang term for concealing an object inside the rectum. In correctional settings, body cavities have been used to hide prohibited items or possessions that someone fears will be discovered during a search or confiscated.

The practice carries obvious medical risks. Objects placed inside the body can become lodged or cause internal injury, bleeding or infection. But understanding the prison environment helps explain why someone might nevertheless take that risk.

Inside a correctional institution, prisoners have very limited control over their surroundings and possessions. Their rooms, clothing and belongings can be searched, and items can be restricted or prohibited altogether. Things that seem insignificant outside can consequently acquire considerable importance inside.

In Reggie’s case, the objects he specifically identified were tobacco and a lighter.

The Prisoner’s Wallet

The idea of prisoners using their bodies to protect possessions is much older than the modern slang term keestering. Readers of Henri Charrière’s Papillon, his famous account of imprisonment in the French penal system, may recognize the general concept.

Charrière described a prison culture in which valuables could be carried internally, effectively creating a hidden place for possessions in an environment where almost nothing was truly private.

The prison world described in Papillon was vastly different from the Canadian correctional institutions in which Reggie was incarcerated. Parts of Charrière’s autobiographical account have also been challenged, so it should not be treated as a precise historical comparison with Reggie’s experience.

But the underlying concept is useful:

When your room, clothing and possessions can all be searched, the body itself can become a hiding place.

Why Tobacco and a Lighter?

Reggie wasn’t describing an abstract prison practice or repeating something he had heard another prisoner talk about. He was preparing to be removed from his room and wanted to retain two particular possessions.

Tobacco had value to him. Without a lighter, however, it would have been considerably less useful, so he concealed both.

That tells us something about how differently ordinary possessions can be regarded inside an institution. Tobacco or a lighter might be unremarkable outside. Inside a controlled environment where access is restricted, the same objects can become valuable enough that someone is willing to take extraordinary measures to keep them.

A Different World Behind the Walls

This is one of the reasons Reggie’s Jail Diary is such an important part of the archive. Official documents can tell us when Reggie was sentenced, where he was incarcerated and when he was released. They cannot easily tell us what it felt like to live there.

Reggie can.

His diary records arguments with correctional officers, relationships with other prisoners, boredom, anger, medications, drugs, institutional rules and the small routines of everyday prison life. Sometimes the most revealing details are the ones Reggie himself barely stops to explain.

The June 15 entry is a good example. To most people reading it today, the idea of hiding tobacco and a lighter inside one’s body is extraordinary. Reggie included it in a sentence.

That difference in perspective tells us something about how accustomed he had become to an environment very different from life outside.

How Did Contraband Get Into Jail?

Reggie’s account also raises another question. Keestering could be used to hide something from discovery, but it does not explain how prohibited items—particularly drugs—came to be inside a correctional institution in the first place.

Elsewhere in Reggie’s Jail Diary, drugs and other contraband appear often enough to raise an obvious question:

If Reggie was inside a secure correctional institution, how were drugs getting in?

That deserves its own story. Rather than assume that present-day methods or conditions applied to the institutions Reggie experienced, that story should begin where this one did—with Reggie’s own writings—and then use historical sources to understand the correctional system in which he was living.

For now, this small passage from June 15 gives us something unusually valuable: a glimpse of prison life not from an official report or institutional record, but from Reggie himself.