by Leah Eclavea

Guam - Following the proclamation signing by Governor Eddie Calvo declaring Corrections Week, one activity the Department of Corrections was hosting is a tour of the facilities. One aspect to see is the amount of art that inmates and detainees produce. KUAM News visited the Mangilao facility and viewed art projects the detainees in Post 18 created, all entirely made up of paper and Elmer's Glue.

Detainee Dan Santos explained how he and his fellow inmates craft up these creative ideas, saying, "We do paper projects just keep our time occupied we get recycled paper we recycle it into projects first we do the rolling, the assembling, then the painting with the shoe polish and stuff."

Santos has been detained at DepCor's main facility for over three years. He says majority of the projects they build is given to their families, to residents who request for them as well as donated to government agencies. "The more paper we have the more projects we can come up with," he added.

With 22 hours of day in confinement, such are the type of activities inmates use in order to pass the time while being detained. The detainees push their creative minds by using the limited resources to make items like a picture frame ferris wheel, crabs, latte stones, turtles and more. The materials are all either donated or bought by the inmates. "When we get our incoming $5 we buy newspapers or sometimes we get lucky with some discarded newspapers from people," said Santos.

Other art works that can be seen at the facilities - all entirely put together by the DepCor population - include a variety of woodwork, such as desk and chairs made from pallets, and 3-D characters crochet using yarn.