Thanks for all your comments about the Mega Jail show. I’m sorry to say I’ve been away all this week so I haven’t been around to soak up a lot of the positive feedback. Anyway, Part 2 is coming this Sunday.

A lot of people commented on how bleak the first installment was. Part 2 offers some glimmers of hope. Every few months the jail system chooses thirty or so of the younger inmates who are guilty of serious usually violent crimes and offers them a second chance: a place in a boot camp programme for four months instead of a long custodial sentence. We follow a cadet troop over the first few weeks, including a guy from the sixth floor of Main Jail called Patrick who’s been in all kinds of trouble.

We also go back to Main Jail and experience more of the weird gladiatorial code, courtesy of an inmate called Johnny Jackson who we meet just as he’s been removed from his cell for beating up a cellmate who “went psych”; and we go to another jail facility in the Miami system, called “TGK”, where we visit the “Special Management Unit” including a guy who’s been in solitary for years and is possibly facing the death penalty for an alleged triple murder. I think my encounter with him, in particular my second visit to his cell, is my favourite section of the whole two hours of Part 1 or Part 2.

I can’t write much more because I have to get to work. If you’re interested in a little more background on my time in Miami there is an interview for the Radio Times website here:

http://www.radiotimes.com/blogs/1314-louis-theroux-on-his-return-to-the-us-penal-system/

And there’s an article I wrote for the BBC website here (featuring a nifty sketch of the cell lay-out):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13457576

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Here is the trailer for Louis’ upcoming documentary “Miami Mega-Jail”.

Enjoy!

Please find additional information about this programme here – Louis Theroux – Miami MegaJail

Trailer

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So we have a new show coming up this Sunday May 22, the first installment of a two-parter entitled Miami Mega-Jail. It’s about life in one of America’s toughest and most violent jails, in particular the two floors of the Main Jail in which many of the most volatile and unmanageable inmates reside. Some of you may recall that we made a documentary about San Quentin prison a few years ago. Believe it or not, what we experienced in Miami was even more extreme. Unlike prisons, the inmates of jails are mostly pre-trial. They have not been convicted and are technically innocent. Something about this atmosphere of uncertainty, as well as the sheer scale of the place (7000 inmates), makes it all the more chaotic and volatile – at least, in the areas reserved for problem inmates.  On the fifth and sixth floors there are up to 24 men per cell and a gladiatorial code exists in which inmates are expected to fight to prove themselves. We taped the two episodes over the course of a couple of months, starting late last year. I’ll post a bit more about it when I have time. That’s it for now!

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