The BEST episodes of Hard Time (2011) season 2

Every episode of Hard Time (2011) season 2, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Hard Time (2011) season 2!

Ever wonder what life is like inside a maximum security prison? In this National Geographic series, producers lived within the prison walls, capturing the day to day life of inmates and correctional officers.

Last Updated: 10/24/2024Network: National GeographicStatus: Ended
star
7.33
9 votes

#1 - Prison City

Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/1/2011

Ross Correctional Institution is a gated city. Every inmate must make a choice: Use his sentence to prepare for a life on the outside, or fall prey to the convict mentality which on the inside is called getting institutionalized.

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star
7.25
8 votes

#2 - The Hustle

Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/1/2011

Go inside the underground prison economy at Ohio's Ross Correctional Institution and see inmates try their hands at different money-making strategies. A "jailhouse thief" brings his street ways within jailhouse walls, brutally robbing inmates and selling their possessions. A drug dealer on a 27-year sentence for attempted murder struggles to stay "clean" after getting caught up selling contraband at the orientation prison.

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star
7.09
11 votes

#3 - Breaking the Rules

Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/8/2011

A high-stakes game of cat and mouse plays out at Ross Correctional Institution in Ohio. On one side, you have the inmates: men who've spent a lifetime breaking the rules and outwitting the system. On the other is a team of officers who monitor every corner of the prison and work to catch the offenders red-handed. There are rule breakers: a drug hustler trying to run his game behind bars, an old-school inmate, a jailhouse lawyer subverting the system and a lone wolf with one too many strikes.

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star
6.91
11 votes

#4 - Worst of the Worst

Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 3/15/2011

With more attacks on inmates and staff than any other facility in Ohio, Lucasville is the jail within the prison system. Fight, extort, run contraband or break the rules in any other prison in the state and you could be sent here. With some of the strictest controls of any prison, new arrivals at Lucasville spend 23 hours a day on lockdown with little movement and even fewer privileges. But even in such a restricted setting, the hustles and gambles of prison life continue.

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star
6.50
6 votes

#5 - Against the Wall

Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/22/2011

Enter the locked-down world of Ohio's intake prison. For the newly convicted, the Correctional Reception Center (CRC) in Orient, Ohio, is their last view of the free world. More than 14,000 inmates are sized up each year at CRC and moved on to serve out their sentences. From robbers to murders and rapists, CRC sees it all. And while most follow the rules and do their time peacefully, some inmates come in with their own agenda, ready to make trouble.

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star
6.40
5 votes

#6 - Prison Gangs

Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 3/1/2011

In prison, every day is a fight for survival. An inmate's most important weapon may not be a shank or a razor, but instead a gang membership. With more than 1,400 classified gangs in the Ohio prison system, inmates are joining up in alarming numbers.

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star
6.33
6 votes

#7 - Female Offenders

Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/15/2011

Forget what you thought you knew about women behind bars: theyre the fastest growing prison population in America, and one of the toughest to manage. At the Ohio Reformatory for Women, the system is tested daily by every kind of female offender: from capital murderers, to nursery mothers - and everything in between. Behind these bars, there are "pseudo-families" instead of gangs, infants being raised by inmates, and a complicated web of contraband trades and power plays. This is a world of women unlike any youve ever seen.

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star
5.83
6 votes

#8 - Back on the Streets

Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 3/8/2011

Almost all of the inmates in Ohio's Ross Correctional Institution for drugs, robbery or murder will be released back into the community someday. But withdrawing from the temptations of gang life, gambling and dark hustles is a steep challenge. After years behind bars, prison can seem more like home than the outside world. The last few months of an inmate's sentence are a time for him to unlearn the prison mentality. Follow inmates nearing the end of weeks, months or years of imprisonment

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