World’s Toughest Maximum Security Prisons – Big Bigger Biggest (Part 1)

foreign just over 200 kilometers from Washington DC behind a ring of lethal razor wire stands one of the most secure prisons in the world hundreds of cameras bulletproof cells that lock without keys [Music] and an arsenal of weapons to contain the prisoners Step Up this is North Branch Correctional Institution a masterpiece of prison design [Music] North Branch owes its existence to a series of landmark lock-ups at the heart of each lies a breakthrough in prison design but made each jail harder to escape from than the last one by one traveling up the scale we'll reveal the incredible Stories Behind these structures and the inventions that have allowed prisons to evolve four ingenious leaps forward that have made prisons safer tougher and bigger [Music] pretty much North Branch Correctional Institution is a Maximum Security Prison and it has to be over 900 of its 1400 inmates are convicted killers to keep them locked up and safe from each other North Branch is brooming technology all right stand up body scanning machines unbreakable cells and powerful non-lethal weapons all designed to give officers the edge in the daily cat and mouse game with the prisoners if you worked in prisons as long as I have you never say never there's little simple things that you don't think about that you put your guard down they're going to beat you stand how North Branch can keep so many violent offenders under lock and key we need to travel back in time in 12th century England the king wants to build a fortress that doesn't just keep his enemies out [Music] but also keeps his prisoners securely locked inside [Music] when William the Conqueror invades England in 1066 he builds A Mighty Fortress in the middle of London the great tower it is the biggest building in the capital designed to keep the king safe and show the English whose boss the tower is really built to owe all the londoners and to impress Williams power on them but it was also used as many castles were as a prison Through the Ages the tower has held some of history's most famous prisoners and Berlin Sir Walter rally and the princes in the tower [Music] but as formidable as the tower looks today it wasn't always so [Music] in the 11th century there's only the great tower in the center to hold the prisoners [Music] surrounded by the massive Roman city walls and the ditch behind a wooden wall called a palisade [Music] in 1100 the great tower receives its first prisoner ranol flambard arrested for extortion but he doesn't plan to stay for very long flambard was Bishop bishop and we know he's brought here in September 1100 but by February the following year he's planned his Escape flambard's plan is to outwit his guards the conditions for prisoners as far as we can tell we're flambod will be pretty good because part of his Escape Plan is the fact that he's able to bring in a whole Feast for his guards seems that he drank them onto the table when they were drunk and snoring as the chronicle says he then went to the barrel of wine which had a rope hidden inside it took the Rope out attached it to the window bar and climbed down the outside of the Tower and escaped soon as flambard overcomes the walls of the great tower only a low wooden wall stands between him and a life of freedom [Music] the breakout exposes a major weakness in the tower's security [Music] there was only one layer of Defense at that point um really there was just a sort of ditch that would have filled with water and a wooden Palisade so he didn't have to go through many layers to get out the tower stays like this for many years until King Richard the lionheart decides to boost its defenses places the wooden Palisade with a mighty stone wall around it he digs out a moat floods it with water from the River Thames [Music] but the Thames is tidal so the moat keeps draining away takes another hundred years and the help of a Dutchman to solve this Plumbing problem once and for all the answer comes from an unexpected place canals we know which list brought in from Flanders a man called Walter we know at this stage that he does use technology to keep bought it in the moat we know that he has sluice gates at either end of the moat so a bit like a lock on a canal it's designed to hold the water I mean the Thames is incredibly tidal here the king builds yet another wall and widens the moat then his Dutch engineer put sluice Gates into the outer wall When the tide comes in Gatekeepers open the sluices to fill up the moat and then close them again to trap the water inside and this is the moat that still survives today it's about 50 meters across and at the time would have been about 15 meters deep so really serious defense the massive moat seals the tower's reputation as an impregnable Fortress and an inescapable prison but the mighty walls it's kept thousands of prisoners safely locked up through the centuries right up until 1941. Tower's concept of multiple layers of Defense still influences the design of Prisons today [Music] North Branch takes this idea to the extreme prisoners here have all the time in the world to contemplate life on the other side of the fence but there are so many hurdles to overcome that the chance of Escape is remote first of all the correctional officers or cos are not as easily fooled as flambard's drunken Tower guards [Music] sir Step Up step to the door open Charlie 41 4. be honest we trust no one we have to make sure inmates do not get disguises of visitors or take staff uniform and try to walk out the front door face the wall I'll pat you down real quick before we put you back in the Southbridge a lot of times it's staff negligence and that's why they keep our staff on their toes you don't take anything for granted okay step in the cell sir [Music] Dino pantes is serving a life sentence for having his wife killed don't see where anyone can plan on Escape in this institution this institution is very secure I work in the grounds unit when you're out there on a hot summer day and you look up you see a shotgun sticking out of this house they take security seriously around here any prisoner pondering Escape faces a barrage of physical obstacles the Tower of London had four layers of Defense North Branch has seven its cells are made from extremely tough concrete they're cemented into a cell block controlled by CCTV all the cell blocks are identical to confuse prisoners the large open space around the blocks is monitored by guards in watchtowers the first perimeter fence is four meters tall and has microwave sensors that automatically trigger searchlights Beyond this sits the ultimate Escape barrier the outer fence which is covered with a special type of wire that has razor-sharp edges engineer gems Stansfield is about to tackle a small section of this simple but effective barrier this is my razor wire moat now it's made up of coils of high tensile steel wire and onto those coils a fixed punched out razor-sharp barbs it's exceptionally difficult to get through now I'm going to have a go see how far I can get to give us an idea of just how it does what it does immediately you feel like the tension in the wires is stopping you getting anywhere and what oh I'm now properly stuck the way this stuff grips into my clothes is such that I can't go forwards and I can't go backwards it's because the shape of these barbs now a well-tooled up prisoner may have some kind of wire cutters the thing is with razor wire it has a reputation because of the tension in that high tensile steel of pinging where you don't expect it if you try and cut it slightly nervous all right that's got my arm now that's actually quite a struggle to get that out I'm going to give up I don't want to go any further if I persevere which I can do it's only going to cause me more physical damage I've got some animal skin here if I were to push it in here it gets stuck on these barbs in such a way that the more you struggle the more it bites in and it gets to a point where to get out you have to rip a hole in yourself North Branch Correctional Institution is surrounded by row upon row of razor wire the warden here knows its value from an escape attempt at another prison I've had pulley made out of wire because he tried to escape you get caught up pretty bad we had to wear leather welders outfit to go in to keep us from getting cut it is nearly impossible to breach all seven barriers at North Branch [Music] every inmate's probably thought about escaping but it's the furthest thing from my mind easiest way to get out of prison is through the court system back in 1300 the Tower of London shows that many layers of fortification make a prison more secure but as prisons grow bigger it gets harder to monitor the inmates to build the biggest prison in America Architects must separate the prisoners but keep an eye on every single one of them [Music] oh [Music] in 1829 social reformers in Philadelphia build the biggest prison of its day Eastern State Penitentiary it's based on a revolutionary idea they believe the secret of making a person remorseful penitent was to lock them away from society and give them time to look into their hearts so this new philosophy led to a new word of penitentiary a place to make someone look into their heart and become truly remorseful at the time Eastern State is a technological Wonder every cell has running water Central Heating and flush toilets luxuries that not even the president can enjoy at the White House so here we are in a typical Eastern State cell it's about eight feet wide about 12 feet deep it's got a 12 foot Barrel vaulted ceiling with a skylight which we're meant to bring down the light of God almost like a monastery with an inmate living in silence and contemplation they're going to eat in the cell sleep in the cell work in the cell Worship in the cell this was their entire world the concept of isolating prisoners like this is groundbreaking before Eastern State most prisons crowd all the inmates men women and children together Under One Roof these jails are overcrowded dirty and a breeding ground for crime in the 18th century Architects start thinking about ways to solve this problem English philosopher Jeremy Bentham comes up with a clever idea [Music] he knows that holding lots of prisoners in a single space is a recipe for trouble [Music] locked away in separate cells prisoners are hard to watch Bentham arranges the cells in a circle and stacks them in layers he puts a watchtower in the middle so a single guard can see into every sound only to make this prison bigger it has to either grow unfeasibly wide or impossibly tall [Music] the legacy of bentham's idea lives on at Eastern State its layout is so clever that just a few guards can monitor hundreds of prisoners with ease they're still the central Hub of bentham's design but the cells are arranged in long arms radiating out from the center there's one guard in the middle and one patrolling each of the corridors thanks to this radial design a handful of guards can watch over hundreds of prisoners who can never be sure when they're being watched [Music] this was the 1820s version of like a video surveillance system the central surveillance Hub in the middle of the building and surrounded by radiating spokes like a wheel so a single officer could turn on his heel and see down all the seven corridors in this prison there is nowhere to hide the cells even have holes in the ceiling for the ever watchful eye of God eastern state becomes the most famous prison on the planet 300 prisons all over the world copy its design that makes surveillance so easy when it closes down after 142 years it's held over 75 000 prisoners North Branch Correctional Institution takes the idea of surveillance to the extreme there are no cameras in the cells here but the rest of the prison is closely guarded by CCTV [Music] I feel that this institution is very safe I came from another institution where when you take a shower you watch yourself this institution if there isn't a CO watching you there's a camera watching it when it comes to surveillance North Branch has got it covered but the cameras don't see everything they always say if you take an inmate with no clothes on throw them out of an airplane when he hits the ground you have a weapon it's just amazing how they conceal it you can remove your hands from the wall smuggled Contraband is a massive problem even in a high-tech prison so at North Branch prisoners must face the boss this is the boss chair body orifice security scanner scans the body for any kind of metal go around to the front of the machine step up and carefully turn around take a seat you have any metal on you all right we have a watch anything else no sir all right try again turn around and again have a seat make sure your back is we've removed an enormous amount of Contraband from these institutions every single drug stash or cell phone that we take out of these institution represents a an officer going home at the end of a shift safe and sound because the violence that's perpetrated on behalf of this Contraband is intense this is the special Squad that fights one of the most lethal weapons in a prisoner's Arsenal [Music] a mobile phone [Music] cell phones are extremely dangerous inside of a prison the cell phones allow them to circumnavigate the security system and arrange drops of Narcotics they can even arrange hits against the witnesses against them and also Correctional staff they can arrange to try to hurt them as well on the outside to you and I a cell phone has no smell to a dog it has a multiple composite smell which in the dog's brain we have trained them to associate that composite smell with their toy the net dog's Natural Instincts is to hunt and find things so he actually thinks he's trying to find his toy thank you oh boy Motorola cell phone good job good enough got it whereas a correctional officer would have to spend hours and hours searching for this Contraband the dog can localize it to a very small area very quickly so in that regard he's worth 20 or 30 correctional officers just one single dog all right cell 44. last year the K-9 unit at North Branch flushed out 269 phones well we have one inmate that had two cell phones on the charger up his rear we could not go take it from him but we can put him in a Cell until he gives it to us which means he's isolated and he'll eventually get tired of it being in that location and give up because we know we're going to get it one way or the other in 1829 Eastern State Penitentiary shows that tight surveillance is the key to building big prisons but as prisoners become ever more ingenious simply watching them is not enough Engineers building Alcatraz the world's most secure prison have to make sure that its cells are totally escape proof in the 1930s America is hit by a wave of organized crime the FBI spends many years trying to catch and convict Mobsters like Al Capone when they finally arrest him they must make sure he stays locked up to contain this new breed of super gangster the US government plans to build a super prison they find the perfect location an island in the middle of San Francisco Bay called Alcatraz [Music] on the island is an old military fort sitting in a deep pit cut into the Rock workers demolish the old building and build three stories of Steel reinforced concrete cell blocks on top [Music] one of the 600 cells has any contact to the outer walls they're a prison within a prison each cell is fitted with unbreakable steel Gates which have no keys but can be operated remotely Alcatraz is the biggest concrete structure in the world and supposedly the most secure prison on the planet Bob Luke arrives in Alcatraz in 1954 looking forward to 12 years on the rock the boat made a wide turn and then I could see the island and first I saw the houses down the bottom and then looked up and the prison was sitting up on top of the island so that was my first glimpse of Alcatraz it looked like to me like a French Chateau but I knew that this was an old country home this is going to be my prison for several years of course we all went through the Alcatraz it was going to be at the end of the line Alcatraz is the last stop for America's most dangerous and violent offenders this is my mug shot it was taken uh the first day I got here in April 1954. it's just a young thug that beats you up positions look at you hold up Banks I was a burglar a car thief sort of 11 or 12 years in prison for all that so I was I was a different guy keep people like young Bob safely locked up Engineers fit the cell doors with an extremely tough kind of prison bar when they opened the prison up in 1934 these all were done over with tool steels you can't cut these bars even if you had a hacksaw blade they're impossible there's a heavy hardened tool steel inside this bar I used to come in at 12 o'clock at midnight and walk these tears counting and I always felt fairly safe you know the doors aren't just Unbreakable they lock without keys they give a whole new meaning to the term The Slammer we've got 13 Doors that we can open from this one box and the officer would yell down the row here rack up just giving them a heads up that the doors are going to be closing because that's where you get the true Sound Of The Slammer and this is part of the punishments of Alcatraz here in this door open and close every day the first time you hear that door slam it's like being entombed you know you just know that this is going to be it for a while Alcatraz looks like the perfect prison a concrete Fortress brimming with technology [Music] it doesn't even need a fence around it as it's surrounded by the icy currents of San Francisco Bay [Music] all right when I used to work the towers I used to see logs maybe eight nine feet long going out with the tide is if it had an outbourne motor on it out it would go oh sure I wanted to try to escape from anywhere but I always thought it was impossible to try here so I just give up even uh you know thinking about it despite all the technology at Alcatraz three inmates go missing in 1962. all that's left of them are three dummies made of soap toilet paper and hair stolen from the barbershop and of course the big holes they've scraped into the concrete walls of their cells with a spoon the cells are back to back with a quarter in between nothing but pipes they call right up to the top and once they got up there they can't be seen it must have took a year or two years of continuous planning kind of amazing how that was allowed to happen [Music] despite a massive search operation there's no trace of the prisoners I don't believe anyone ever escaped from Alcatraz most people don't realize the closest these inmates ever got to water was to take a shower now you could be imagined panic-stricken two three o'clock in the morning jumping into that bay no way my Impressions is that they got into the water they may have got out 100 yards or so and then goodbye whether the man escaped or not the fate of Alcatraz is sealed an investigation reveals that the supposedly escape proof concrete is to blame for the Breakout Alcatraz uses seawater to flush the toilets it trickles from leaky pipes and seats into the walls brick chips in the concrete soak up the water and swell like sponges wedging open fissures in the walls eventually the reinforcing steel bars expand as they rust and cracked the concrete even more after 30 years the formerly super strong walls are so crumbly that they're not even a match for a spoon The Leaky concrete would cost Millions to repair so in 1963 Alcatraz closes its doors for the last time but the lessons from the rock live on [Music] North Branch still uses concrete cells but they're made from an extremely durable type of concrete each cell is built in a factory in Pennsylvania the whole cell is cast as a single piece of concrete to make sure it's Flawless or for North Branch we produce 508 double modules each double weighs approximately 25 tons inside the cell walls is a cage of tightly spaced steel wire the steel is placed in a grid it serves the purpose of reinforcing the concrete but it also serves as a security barrier so that the inmates aren't able to Tunnel through the concrete foreign [Music] and then they pour in a secret concrete mixture designed to make the cell super strong it looks like a simple job but the workers have to be careful not to introduce any flaws into the cell walls so you got to keep the concrete coming up even on both sides as the concrete hardens workers draw samples and cast them into cylinders then they test them to destruction this concrete's probably twice as strong as what people have in the driveways at home [Music] this machine puts pressure on the concrete until it cracks it must survive over 3000 tons per square meter you can see in the cylinder a little bit of failure right here it didn't Crush everything through this is still capable of withstanding at least that much force again and even the parts that are not made of concrete are super tough frames and the window frames are actually cast with the module and they're virtually impossible to remove the glass that goes inside the window frames is extremely thick and able to resist impacts by hammers by gunshots by whatever the prisoner could even think to throw at it the bolts that we use to attach the fixtures can't be removed by normal Tools in some cases the head of the bolt actually breaks off by Design in other cases the security Fasteners use a special head design that can't be purchased by people off the street [Music] no one has ever escaped from any of ourselves today our cells are escape proof why do I feel like I just jinxed ourselves the cells are shipped from the factory to the prison and assembled into a seamless cell block thick steel doors close the only remaining Gap all the pipes and wires run through the concrete wall into a small void in the corner called the pipe Chase even if a prisoner could break through the concrete into the pipe Chase he'd be no closer to escaping all right this is the pipe Chase leading to the um toilet in the sink areas it doesn't go anywhere it's concreted off at the top and concreted off at the bottom if the sink were to be pulled off of the wall there's a rebarb through the concrete right there and there is nowhere to go if they were to get into the pipe Chase they're in the pipe Chase they can't go anywhere the cells in North Branch don't need CCTV inside them because they're totally tamper-proof [Music] what we have here is one of the cells that we use the house inmates typically they're double bunk cells like the one that you see here right here we have a sink in the toilet combination also above it you can see we have a sprinkler system in case somebody tries to catch something on fire most of the stuff that's in here is non-flammable the stuff that is flammable it's not going to burn anywhere but itself because there's no other fuel sources for it we have a clear plastic television they can't really hide anything in there um if they take it apart we can kind of see where they took pieces out of it most Electronics in here are clear plastic so they can't take pieces out use the metal as a weapon or store weapon drugs anything of the sword in there everything has a security rivet can't just fashion a type of screwdriver or some sort to get in there you'd have to really be good at what you're doing to get a security screw off thank you [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Element 18

Views: 365,832

Keywords: nbci, high, tech, hyper, max, supermax, masterpiece, design, lockup, structure, architecture, evolution, convicted, technology, unbreakable, scanning, warden, element18, mighty, fortress, castle, famous, construction, escape, conditions, breakout, weakness, impregnable, break, moat, razor, wire, sentence, sensors, ultimate, philadelphia, maryland, concept, isolation, inmates, overcrowding, guard, patrol, concealed, contraband, organised, crime, gangster, rock, slammer, perfect, cage, concrete, improvised, solitary, confinement

Id: M881Px5izXM

Length: 36min 59sec (2219 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023