The BEST Episodes of Inside the World's Toughest Prisons

#1 - Norway: The perfect prison?

Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired Dec 14, 2018

Many prisons aim to punish and demean inmates. Norway's Halden Prison -- as Raphael Rowe is about to see for himself -- does things differently.

7.93

15 votes

#2 - Romania: the Romans prison

Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired Dec 14, 2018

7.64

14 votes

#3 - Colombia: the drug prison

Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired Dec 14, 2018

7.60

15 votes

#4 - Brazil: The Gang Prison

Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired Jul 6, 2018

Investigative journalist Raphael Rowe spends a few days -- both as a guard and a prisoner -- inside Brazil's gang-filled Porto Velho Penitentiary.

7.55

22 votes

#5 - Costa Rica: the prison on the hill of ruin

Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired Dec 14, 2018

7.46

13 votes

#6 - Papua New Guinea: The Breakout Prison

Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired Jul 6, 2018

Raphael Rowe visits the short-staffed Bomana Prison in Papua New Guinea, where near-constant food shortages keep the facility on the brink of chaos.

7.31

16 votes

#7 - Belize: The Prison That Found God

Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired Jul 6, 2018

In Belize Central Prison, the inmates are told that rehabilitation comes through God. Raphael Rowe investigates if this evangelical approach works.

7.29

14 votes

#8 - Philippines

Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired Feb 18, 2016

Paul spends time in the Rizal City Jail, known for being both overcrowded and housing impoverished prisoners. Here he shares a cell with a murderer and a rapist. He also explores how the Bahala Na gang rules a prison in the country.

7.28

29 votes

#9 - Ukraine: The Prison in a War Zone

Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired Jul 6, 2018

Ukraine's Zhytomyr Prison is operated with a skeleton crew that allows prisoners to freely roam the grounds -- often with potentially dangerous weapons.

7.22

18 votes

#10 - Mexico

Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired Feb 25, 2016

In a television first, crime journalist Paul Connolly is granted access to El Hongo maximum security prison, one of Mexico's toughest jails from where no-one has ever escaped. Isolated in the barren Baja desert of northern Mexico, El Hongo is a concrete fortress of discipline and punishment designed to contain and control over a thousand inmates including hardened cartel gangsters.

7.08

24 votes

#11 - Poland

Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired Feb 11, 2016

Paul serves time in the purpose-built prison in Poland, that was built to hold the worst criminals of the worst. Here he meets a notorious gangland killer and learns how a zero tolerance regime wiped out a prison gang.

7.03

33 votes

#12 - Honduras

Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired Jan 4, 2016

Paul Connolly heads to Honduras, the murder capital of the world, to spend a week living as a prisoner inside one of the most dangerous prisons - Danli Prison.

6.87

38 votes