‘60 Days In’ shines light on surviving nightmare prison system

A SHAMELESS reality TV show that drops ordinary people inside one of the harshest jails is back. And this time, it’s scary.

How would you feel if you were thrown into jail and faced with this?

A SHAMELESS reality TV show that drops ordinary people inside one of the harshest jails for two months is back with a vengeance.

If you’ve been living under a rock (or have a modicum of self-respect), you may have missed phase one of Sherrif Noel’s loopy experiment set inside the even loopier Clark County Jail.

Eight innocent Americans go undercover as first-time inmates inside an ailing prison.

Footage for the series is recorded on the security cameras at Clark County Jail in Indiana and via face-to-face interviews with a mock documentary crew pretending to film “first time inmates” talking about their experiences.

Sherrif Noel, the man who runs the prison and is credited with coming up with the concept, claims the inmates are there to gather intel on what happens when the correctional officer’s aren’t around in order to improve the institution’s efficiency.

Each inmate is given a detailed cover story and an arduous two-month sentence, and only the Sherrif, the prison Captain, and their closest loved one’s have any idea what’s going on.

The show may not have its ethics completely intact, but nobody can deny this is some real-life sh*t.

In the second season, eight brave, fame-hungry souls are opting for the orange/green jumpsuit, and of course, as this is 60 Days In’s sophomore endeavour, the producer’s have ratcheted up the crazy — and then some.

FEMALE INMATE’S FIRST NIGHT: ‘DO YOU F**K GIRLS?’

Take Ashleigh, the wife of contestant Zach from season one and recovering booze and drug addict. Soft, healthy looking and easy on the eye, Ashleigh is the last person you’d expect to see in prison, and her new inmates sniff her out like a pack of hungry dogs, rewarding her with the worst night of her life thus far.

“Do you f**k girls?” a sleazy inmate asks not long after a group of girls pressure Ashleigh into turning around and lowering her pants. Reduced to a piece of meat, the stay-at-home mum is made to hold the position for what seems like forever.

That night, Ashleigh doesn’t get a wink of sleep, thanks to the sounds of rampant sex, and particularly worryingly, the consumption of hard drugs.

For the former addict, and seemingly submissive Ashleigh, this is a true test of her strength.

Ashleigh is almost immediately placed in an uncomfortable position, and made to hold it.

WHO WANTS A PIECE OF BRIAN?

Ryan is an Army Reserve medic whose articulate way of speaking makes other inmates question whether or not he’s a mole. Luckily, his white-collar cover story is impeccable, and he regales his fellow crims with the believable details of committing cheque fraud.

When Ryan is invited up to the upper-echelons of the cellblock, Sherrif Noel expresses concern that the young idealist is getting in too deep, a concern that’s quickly quashed after the show’s most intense fist fight to date.

Using real-world skills to his advantage, Ryan tends to the wound of the man who won the fight — the enigmatic Garza. Shifting the crim’s knuckle back into position and saving him a trip to the infirmary, Ryan establishes his role in the cellblock.

But now that Garza and co. need Ryan, how deep will he be forced to go?

MALE PRISONERS SIZE UP THE NEW KID

As an lawyer for the department of corrections, what Brian knew of prison was only ever theoretical. He’s entered phase two of the program in an effort to face the realities of his chosen industry.

Before being assigned a pod, Brian is sent to the jam-packed classification room, all chubby and softly spoken and screaming insecurity. It takes nary a minute for the room full of criminals to size him up and conclude the man is weak. And boy do these men have fun with the weak.

Within moments, Brian’s personal space is intervened by two brutes, who proceed to play with his hair and running their fingers down his neck purely effort to elicit maximum discomfort. Another crim accosts Brian without wearing any clothes, which everyone in classification finds hilarious.

Another inmate takes it further, sending others into hysterics as he tries to slip into Brian’s bed.

As Brian himself notes, it seems the game is “who can make homosexual advances at Brian?”

Only 59 days left for Brian. Who’s putting money on him bailing?

Watch as these three and five other bold, innocent souls brave two months in this overcrowded, underfunded hell hole, and tell me reality TV isn’t well and truly falling off the deep end?

Either way, this is delicious, compulsively watchable trash, and from September 28 on Foxtel’s CI channel you can get your meat-hooks into season two of 60 Days In.

— Jeremy Cassar is a screenwriter and novelist from Sydney. He’s used his skills as a judgemental bast**d to wrote his latest masterpiece, How to Spot a Hipster.

— Additional reporting by Rohan Smith.