Transcript for Show gives inside look at life behind bars
We have a sneak peek of 60 days in, the gripping show that takes us undercover in our nation’s prisons. New season debuts tonight. Take a look. 60 days in shines a bright light on the brutal realities of jail life. Once I entered the pod, it really feels like this is it. It has really begun. Reporter: The new season on A&E all takes place at the county jail in Florence. But those seven volunteer inmates were given a specific assignment. This gave us the opportunity to identify and address the issues that we thought we were having, so we had three missions this season which is different from all the other seasons. Our missions were to find out what drugs were in our facility, what the gang issues were in our facility and overall facility operations. Reporter: This season also features the first participant who was a prisoner. Abner, a former gang member, now chaplain. I want people to know that people change the system and it gives you the tool. Take advantage of the tools. The number one reason for doing this show is to give back to the community, to society, to my country. And doing something that’s positive. We’re here with the host, our chief legal analyst Dan Abrams. A nice applause there. We heard what motivates Abner. What motivated some of these other people. People go for a variety of different reasons. There have been times when people have gone because they’ve got a family member who is behind bars and want to understand what it’s like. There are people who want to be able to prove to themselves they can overcome it. There are people who have been really fascinated by the prison system either they work with it or they hate it or whatever the case may be, there have been a lot of different motivations for the people who go in, but you can say one thing about everyone who goes in, they’re different when they come out. There’s no question about that. This year the people that went undercover didn’t actually know each other. They did. So this time — previously none of the people actually knew who the other folks were. So they’d kind of be looking around the jail thinking, are there other people who might be undercover here? They didn’t know. This time they knew and the danger with that is you don’t want them immediately congregating together. They can blow someone’s cover. They can blow each other’s cover. You are in a jail with people who don’t know that you are sent in there. These are real prisoners who cannot find out that you are there as part of this program. Which is great for all of us to be able to see something like this. I’m surprised the prisons let this happen. You know, but they’re learning a lot about the jails because you can’t get someone to go undercover in a jail who works for the government for 30 days, 60 days as the case is here. So they get people who literally go undercover for 60 day, they’re providing reports and providing information, they’re talking about how drugs are getting into the prison, into the jails. They’re talking about how gangs are congregating there so they’re really offering and in this case in Pinal county the sheriff there information on how things are happening that are problematic and also with regard to the jail guards as well. Because they don’t know that these folks — so they can say this person was terrific. This person was by the book. You know, this person needs a little more training, et cetera. So a lot of information they can get out of in that there’s no other way to get. It is fascinating stuff. “60 days in” premieres tonight
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
