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America's Hardest Prisons

All Episodes 2006
TV-G

  • Ended
  • #<Network:0x00007f898ff7d990>
  • 2006-05-07T14:30:00Z
  • 1h
  • 1h (1 episode)
  • United States
  • Documentary
Find out what goes on inside America’s most dangerous prisons. Visit the institutions where hardened criminals try to break all the rules every day and meet the prison officers who try to keep them in line. Discover the stories behind the inmates who are kept there. For some, life on the inside is all they know. For others, only thoughts of their loved ones keep them on the right track. And for those who want to go straight, their biggest challenge comes when they try to make a new life on the outside. Beginning with a guided tour of Stateville Correctional Facility, in Chicago, Illinois, by Sgt. Baldwin, a 16-year veteran. He expresses the importance of the outside world to inmates and how it keeps them sane. It turns out family, romance and friendship are the things that make life go around, even among ‘the worst of the worst’.

37 episodes

Series Premiere

2006-05-07T14:30:00Z

1x01 The Stabbing

Series Premiere

1x01 The Stabbing

  • 2006-05-07T14:30:00Z1h

Season Premiere

2x01 Boiling Point

Season Premiere

2x01 Boiling Point

  • no air date1h

With more thieves, drug dealers and addicts entering each month, how do under-resourced staff cope when a prison reaches breaking point?

In Utah State Prison one in four of the prisoner population has gang ties. Gangs battling gangs and extreme loyalty - but this time it's behind bars

2x03 Last Chain Gang

  • no air date1h

Phoenix, Arizona prides itself on keeping jail costs low, making inmates labour for their upkeep in the nation's only chain gang.

Follow three new recruits as they face the challenges of officer training at the tough and isolated prison in Rawlins, Wyoming.

Ironwood Correctional Facility is set in the middle of the desert. When a riot breaks out, the 81 prisoners have some tough decisions to make.

2x06 Young And Bad

  • no air date1h

Iowa separates its youthful offenders from their hardened adult prisons. But is housing 1,100 young convicts together a breeding ground for trouble?

Season Premiere

3x01 Gang Wars

Season Premiere

3x01 Gang Wars

  • no air date1h

Pelican Bay State Prison is home to some of the world's most dangerous gang members. From behind bars, leaders of gangs still run their organisations.

3x03 Iron Grip

  • no air date1h

North Carolina's Alexander Correctional Institution is a fortress that houses some of America's most hardened criminals. Tough rules and regulations make it a prison all convicts want to avoid.

3x04 Gangland

  • no air date1h

Rival white and Mexican gangs have turned California's Salinas Valley State Prison into a war zone. What will happen when the lockdown, imposed since two prison officers were stabbed, is lifted?

3x05 Women Behind Bars

  • no air date1h

California's Valley State Prison houses nearly 4,000 female inmates. Enter a world riddled with drugs and danger, where hundreds of babies are born to incarcerated mums.

Season Premiere

4x01 Surviving Stateville

  • no air date1h

Built in 1925 and aging badly, Stateville Correctional is a dangerous place filled with dangerous men, nearly all serving 20 years minimum.

Prison is hard, but getting out can be even harder. Most inmates leave with less than $200, needing a job and a bed before the cash runs out.

4x03 Bad Girls

  • no air date1h

At the Wayne County Jail, officers and counsellors struggle to rehabilitate female offenders, including thieves, drug addicts and prostitutes.

4x04 Kids Behind Bars

  • no air date1h

Colorado's Youthful Offender System aims to break down criminal habits and gang mentalities, from first-time convicts to street-savvy veterans.

4x05 Frontier Jail

  • no air date1h

Even Alaska has its share of bad guys, from drunk drivers to sex offenders, robbers to murderers, and there are 12 prisons to house them.

4x06 Marked For Death

  • no air date1h

With sex offenders making up 75 per cent of its inmates, Fremont Correctional Facility is one of Colorado's most complicated prisons.

Season Premiere

5x01 Chaos Control

Season Premiere

5x01 Chaos Control

  • no air date1h

Drunk drivers, drug dealers, petty thieves and killers make trouble for themselves and officers processing them in St Louis County Jail's open central booking area, before they're assigned to cells.

Behind the big electric fence at one Colorado prison, inmates have resorted to classic convict behaviour. Gangs and other illegal activities flourish here, posing serious problems for officers.

5x03 Mexican Lockdown

  • no air date1h

Just south of the US-Mexico border, notorious Mexican prison Cedes houses a number of criminals linked to dangerous and influential drug cartels.

5x04 Judgement Day

  • no air date1h

Meet the officers trying to protect Cuyahoga County Jail from the spread of the Heartless Felons – one of Ohio's deadliest prison gangs.

Go inside one of America’s most dangerous prisons where hardened criminals may be female, but it's just as difficult to keep them in line.

Season Premiere

6x01 Gang central

Season Premiere

6x01 Gang central

  • no air date1h

Officers at Denver County Jail must transfer gangbangers to a new facility, dealing with homemade weapons, the criminally insane and a triple murderer who’s found a way to stop his cell from locking.

6x02 San Antonio gang war

  • no air date1h

Bexar County Jail in San Antonio, Texas is in the middle of a gang war between the highly organised Mexican Mafia and the young, hot-headed Tango Orejons who used to do the Mafia’s dirty work.

With room for 4,000 inmates, Hillsborough County Jail is one of the biggest in Florida. The biggest threat from its addicts, burglars and murderers isn’t drugs or gangs, it’s attacks against officers.

6x04 Chaos in California

  • no air date1h

Sacramento County Jail faces a huge problem: maintaining order in a highly overcrowded prison full of inmates accused of everything from drugs to kidnapping to torture, with very few officers.

6x05 Lockdown: County jail

  • no air date1h

As Portland Police arrest more thieves, drug dealers and addicts, the jail runs out of room for its 700 inmates. Lacking space, staff and the resources to house new prisoners, where will they fit?

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