How did inmates organize themselves in colonial Egypt? In what ways did their resistance affect conditions in, and shape perceptions of, the prison system? This paper studies Egypt’s colonial prisons from the vantage point of its inmates, presented here as both convicts and workers. By foregrounding the experiences of convicts, it reframes and disrupts larger narratives of empire and nation, underlining their mutual indebtedness to the work and activism of prisoners. Penal labor underpinned British colonial rule. Convict quarries supplied the raw material needed for the occupation’s signature infrastructure projects, while prison factories produced everything from home goods to war munitions. British officials trumpeted this output with great fanfare but downplayed the difficult working and living conditions inmates faced. Their silence hid the scale of convict resistance. Between 1900 and 1920, no less than eight major riots rocked Egyptian prisons, rebellions that turned prisons into emblems of colonial despotism in the public imaginary. This paper argues that inmate subculture shaped conditions in Egypt’s colonial prisons and altered the trajectory of official policy. Independent organizing among inmates often forced the colonial state to abandon any pretense of reform and to unleash outright violence and repression instead. Yet, episodic rebellions are only one part of this story. Inmates sustained their connections to the outside world through their families and with the connivance of their corrupt guards. Smuggling flourished, further enabling prisoners to shape the conditions of their imprisonment. Inmates constructed their own social world, both separated from and connected to their lives beyond prison walls. Any history of ordinary prisoners must grapple with the methodological challenge of their archival silence. They did not leave behind any documents in their own voice. To cope with this silence, this paper uses the tools of microhistory to build a fine-grained picture of convict life and to show inmates’ various strategies of survival and adaptation.