people drive past prisons every day. >> they're terrified of them. >> or they don't think of them at all, right? it's, kind of, like this forgotten zone. i don't want people to forget about this place. >> the united states federal prison system has 157,000 inmates in its custody and locks

up some of the most dangerous and high profile criminals in the world. tonight, we will take you inside the federal bureau of prisons, an agency in crisis. on the banks of the rome river by a tranquil city park sits the highly secure global headquarters of interpol. 196 countries are members of interpol and share important intelligence about worldwide criminal activity. but there are questions about why some of those countries are still part of its alliance. >> i'm just trying to understand how a country that is being investigated for mass murder can be a member in good standing with interpol. "60 minutes" has discovered tigers roaming in the wilds of colorado and elephants in georgia?

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the united states federal prison system has 157,000 inmates in its custody and locks up some of the most dangerous and high profile criminals in the world. serial killers and terrorists are among those inside its 122

prisons, which includes supermax penitentiaries and minimum security camps. the cost to american tax payers is more than $8 billion a year. tonight, we will take you inside the federal bureau of prisons, an agency in crisis. a series of government investigations has found the bureau's workforce is dangerously understaffed. and inside its women's prisons, there is an alarming pattern of abuse. colette peters is in charge of fixing the prisons. she's the sixth director in six years. >> reporter: this is aliceville, a low security women's prison in rural alabama, where more than 1,400 inmates are serving time. >> people drive past prisons every day. >> they're terrified of them. >> or they don't think about them at all. i's, kind of, like, this forgotten zone. i don't want people to forget about this place. >> reporter: colette peters became director of the bureau of prisons in august 2022.

after a 20-year career in corrections, she's built a reputation as a reformer. >> i love your poster. we are all stronger than we think, aren't we? >> reporter: before becoming director, she was credited with shaping oregon's state prison system by prioritizing staff mental health support and advocating for the compassionate treatment of inmates. >> i have this very early memory in kindergarten where an individual came in with a pocket knife and was marched to the principal's office. and i just remember in that moment saying, i want to help him. >> many people in your custody are there because of horrific crimes. why do they deserve compassion? >> because 95% of them are going to come back to our community some day. and i want them to be productive, tax paying citizens, who no longer commit crimes. >> reporter: but the bureau of prisons is so inadequately staffed, it is struggling to fulfill its mission, rehabilitating inmates and keeping its prisons safe.

government watchdogs have documented disrepair in all of its institutions, requiring more than $2 billion in fixes. and employees rank the bureau of prisons the worst place to work in the federal government. >> it's very rare for the media to be allowed inside a federal prison. why are we here? >> i truly believe in transparency. are we perfect? no. do we have issues we need to resolve? absolutely. but i want people to see the good stuff. >> reporter: we toured aliceville with director peters and saw where inmates live, learn new trades, and work. on this day, sewing sleeping bags for the military, a coveted job because it pays $1.15 an hour. >> you ladies are amazing, and when you leave here, you're going to be incredible. >> this ceremony is for inmates graduating from a faith-based program preparing them for life on the outside, by connecting them with community leaders and teaching them life skills, like

anger management. but the reality is nearly half of federal inmates will end up back behind bars or arrested within three years of getting out. >> a lot of those faces in there, who have so much promise and hope today, could end up right back in here. >> yeah, you know, i think we have a lot of work to do to dial down that recidivism rate. we have to send fewer people to prison for shorter periods of time, and when they're here, do things like that. >> you also have a major staffing issue, and people can't get these classes they need. >> staffing was a problem before the pandemic. so, those recruitment efforts and those retention efforts have gotten hard. >> how many correctional officers do you need on staff to get you out of this staffing crisis? >> so, we hope to have that real number for you and the public very soon. >> that seems like a critical number. how was that not on your desk when you took this job on day one and still not there a year later? >> the good news is this was a problem the bureau was trying to solve before i got here, and

we're in the process of solving it. >> director peters says she expects to have the number of officers needed by october, more than two years after taking office. but shane fausey says he knows what that number is now. >> we're short about 8,000 positions nationwide. >> how bad is it? >> the result is one of us losing our life. and it's that bad. we can't continue with this course. >> reporter: by the union's count, the bureau of prisons is down about 40% of the correctional officers it needs. >> the less supervision you have, the more bad things happen. misconduct increases, violence increases. >> reporter: and because there are not enough officers, the bureau r staff to step in. it's a controversial practice called augmentation. >> teachers, nurses, doctors, food service people, the people that maintain facilities -- >> reporter: they're doing what

now? >> they're in a housing unit supervising offenders. >> reporter: do they have training in that? >> they do. but i can tell you, i'm no better a plumber than they are a correctional officer. i can walk into a housing unit and tell you something's right or something's wrong. you develop that over years of experience. >> reporter: let's break this down. we are talking about hvac repairmen and accountants who are now guarding inmates. that doesn't sound safe. >> so, it is. so, they have the exact same training as the correctional officers. now, what i will say is, augmentation should only be used in the short term. we've used this now to solve a long-term retention and recruitment problem, and that isn't right. >> reporter: on this point, the union and management agree. prison staff, like teachers and doctors, need to be able to do their jobs so that inmates don't lose access to critical services and programs. >> there are buzz phrases. everybody's a correctional

officer first. that sounds good on paper. but if you take the teacher out of the classroom and nobody is teaching the offender the skills to go back out to society, we're just back to warehousing people. >> reporter: while we walk the halls of aliceville, classrooms were packed. but several inmates told us that much of what we saw in our tour was staged. >> am i getting a real look at what life is like in here today? >> absolutely not. >> no, definitely not. >> it's very disrespectful here. >> even though we made mistakes, when we're out here, we're not treated with respect. >> you feel safe here? >> sometimes. >> prison is prison. you see what i'm saying? >> tell me about staffing. >> they're short staffed all the time. there's times where you don't know if you're going to be able to go outside because somebody didn't come to work. >> and if you were to speak up about some of these issues that you're telling me about, what would happen? >> you're going to the shu. >> reporter: the shu, short for

special housing unit, is inside the jail, where inmates are segregated from the general population and rarely let out by themselves. >> making you nervous to talk to me right now? >> a little bit. >> what does the director need to know about aliceville? >> fix it. >> we need the opportunity to grow and rehabilitate. we don't have that here. >> reporter: i talked to a handful of inmate here today, and they say you're getting a cleaned up version of what life is really like. >> i've been doing this work for a long time, so i can see when things have been swept under the rug. i'm not naive. when anybody comes to your house, you clean it up. >> reporter: of all the issues, perhaps done is more disturbing than the rampant sexual abuse of female inmates by the male officers who are supposed to protect them. women are housed in nearly a quarter of prisons, and an investigation found bureau staff have sexually abused prisoners in at least two-thirds of those facilities over the past decade.

aliceville is no exception. three officers have been convicted of sexual abuse since 2020, including one who pleaded guilty earlier this month. >> those are just the cases that we know about. how does this keep happening? >> you can't predict human behavior. but what i can tell you is the things that we're putting in place to manage to that misconduct i think are the right things and sending a clear message that this type of behavior is egregious, horrendous, and unexcusable. >> reporter: but female inmates at a women's prison in northern california accuse director peters and the bureau of prisons of failing to protect them. its official name is federal correctional institutional dublin. but it's known by inmates and staff as the rape club. seven dublin officers, including the warden and the chaplain, have been convicted of sexually abusing nearly two dozen inmates from 2018 to 2021. and this past august, eight inmates filed suit, claiming sexual abuse continues to this day.

>> these are mothers. they're daughters. they're sisters. >> reporter: tess worked as a correctional officer at dublin for 25 years. she resigned in 2022 after she says she was retaliated against for whistleblowing. >> they train us in the red flags to look for. and then when we report, hey, every red flag, this guy meets. you need to go deal with this. they don't do anything. >> what was the chaplain doing that made you suspicious? >> one time i came in on a weekend. he didn't know i was there. his office was dark, and he had an inmate in there with him. and i don't know what they were doing. >> that's a red flag. >> oh, definitely. >> reporter: former officer says she reported the chaplain and other officers she suspected of sexually abusing inmates to an internal affairs investigator but was ignored for years until federal investigators stepped in. >> what happened to the officers you accused?

>> most of them have been or are in the process of being convicted. and a lot of them are named in lawsuits right now. >> how does that make you feel? >> good. >> reporter: the bureau of prisons has a backlog of nearly 8,000 open misconduct investigations, hundreds of which contain allegations of sexual abuse. director peters hired more staff to tackle the backlog, but she says it will take two years to clear those cases. in response to the dublin lawsuit, bureau of prisons lawyers say inmates' claims have been investigated and that no threat remains. >> we've done a tremendous job in the last year rebuilding that culture and creating a institution that is more safe, where individuals feel comfortable coming forward and reporting claims. >> you just used the phrase, "tremendous job" in dublin. eight inmates have filed a class action lawsuit, and they've got testimony from more than 40 current and former dublin

inmates who say that the abuse is ongoing. >> that means the process is working, that they have the ability to come forward, they have the right to bring that class action lawsuit together. >> these dublin inmates say they are facing retaliation for speaking out. >> i have been very clear that retaliation will not be stood on my watch. so, when allegations of retaliation come forward, they are investigated. and we will hold those people accountable. >> it's one thing for you to say that retaliation is not tolerated, but it sounds like it's actually still happening. >> again, i would say those are allegations. i would like to be more grounded in fact, around proven retaliation. >> reporter: the fact is that an additional 19 staff members have been accused of abusing inmates. the bureau says those staff members have been put on leave, new management has been brought in, and there are now working security cameras in areas where inmates were abused. >> what are these victims owed?

>> to have individuals who are in our care who rely on us for their safety and security and to have that be violated, i don't know that you can bring anything that would undo that wrong. >> what about an apology? the victims in dublin say they've never received an apology. >> well, i will tell you that is our mission to keep them safe. that is our job. >> is it your job to apologize for what happened in dublin? >> i don't know that my job is to apologize. is it heartbreaking and horrendous to have something like that happen when you are proud of your profession, as a corrections professional? absolutely. >> reporter: in addition to the lawsuit filed this past august, more than 45 current and former dublin inmates have filed lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by bureau of prison staff. ♪ ♪ you don't have to wait until retirement

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if you're a fan of crime novels and movies, you've probably heard of interpol, the international police organization was started 100 years ago, when 20 countries, including the u.s., came together to fight international crime. today, it has 196 members, connecting the new york police department, scotland yard, police in moscow, mumbai, manila. but for all its good work, interpol has been accused of doing the dirty work of some of its more repressive members. russia, for one, has used interpol to track down people who have run afoul of president vladimir putin. we visited interpol in leone, france, last fall and found an institution trying to navigate the treacherous path between policing and politics. on the banks of the rome river by a tranquil city park cities the highly secure global headquarters of interpol.

for the past decade, it's been led by jurgen stock, a former vice president of the german federal police. >> the purpose of interpol is still the same, connecting police for a safer world. >> reporter: as interpol's secretary general, stock manages operations in leone and regional offices on five continents. 900 employees work at the leone headquarters. many are police officers on loan from member countries, chosen for their expertise. they don't carry guns or make arrests but rather collect and share information with law enforcement agencies around the globe. interpol also has bureaus in each member country, including one in washington, d.c., managed by the departments of justice and homeland security. >> so, what is the main mission of interpol? >> i would describe it as an information broker. we collect, we invite member countries to share information. we do analysis. we enrich the information. interpol's information is

leading to arrests of high-level criminals, murderers, drug traffickers, those who are abusing children all around the world. every single day that happens. >> reporter: last year, interpol coordinated a crackdown on human trafficking and prostitution, operation global chain, that led to 212 arrests in 22 countries and the release of more than 1,400 victims forced into criminality. it's been going after one of the world's most powerful crime organizations, italy based -- thanks to interpol the second most wanted man in italy was arrested in brazil after 23 years on the run. >> we were able to identify him through images that were shared that allowed us to be sure it was the guy. >> tattoos? >> tattoos. >> cyril gout oversees 19

massive databases which are queried 20 million times a day. they are a compendium of crime, piracy, fugitives, elicit firearms, stolen travel documents. >> my role is to make this information available to the end users. >> the members. >> the member countries of interpol. but for me, the customers, the end users. these are the police officers who want to arrest those major criminals and providing them with actionable information everywhere around the world. >> reporter: interpol has a number of ways to alert its members, including a yellow notice for missing persons, a black notice for unidentified bodies. perhaps most important, the red notice, a closely guarded list of 74,000 of the world's most wanted fugitives. with the suspect's name, picture, fingerprints, details of the alleged crime, and the country seeking the arrest. >> the red notice is not an international arrest warrant.

that is also very often misunderstood. >> how would you describe it? it seems like it's a digital wanted poster. >> yes. it's an alert that we are disseminating that somebody is wanted by a member country. >> reporter: each notice is vetted by a task force secretary general stock created to make sre it doesn't violate rules forbidding the use of interpol for political, religious, or racial persecution. but the vetting is not foolproof. >> some of interpol's more repressive members take advantage of red notices, using fabricated charges to locate, detain, and extradite people they want to get their hands on, like political dissidents or innocent people who have merely displeased powerful officials. >> like any information sharing system, the information you get out is only as good as the information you put in. >> rhys davies, on the left, and ben keef are barristers, british lawyers, who help people accused of crimes to navigate interpol's

complex bureaucracy. >> our clients come to us and say, we've been accused in a particular state, which has been fabricated. interpol has taken this at face value, issued a red notice. >> reporter: both concede interpol does a lot of good, despite a yearly budget of $170 million, which is about the size of the omaha police department. >> the constitution says they are meant to believe their member states. so, when a member state -- russia, china, turkey -- whose rule of law is often non-existent say to them, a particular person is wanted for criminal offense, they are bound by the constitution to aleve them. >> does interpol view all the information that comes out of all of them as equal? >> this is one of our main frustrations is the interpol don't penalize countries properly. >> they were never in that club. >> they were never in the club. >> when a country is clearly egregiously breaching the rules,

and manipulating the system on a gross scale, they don't suspend them. they have not suspended russia. russia is still an active member of interpol. >> reporter: russia accounts for nearly half of the red notices interpol makes public. according to a russian police official, its interpol bureau in moscow helped arrest and extradite more than 100 criminals in 2021. and in 2022 helped nab the founder of the world's largest dark net criminal marketplace called hydra. but some of the information russia gives interpol is suspect. members of congress, human rights groups, and the european union have labelled russia a serial abuser of red notices. >> so, russia is widely viewed as being very brazen in its attempts to manipulate the system. the famous example we talk about is bill browder. >> reporter: bill browder is a london-based american-born financier.

he made his fortune in russia, but has spent the last 11 years on the run from president vladimir putin, after he and his lawyer exposed corruption by russian government officials. his lawyer was arrested and died after being beaten in a moscow prison. browder was convicted in absentia on suspect fraud charges. the kremlin turned to interpol to bring him in. >> so, how many times, by your count, has russia tried to arrest you by way of interpol? >> eight times. i must hold the guinness book of world records for the number of times they've tried to abuse interpol. >> reporter: his closest call came in 2018, when he was visiting spain. >> i opened the door of the hotel. and outside the door, just about to knock, is the manager of the hotel and two uniformed officers from the spanish police. i pull out my passport, i hand it to the -- one of the two police officers.

and he said, you're under arrest. and i said, what for? and he said, interpol, russia. >> reporter: the hotel manager told him to collect his things from the bedroom. once out of sight, browder grabbed his phone and sent out this tweet. >> at the time, i had about 100,000 followers, and i tweeted out, urgent, being arrested in madrid, spain, right now. >> that was quick thinking. >> this is not the first time i had this worry. they'd been chasing me with interpol for a long time. i'm sitting in the back of the police car and because they hadn't taken away my phone, i took a picture of the back of their heads. >> reporter: he sent this picture in a second urgent tweet, in the back of the spanish police car going to the station on the russian arrest warrant. >> what were you hoping to accomplish? >> i'm hoping to wake the whole world up to the fact i'm being arrested. i didn't want to be slipped into the back of a russian jet and sent off without anyone knowing where i was. >> what did you think was happening or was going to happen?

>> if i was sent to russia, i would be killed, no question about it. >> reporter: while browder stayed locked in a holding cell, his tweets went around the world. >> the chief of police comes back with a translator and says, we've just gotten off the phone with interpol general secretariat. the warrant is no longer valid. you're free to go. >> wow. as a result of your tweets? >> as a result of the tweets. >> are you fearful that this could happen again? >> every time i cross the border, my heart starts beating a little bit faster. >> reporter: we asked jurgen stock why, after all this, russia hasn't been suspended from interpol, especially considering the u.n. is investigating russia for war crimes in ukraine. >> i'm just trying to understand how a country that is being investigated for mass murder can be a member in good standing with interpol.

>> interpol introduced some measures when the conflict started to avoid any political abuse of our systems. but we also decided to keep the channels of information open. >> reporter: russia is hardly the only country to use interpol to do its dirty work. bahrain, for example, used interpol to nab a professional soccer player, an outspoken critic of the government at the bangkok airport in 2018. he spent two and a half months in a thai prison. china used a red notice to arrest this activist in morocco in 2021. he remains in prison awaiting extradition. and qatar issued a red notice for the scottish engineer in 2022 over a disputed $5,000 bank loan. he spent two months in an iraqi prison. all of these red notices were eventually rescinded but not before lives were upended. >> i don't know how to characterize the people who get caught up in this.

are they collateral damage? >> no, i would never call that collateral damage. and we are investing all we can to ensure that every piece of information in our databases are compliant with our rules and regulations. >> but you know and we have heard of incidents where people are languishing in jail because of erroneous information that was sent out by interpol. >> i'm not saying that the system is perfect. we see wrong decisions on the national level and we have seen wrong decisions also on interpol. that is correct a small number of cases. >> reporter: interpol admits in 2022, 304 of nearly 24,000 wanted person alerts were found to violates its rules and were denied or deleted. the organization declined to share which countries were the worst offenders. >> there are well-documented cases against russia, china,

turkey, united arab emirates, for repeatedly abusing the interpol notices. why not name and shame these countries? >> because we believe this is not in the interest of international police cooperation. you need to have a platform where information is being collected from different parts of the world, where criminal groups are operating. we want to provide a channel even between states that have diplomatic difficulties or even conflict. our decision is not to police a member country in terms of their human rights agenda. that's not our role as a technical police organization. >> that's not justice. that's not justice. we get it right most of the time. >> british barristers rhys davies and ben keith say if interpol is to survive another 100 year, it must police itself. >> we're concerned about human rights and interpol are concerned about people who are allegedly criminals. and innocent people get caught

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and, lo, before the flood, the lord said to noah, make yourself an ark. bring out every living creature. that was the old testament. but what happens today when disaster threatens animals? a powerful force, a zoo, a foreign government, even the u.s. department of justice often calls from on high and enlists the services of one man, pat craig, founder of the wild animal sanctuary in colorado, who's emerged at the go-to guy for orchestrating high stakes rescues around the world. last spring we accompanied this modern day noah to his zoo in puerto rico for his most abitious mission yet. >> reporter: these lions were once literally the pride of puerto rico. housed at the dr. juan a. rivero zoo on the island of mayaguez, the only zoo on the island.

but after years of neglect, this was the tableau that greeted pat craig and his wife monica when they arrived here from colorado. >> what was your impression when you got to the zoo for the first time? >> the animals were very, very sad looking and some of them were very, very sick. i felt physically and emotionally overwhelmed. >> even while we were there, animals died almost on a weekly basis. >> correct. >> that felt even worse because we're present and yet we were there too late. >> reporter: over a course of a decade the u.s. department of agriculture cited the zoo two dozen times for substandard conditions and animal mistreatment. after hurricanes irma and maria ravaged the island, the zoo closed to the public in 2018. for the more than 300 winged, scaled, and four-legged residents still captive, the situation turned from bad to down right desperate. >> we saw a zebra that had a

horrible wound on her leg and her tail, and she couldn't stand up. we saw a pig who had a skin condition. her skin was just falling apart. >> reporter: a mountain lion's untreated cancer spread all over its body. >> seeing the mountain lion suffering the way he was, that broke my heart. and not being able to -- sorry. >> help them. it was just so evident that this facility was way beyond repair. >> reporter: the u.s. department of justice, which enforces federal animal welfare laws in the states and puerto rico agreed and in february staged an extraordinary intervention, sending a battalion of agents to the zoo to evacuate every single species to permanent homes on the mainland. to leave this mission to captain this ark, as it were, the doj tapped wild animal sanctuary founder, pat craig. we were there in april to witness the operation. equal parts military-style

logistics and battlefield extraction. among the targets, seven lions sweltered in a concrete bunker. >> and they never hooked up the power after the hurricane. they never hooked up the power to the zoo. >> never. >> wait, there's a zoo that's functioning with animals there and there's no power. >> there's no electricity. >> there's no power. if you look at the pictures from the inside of the building, it's like jail cells, all in a row. >> reporter: when it came time to coax the cats out of their cage, craig entered the lion's den. >> what happened? >> they were defensive because they don't know who we are and what we're doing and why. we show up and we're like, believe me, you've got to trust we're trying to help you here. >> reporter: the sweet talking didn't work. so, they deployed plan b, sedation. hard to watch, but accepted practice when rescuing uncooperative carnivores.

over the course of five months, craig and his team of 20 used patience, prodding, pursuit, and grape jelly to lure each animal into its custom-built crate. a camel, a kangaroo, a rhinoceros, these stubborn hippos. monica craig, a native spanish speaker, had hoped to coordinate with the local staff. but the team from colorado mostly had to go it alone. she said the zoo keepers in puerto rico often refused to help. >> we tried many, many days to communicate with them and try to tell them, hey, we're not bad people. we're just trying to do what we're supposed to be doing for these animals and give them a better home. >> what was their response to that? >> they were upset. they were like, no, i don't think -- i don't think that's right. the animals belong here. >> reporter: it was a sentiment shared by many in the community. and at times, resistance curled into outright sabotage.

the rescue team had nearly wrangled mundi, once a star attraction, into her transport crate when suddenly -- >> out of nowhere, this elephant tears out, stars running around. >> what do you think happened? >> i think somebody shot her with a bb gun just to make her hate that crate. now she thinks the crate did something to her. >> reporter: we reached out to the department of environmental resources, which is responsible for the zoo. in a statement, it said the animals were provided with comprehensive care and denied there was any neglect, blaming problems at the zoo on hurricane damage, limited resources, and aging animals. once the transport was finally ready, a police escort to the airport. then the animals were loaded, one by one, onto charter flights bound for new homes craig had arranged at sanctuaries across the u.s. how do you ferry to safety an 8,000 pound elephant like mundi?

on a 747 cargo jet, of course. departure brought a sigh of relief. >> when she took off, i cried because i said, thank you, god. she's in. it's over. she's out of here. there's no question about it anymore. >> reporter: pat and monica craig took as many of the rescues as they could back to their 1,200-acre facility. the vast menagerie roams the grassy enclosures on the high plains of colorado. each of the animals here came with a sad back story, their own tales of woe, as it were. tigers kept in garages as pets, lions saved from a zoo in war-torn ukraine, bears abused at a korean medical facility. now 64, craig got the idea for the place as a teenager in the 1970s, when a friend who worked at a zoo gave him a tour behind the scenes. >> there were all these animals, lions and tigers, that were in small cages. he said, these will be euthanized.

i thought, this is crazy. these are healthy. they're not old. they're not sick. >> reporter: craig decided right then and there to open his own sanctuary on his parents' small colorado farm. with few regulations to guide him, he built the animal enclosures himself and scoured biology books for pointers. >> did you have any experience with lions and tigers? >> none. >> a degree in zoology? >> i was just starting college back then. it was going to be a business degree. >> reporter: he quickly learned that lions and tigers are no house cats. >> in the early years, i was in the hospital more times than you can count. it was like, okay, don't do that again. all those years of making mistakes and not getting killed. >> what does a mistake look like? >> pretty bad. i've had my left arm almost torn off, bit through the chest and collapsed lungs. >> reporter: the animals, craig can handle. but on his missions to hostile environments around the world, it's the people he needs help managing.

heavily armed federal marshals accompany craig when the department of justice dispatched him to retrieve maltreated big cats that had been kept by the notorious tiger king, joe exotic, the unlikely netflix sensation, and his associates. these two were among the 141 animals craig liberated and brought back here. >> what kind of condition was joe exotic keeping these guys in in oklahoma? >> well, you know, it was just all these really small cages that were just line after line because it was a gigantic breeding operation primarily. >> reporter: the rescue missions and the sanctuary operate on an annual budget of $34 million. funding comes mostly from private donations. when animals arrive here, this is often their first stop, designed to mimic the conditions they came from. here, they're evaluated and given a treatment plan, whether it's medication or emergency surgery. craig and staff veterinarian dr.

mikaela vetters introduced us to chad and malawi, rescued from puerto rico. >> how confident do we feel about our locks here? >> confident. >> this guy is ready to hang out with us. >> they suffer from permanent neurological damage, likely caused by malnutrition. something craig can spot just by looking. >> she doesn't have control over it. >> head tilting at an angle. >> we've had literally hundreds of lions have come through. >> you've seen this before. >> the sanctuary devises a special diet for each animal, which requires 100,000 pounds of food each week, donated by nearby walmarts, occasionally cupcakes included. when we met him, mikey the bear, was midway through his rehab. >> right now he's in lockout so we can medically manage him. >> what did you see the first time you saw him? >> he was in a great deal of pain, very gingerly moving.

we assume he's got a great deal of arthritis. which we have provided medication now and now he's getting around almost like a young bear. >> nursing animals back to physical health is one thing. ministering to their emotional wounds is a bigger challenge. having been raised in captivity, many of the animals arrive with what amounts to severe ptsd, and they must be taught to trust the humans caring for them. >> they're already mad at people anyway because of whatever people had done. i had one tiger, any time you came near, he would want to hit the fence and kill you. >> what's the timetable for easing some of the trauma these animals have been through? >> some were beaten. some were starved. some were mentally tormented to a degree. so, every case is different. so, some of them will do it in a matter of days. some will be a few weeks. >> doesn't that story imply however traumatic this may have been, it's not irreversible? >> it's not irreversible. >> the goal of all this rehab is to get these wild animals to act

the part. remember mundi? at the zoo, she had zero contact with other elephants for more than 30 years. we accompanied craig on a visit to a refuge in georgia where he placed mundi under the care of conservationist carol buckley. this marked the first time craig and the elephant had seen each other since puerto rico. >> what do you notice? >> first thing she just looks so much healthier. her demeanor is so much calmer and nicer. every day when i would see her in the zoo, god, it would just hurt. now to see this is just amazing. just truly amazing. >> hey, pretty lady. >> reporter: buckley provides the care and feeding but happily admits mundi's real mentors are the other elephants here. >> you're just the inn keeper. you're just the chef. >> i just open and close doors and make sure the waters are running. and the other elephant knows what they need to learn, and they're instructing them. it is fantastic. it is exactly the same as what happens in the wild.

>> reporter: that's the same principle craig employs at his sanctuary. and after two months of rehab, the lions from puerto rico were ready to enter their permanent habitat. >> all right. robert's going to open the door. >> reporter: we were on hand for the release. no one quite knew what to expect, not least the lions. >> you can go, yeah. >> reporter: the first was reticent, but one by one -- >> this must be literally life changing. >> reporter: -- they started to venture out, enclosed for their safety and ours, but otherwise in a vast ocean of green. >> these guys have been in captivity their whole lives. this is a first time. >> this will be the first time they'll be able to run and live in a space like this, have deep grass. >> makes you feel good. >> absolutely. this is why we do this. >> there were a few scuffles, but that's exactly what he hoped for, lions acting like, well, lions. the animals come to the sanctuary from all over the

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the last minute of "60 minutes" is sponsored by united health care, there for what matters. next sunday on "60 minutes," as america gears up for the super bowl on february 11th, jon wertheim investigates online sports betting. >> people might think i'm the typical gambling addict, middle aged guy in a windbreaker spend his retirement savings. >> it's more prominent in the younger generation than ever. the sports books and the commercials and the leagues themselves are making it look so cool to gamble and risk your money. and when 22-year-olds making

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