Romanian prisoners are pumping out scientific books. Or are they?

Potential Romanian criminal mastermind.

Romania--that little European chestnut best known for goat farming and the gymnastic stylings of Nadia Comăneci--has a law that states a prisoner can have 30 days taken off their term if they publish a book of scientific merit. The law came from the Communist era when imprisoned intellectuals were given incentive to do something worthwhile since they were viewed as generally worthless as laborers. See, kids? It pays to study if you think you'll ever turn to a life of crime.

According to a report, prisoners rarely used that incentive. Then, suddenly, after a crackdown on corruption in recent years sent a number of wealthy elites to prison, the number of books published by Romanian prisoners crept up to 90 in 2014. That leaped to 340 books in 2015.

Reports trickled out of the amazing literary feats occurring inside the prison walls. One 212-page book was allegedly written in 7 hours. Another prisoner, an apparent deadbeat, took 12 hours to write a 180-page book. That's faster than I wrote this sentence.

An investigation behind the blossoming book production points to the wealthy prisoners paying professors at various colleges and universities to ghostwrite the texts. "The quality of the work is poor, and some are bluntly copied," one expert told the Associated Press.

Like you, my faith in the Romanian prison system has been shaken to its core.