due to mature subject matter, viewer discretion is msnbc takes you behind the walls of america's most notorious prisons, into a world of chaos and danger. now the scenes you've never seen. "lockup: raw." >> i think it would be inaccurate to say there is never a dull moment in prison. actually there's plenty of dull moments in prison. it's just that all that monotony is broken up with moments of sheer terror. there's a lot of bottled up negative energy in prison, and

as the lockup crews have found out many times, you never know when things can explode. >> i have a bad impulse problem. >> the assault was a cup of urine thrown in an officer's face yesterday. >> and it is chaos. they throw us in here like an animal in a cage. the day we arrived at colorado state penitentiary, a super max prison at the base of the rocky mountains, we found a sterile, austere environment, steel doors behind which inmates are locked up 23 hours a day, but despite his surroundings, inmate shawn shields was in high spirits. when he sat down with us, he was

eager to help our producer get the interview under way. >> quiet on the set, you >> it's a prison, you know. >> all right. let's roll tape. >> then he calmly told us how he got 16 years added to his original sentence of 12 for robbery. >> me and another inmate had an altercation. i manipulated the door so that it wouldn't latch completely, and when he came out to walk, i came down after him and proceeded to stab him. >> why? was it because you guys weren't getting along? >> it was just a verbal altercation. >> does it happen a lot in here? >> there is a lot of verbal altercations between people. you got to understand. there's 16 men living together behind closed doors with stress, animosity toward one another in some cases, and it's not always a pleasant place to be. >> when inmates erupt, no one is safe, including correctional

staff. >> we had an inmate that was on his way to the rec yard and came behind an officer and used a derogatory statement toward him. i immediately told him that his recreation was being taken for that comment. he decided to lean forward as if he was going to brace himself and then just bit right into my left arm. this is my left arm the day that the bite occurred. he bit in so fast and so hard that i didn't even feel him bite me. he severed the nerve in my arm where i now have permanent damage. >> while officer mills' bite wound was severe, his ordeal was not nearly as terrifying as the nightmare one of his fellow officers experienced. in this previously unaired footage provided to "lockup" by the prison, hostage negotiators really outside the cell of inmate willie hill.

moments earlier, hill overpowered a female correctional officer, shackled her with her own restraints, and was now holding her at knifepoint in his cell. meanwhile riverbend's emergency response team suits up for action. while the negotiator speaks with hill, the team quietly assembles undetected outside of the cell door. >> here we go. coming in. >> at a precise moment the door is opened, and the team rushes the cell setting off a flash bang grenade. the team uses pepper spray to subdue the inmate. within seconds, the still shackled officer is pulled to safety.

a short time later, hill is also removed from the cell. though dazed by the effects of the pepper spray, hill is uninjured and the assault earned him two months in punitive segregation and an extension of his sentence. riverbend's emergency response team regularly trains for crises where a cell extraction is called for. our crew was there to cover one session. >> as you can see when you get

that many people in as small a cell as it is, it makes kind of havoc about being able to operate in there. >> straighten him out. there you go. pull him out. straighten him down. >> that is the reason why we do more training. the more training you get to do, the better you get and the less injury you have on the inmate or the staff. >> during the course of our shoot at riverbend, the extraction team would assemble once again, but this time, it would be for real. the incident was triggered when officers conducted a routine cell search for weapons in the prison's maximum security unit. >> the inmates are primarily in here because of behavior, assaultive, and if they can get their hands on pieces of metal particularly, they will sharpen them to make shanks or knives. >> we search a lot. we search as much as we can to make sure they are not storing

contraband items like weapons, drugs, money. >> it was during this cell search that we first met this inmate who was serving an eight-year sentence for carjacking. >> can you tell me what's going on? >> they shaking us down to see whether we got illegal things on us, things that we ain't supposed to have, stuff like that. i call it harassment though. >> his cell is thoroughly searched. >> they like to hide shanks or homemade knives in their boots sometimes. they will come in here and tear out the soles and put them in the bottom. they have 24 hours a day to think of where to put stuff, so it's an endless process. >> so what are they doing? >> they're not allowed to have anything on the walls or the doors, so we take it down. >> this looks like a doctor's waiting room. got little magazines. >> even something as seemingly harmless as a set of headphones

can be considered contraband. >> is there a number on it? >> no, no number on it. that is contraband, and we are taking it. >> at riverbend, every electronic item had to be documented and approved by the officials. there was no record of the headphones, so they were confiscated by the search team. >> later he is led back to his cell. >> we followed him back to the cell really having no idea how he would react. cell searches are fairly common, so we weren't expecting anything in particular. as it turned out, the headphones were really a big deal. inmates have so little when they're in prison that the slightest thing becomes a precious possession. >> why did you take my headphones? >> there wasn't a number on them. >> a short time later, he appeals to another c.o. for the return of his headphones.

>> what do you want? >> i want my headphones. >> what are you supposed to do? >> what do you mean what am i supposed to do? >> what are you supposed to do? >> they come in here and occupy every one of them. they were brand new. they were brand new. i try to talk to you like a man, and you don't want to hear that. these are the types of things we go through every day. they throw us in a cage. they want us to act like animals. it's the only thing they know. we already got a lack of everything. we are in a jail. it is like being buried alive being back here. >> though he is agitated, our producer attempts to interview him about living in maximum security. >> terrell, where are you? >> right here. >> tell me what life is like being in maximum. >> asking me what being back here is like asking a cancer patient how it feels to die slowly. it's like, equated to be asking a rape victim to be demoralized on a day-to-day basis. that's what i feel like.

>> our producer didn't know just how meaningful the next question would become. >> have you heard about officers being assaulted by other inmates? can you talk about that? >> i don't know anything about any guards being assaulted or inmates being assaulted by other inmates. i don't know nothing about that. i'm here about my time. i'm here focused on my time. i don't nothing about no guards being assaulted. if anything i know about guards assaulting inmates. that's all i know. >> the next day, our crew saw the cell extraction team being suited up for extraction, because he had assaulted two officers. coming up on "lockup:raw." >> the assault was a cup of urine thrown in an officer's face yesterday. >> the inmate raises the stakes.

during a routine cell search at the riverbend maximum

security institution in tennessee, a pair of contraband headphones was removed from the cell of inmate terrell shropshire. by the next day, things had escalated. >> the riverbend cell extraction team has been called to remove all items out of unit 3201. he was assaultive toward staff last night. the assault was a cup of urine thrown in an officer's face yesterday and also a coke bottle full of water thrown and hit an officer in the back of the head. when a unit manager discovered this today, he wanted all hard items removed from the cell. we have tried to gain compliance voluntarily by the inmate, he's refused, so a cell extraction team is called. >> when they are called, it is meaning that they are going to forcibly remove an uncooperative inmate from the cell. and when you see them all suited up in riot gear and face masks, you see the seriousness of the threat and the danger it could pose.

they let us follow at a safe distance. >> inside the cell block, they give him one last chance to comply. >> okay. i'm only going to ask you one time to comply, and if you don't, we will have to come in and get you. do you comply? >> soon as i get my [ bleep ] back. >> i'm asking you one more time and that's it. >> with shropshire still refusing orders, the extraction team moves in. >> on the bed. face down. don't resist. don't resist. >> i ain't resisting. don't resist. >> i ain't resisting. >> turn him over. face down. >> gentlemen, just take him on out to the rec yard.

>> shropshire is taken outside while his cell is cleared. >> watch his head there. don't resist now while we take these off. medical staff is always called in after a cell extraction to check the inmate for injuries. though they do not find any, shropshire's complaints continue. >> loosen these things off my wrist, man. you're cutting off my circulation. >> nothing i can do. >> mr. shropshire, if you could comply, then we would not have to go through this. >> [ bleep ] [ bleep ] you got [ bleep ] and these [ bleep ] cameras here, and that is why you did all of this [ bleep ] stuff. what is the matter with y'all. >> everything went according to the way it was supposed to. the inmate was removed from his cell, taken to the rec yard so all of his items could be removed from the cell, all of the hard items and drinking

materials that he used to assault staff with. we went out to the rec yard and medical checked him out, and no injuries, and basically all that he was doing was theatrical, and we moved him back into the house, and he will be in there for a minimum of two hours. as his demeanor and he wants to comply with the policies and the procedures he will be removed from the restraints. i think it went excellent. nobody got hurt. >> terrell shropshire completed his sentence at riverbend and was released in february 2008. but another memorable inmate featured on "lockup" may never know such freedom. >> i was accused of assaulting an inmate with a padlock, so that's why i'm in this area for. >> when we met dante bullock at the anamosa state penitentiary in iowa, he was spending his third day in ad seg, the

administrative segregation eye it in also known as the hole. authorities say he stuffed this padlock inside of a sock and brutally attacked another inmate with it. >> do you think that you have a violent past or angry or what is your situation? >> i am violent when i am provoked. >> bullock is already serving a life sentence for kidnapping, but if the padlock assault charges stick, he could spend the next year in ad seg, locked in his cell 23 hours a day. >> i was in the wrong place at the wrong time. the inmate had been assaulted and my defense to them was telling them i was in the area and pushed out of the way as the inmate was trying to get away from the person that assaulted him. >> bullock was anxiously awaiting a hearing with the prison's administrative law judge to plead his case. in the meantime, he let us know that while ad seg meant losing his television, the location of his cell at least made it possible to keep up with current events.

>> this cell right here in front of the police station, to me, is the best cell on this range due to the fact that you get a lot of movement. you see who is coming in and out and inmates and inmates and the dogs and catch a little of who's with who. >> so do you know what happened between brad and jen? >> brad and jen? yeah. they're divorced. >> three days later, bullock was about to face his own life-altering event, his hearing on the assault charge. >> we're coming up to see the judge today. he's being charged with a serious rule violation, and we -- anybody who is locked up gets belly chains put on them and handcuffed and the dog is just a little extra security. >> the dog is not only to protect staff from bullock, but since bullock is believed to have assaulted another inmate,

it will also protect him from revenge seekers during the walk to the hearing. coming up -- >> how can i defend myself with a report when you say there's a weapon involved and i don't even know what the weapon is. >> i showed it to you. >> and the hearing heats up as bullock and the judge face off. >> now you tell me what the weapon is. >> if you choose to be hardheaded about it, which apparently you are, then there's apparently you are, then there's nothing more i can do.

♪ it's back! xfinity watchathon week. the biggest week in television history. it's your all-access binge-watching pass to tv's hottest shows, free with xfinity on demand. xfinity watchathon week. now through april 12th. perfect for people who really love tv. at the anamosa state penitentiary in iowa, dante bullock faces one year in the hole for allegedly assaulting another inmate with a homemade weapon, a lock in a sock. >> anything you say may and can be used against you in this hearing and can be held against you in criminal prosecution. >> our cameras were with him as he was about to plead his case in a prison discipline hearing. >> your number? >> after addressing procedural matters, administrative law

judge william supeen reads the correctional officer's account of the assault. >> rights determined by the investigation that inmate bullock assaulted with a [ bleep ] weapon and sustained injuries to the head above the right eye and required stitches and broke his right hand trying to block the weapon that required a cast. i have here photos of the scene, of the incident that i will share with you. this is the victim of the assault, and injuries. also before me i have the sock with a padlock and combination lock inside. i have a statement from the staff member that located that. >> i ain't got nothing do with the assault. when the assault took place, i was on the stairs when an inmate ran by me. i could have easily been mistaken, and that's what i believe, that i was mistaken, that they thought that by me being pushed aside, that i was believed to be the one who assaulted him. >> inmates who saw the assault and provided statements remain

anonymous in hearings like this, but it is up to the judge to determine the credibility. >> do you have any enemies in the institution, in the cell block, mr. bullock? >> no, i don't. >> tell me things people would make up about you. >> people i gamble with. >> who are they? >> i'm not going to disclose their names. >> well, i am trying to help you with your defense. >> well, if -- >> excuse me. if you provide names that may not be credible and if you choose not to provide those names, that is up to you. >> how can i defend myself with a report when you say there's a weapon involved, but i don't know what the weapon is. >> i showed it to you. >> now you tell me what it is, but in the report, it don't say nothing what the weapon is. >> anything else that you wanted to say today? >> yes. you ain't got no evidence. how can you prove the pad lock is mine? >> let me assure you that there were multiple witnesses to the incident. >> how do i know they are credible? >> that is my responsibility to determine if they are credible just as i attempt to determine

your credibility. you have been given every opportunity to present a defense, and -- >> i gave you a defense. >> no. you told me your defense was that you didn't have anything to do with this. that's what you told me. >> you guys have the opportunity to make sure the report clearly states when, where, how, and who. >> the standard of evidence is some evidence. the courts have ruled that that can be the report of the staff member. now, hopefully i'm going to be using a greater standard than that for you, and i usually do, but that's all that is required to make a finding of a violation of the rules in the administrative hearing in this institution. now, whether you accept that or not is entirely up to you. i have answered your questions and i have given you an opportunity to present your defense, and at this point i will conclude your testimony, and you can have a seat in the chair outside. >> you tell me the padlock is mine and you ain't even proved -- >> well, you have asked questions and i have given you the answers. you may have a chair in the other room. >> well, they say that the

padlock is mine, but they can't prove it is mine. >> have a seat. >> i believe i probably have a pretty clear understanding of due process. i'm not certain he does. we have met that requirement. >> i understand it is a serious issue, and you would take it serious, you know what i mean? and -- look at, you know, saying what really happened. >> it's only a matter of moments before judge supeen is ready to render a decision. >> mr. bullock, my finding is that assault with a weapon is a class a violation for our policy, and the accountability for that is 365 days of disciplinary defence and a forfeiture of 365 days of earned time. you're also required to pay any medical costs associated with this incident. your have been locked up for six dales waiting for the hearing, and i will give you that six days toward the 365 days. you may go.

coming up on "lockup: raw, inmates gone wild," the story behind this takedown. and one brawling inmate learns how effective nonlethal weaponry can be. >> i didn't remember getting shot. i don't even know if i got shot.

he'sthere's a guy out there whose making a name for himself in a sport where your name and maybe a number are what define you. somewhere in that pack is a driver that can intimidate the intimidator. a guy that can take the king 7 and make it 8. heck. maybe even 9. make no mistake about it. they're out there. i guarantee it. welcome to the nascar xfinity series.

i'm veronica de la cruz. and here's what's happening. history at the vatican. illinois, they walked through the corridors of one of the nation's most historic penal institutions. constructed from sandstone, this castle was built in 1857, four years prior to the civil war, and the friction between staff and inmates seems every bit as old. >> [ bleep ] choke -- >> during our shoot in joliet, a disruptive new inmate had just been removed from his cell and was being taken to segregation. our cameras were there as captain kim morgan attempted to

make the transfer. first, a brief stop to process paperwork. >> you see the -- don't hit me, man. on the real, he hit me, man. >> that particular inmate was from the rnc and we had just received him in from the county. he was upset for one reason or another. i don't even know what it was. he was at the front of the bars being aggressive. i told him to go have a seat in the back of the cell and remain quiet. he wouldn't. he disobeyed him, and then he was insolent toward myself and the lieutenant and it progressed toward them. >> the handcuffs -- >> nobody hit you. >> yes, you did. i swear on the honor of my mother. you hit me now. hit me again. when i leave, he'll hit me again. don't touch me, man. >> as captain morgan processes the paperwork -- >> he hit me severely in the back of the head. in these handcuffs he twisted my ankle. >> -- the inmate continues his tirade against him.

captain morgan completes the paperwork and then escorted him toward segregation. a 23-hour-a-day lockup unit for inmates who violate prison rules. >> i was taking him to north segregation to lock him up in our seg unit. >> when the inmate turns on him, morgan tightens his grip. but the situation would soon get much more intense. >> that's when he tried to pull away from me and turned around on me. >> he's grabbing on me. >> that's when i tried to secure him to the ground until i could get more security help. >> no, no, no. no, no, no. huh-uh. i'm going to walk. i'm going to walk.

>> those particular charges that i charged the inmate with were insolence, disobeying a direct order, assault, he attempted to spit on me as well as turn around on me. and this inmate will go to an adjustment hearing, which is panel of hearing officers, and he will plead his case against my disciplinary report that i give him, and they will do whatever is just. >> while this inmate received an extended term in segregation, combative inmates always risk suffering physical consequences as well. wherever inmates congregate, common areas and cellblocks, the yard, or the cafeteria, there's usually an overhead post manned by armed correctional officers. if extreme violence breaks out, these officers may use lethal means as a last resort, but they usually stop most assaults through verbal orders.

>> keep moving on to the track. >> if that doesn't work, they have an arsenal of nonlethal weapons, including ones that fire wood blocks. though not deadly, woodblock rounds can leave a lasting impression as we discovered at the kern valley state prison in california. >> he shot the [ bleep ]. >> no. but i don't even remember getting shot. i don't even know if i got shot. >> we often talk to the corrections officers about the nonlethal weapons they use, but it is not often that we end up actually seeing what those weapons do, and such was the case with george johns. this was something that happened just the night before. we were lucky to talk to him. >> escort! >> during our shoot at kern valley, inmate george johns, serving eight years for being involved in a high-speed chase while on parole, started a fight in the cafeteria and was hit in the head by a wooden block. we met him the following morning.

>> tell me the story. tell me what happened. >> well, i had a personal problem, and i ran over to handle it, but i didn't make it. i was in the chow hall eating, and i got irritated and decided i didn't like this guy, so i'd fight him. that's it. >> next thing you remember? >> they were dragging me out, telling me i got hit in the head with a block. >> can we see your head? >> the shooting left johns with seven staples in his head and a wound still caked with dry blood. he says the scar running toward the back of his head was the result of getting run over when he was younger. >> so you knew the other guy that you got into the fight with? >> yeah, kind of, sort of. apparently i didn't like him. >> i was eating my dinner, baked potato and gravy at the table right at the corner of the chow hall, and the guy was running, and didn't see him, and he hit me, and i ran into the cement, and that's why i got stitches in the back of my head.

the deal is that he wants to go around intimidating other people and try to throw his weight around and try to manipulate or whatever. >> though asked a number of times by the producer why he started the fight, johns was never specific. >> if you can't tell me what's going on, then just tell me you can't say what's going on. >> i just told you as far as i can go. i don't know why i didn't like him. he didn't spit in my soup or nothing, but it just progressed to the point where i felt like i had to kick his ass, that's it. i exploded. i have a bad impulse problem. >> but ayhart has his suspicions about why the attack occurred. he thinks that johns wanted to be sent to the hole in order to be segregated from other inmates for his own protection. >> he chose to hit me, attack me right in front of the cops in the tower, right in the chow hall. so i consider that to be a

protective custody, pc, move on his part. >> he was just saying that the other guy, johns, was doing a pc move. he's trying to say he owes drug money on the yard or something like that, and the reason he's doing that is so that he's in the hole now so he won't get stabbed on the yard or whatever. so if he's in the hole, he won't have contact with the inmates on the yard. if they're saying pay me the money or you get stabbed, they did something in front of the cops they will be locked up and sent to the hole and they will stay here until a later date. they will have to eventually have the deal with it, but for a short time, he is safe in here. >> johns in fact did get sentenced to time in the hole, but never confirmed whether it was on purpose or not. >> so was it worth it? >> not really. but at the time, yeah, i didn't think about the consequences. i didn't think about falling down and pepper sprayed and burned still. i didn't think about getting staples. i didn't think about none of that. up next --

>> prison-made whiskey, they call it juice. it's got prunes in it. >> alcohol inside of the correctional institutions are a big problem. >> when inmates get drunk. >> when you have that white lightning in your system, you immediately get violent.

you can't tell how wild a prison inmate might be just by looking at him, but sometimes you can learn a lot by his nickname, and it seems in prison almost everybody has one. >> my name is alvin williams and everyone calls me gator. a lot of us have animal names in here because it has to represent something, you know, but that's prison life.

>> alvin got his nickname while working as a sparring partner to a heavyweight boxer. >> every time he gets me to the ropes, he jabs me hard, and i get upset and i say, man, you're hitting me too hard. he kept on doing it. i took my gloves off. i kept on attacking him, and i knew i could not beat him hand to hand, so i bit him. when they broke us up, they wiped off the blood, it was in the shape of a gator. i don't know how i hit him or anything. >> what is your nickname? >> cocoa joe. >> people in the start call me hustle. >> skunk. ksr and stinky because it sprayed me. >> everybody said i kind of looked like dracula and people started to call me drac for short and it kind of stuck. >> cocoa. is that for cocaine or cocoa man, what is that? >> i don't know. they gave me that name. >> you have to hustle, and being quick, that's how i got the name hustle. >> ben quick. i don't know how i got that one. >> coyote.

>> what does it stand for? >> it is a nickname my grandfather gave me as a baby. >> stalker steel used to work out on the pile, littlest guy out there. that's how i got those three. >> they call me outlaw. >> outlaw? >> yeah. >> self-explanatory? >> yes, it is self-explanatory. >> they call me doo like the coal miner's daughter and not the daughter part, dude. but doolittle on there. >> and the name hustle got me here, too, you know, so sometimes it ain't good to hustle. >> while nicknames are common in prison, we've discovered something else is as well, but it's not as harmless. >> what is that? >> prison-made whiskey. it's got prunes in it. they just wait until it ferments good. >> what does it smell like?

>> it's got a strong whiskey aroma. >> inmate-manufactured alcohol goes by many names, prison julep, pruno, hooch, white lightning. whatever it is, our crews have seen it, heard about it, and smelled it. it exists in every prison we filmed in. >> alcohol is used daily. alcohol inside our correctional institutions are a very big problem because it only takes a small amount of time to make the alcohol, and just about everyone does it. so it's a constant cat-and-mouse game. >> this is a bag of pruno that we discovered in an inmate cell a couple of days ago. a regular garbage bag and inside, you can smell the sweet smell of the prune oil itself and the apples. >> how much could that serve? that's a keg. >> actually it will -- i would say it would serve up to five to ten people depending. some of the inmates actually even sell the pruno.

>> can you order a cocktail in there? >> well, i guess if you go to the right person, i'm sure you could. i don't know the particulars of it. i said i got caught with it. i don't know the makeup or how to do it. even if i did, i probably wouldn't divulge that. >> but we've got plenty of officers and inmates who would. >> we give them everything they need for pruno. you need fresh fruit, which we have to give them, and you need something with sugar in it, and most fruit have some. i mean extra sugar helps. we don't have to give them that, but you can get candy from the canteen issue and sugarcoated, and you need containers to keep it in while it is heating. we give them little milk cartons, and if they want to destroy state property, the pillows and mattresses are in plastic cases, and they can be torn apart and they make nice bags. then you need heat. you have a light fixture in

there and lamps give off heat. fruit, sugar, water, container, and heat. three to five days, and you have drinkable pruno. >> like a vintner selecting a certain grape variety for their wine, inmates can choose from a wide array of ingredients to brew their hooch. >> kool-aid. >> ketchup, tomato paste. >> pineapple. >> grapefruits. >> prunes. >> peaches. >> sugar and yeast. >> they can get their hands on prunes and whatever they like to use. >> of the many experts we have met, the truest connoisseur had to be tyrone outlaw, an inmate at kern valley state prison. ironically, located right in the heart of california's central valley wine country. >> we have two types of alcohol. we have pruno, which is made from oranges and fruit that you let sit and rot and we pour it into a bag and make mush out of it, and then you add a lot of hot water to it and let it sit

with a lot of sugar in which it ferments it to make the alcohol base. then we take it from the bag and pour it into the pillowcase and strain it and keep all of the mush out of it and put the liquid in the bag to be used for apples and two boxes of sugar. and you will have three gallons of pruno, and you can sell it. and each tumbler is $10 for that, or you can sell it for $10 apiece your can just get drunk off it all you want. >> outlaw then told us about a much more potent concoction. >> the second version we do is called white lightning, that is similar to jack daniels, hennessey, and, in fact, 150 proof. >> according to outlaw, white lightning has a very dark side. >> pruno can get you drunk and riled up and get you just that intoxication under the influence trip, whereas, white lightning can cause you to drink a half a

cup of white lightning and it will actually, if the cos were to come to ask you a common question like something like can i see your i.d. card, because you have the white lightning in your system, you will immediately get violent. a lot of times they do that and they have to take the dudes to the ground because they are on white lightning and takes six or seven cos to bring them down. >> at pelican bay, we saw the definitive guide to distilling white lightning, a hand drawn illustration confiscated in a cell search. >> i found that in an inmate's cell. it explained to the people on the tier how to manufacture one, you know, pure alcohol. but they're actually making 150 proof. that's not your regular pruno. a little more sophisticated. >> this is the final result. this here is about the equivalent of grain alcohol. extremely potent. >> how does this taste? >> white lightning tastes

exactly like whiskey without any cut. some guys in prison will cut it with, say, something like kool-aid or something because it's too strong. then you have other guys that just down it just raw. and a lot of these dudes that make this stuff, they don't realize that the bacteria in the stuff they're drinking doesn't do anything but give them tuberculosis and other diseases because it is nothing but rotten food that it's made from. >> since drunken inmates can lead to big trouble, correctional officers are constantly on the lookout. >> they're out there searching. they'll find it. three days later, the same cell, they're making alcohol again. it's just constant. we have over 3,000 inmates doing this. coming up on "lockup: raw" -- >> one of the items he makes the most of, these scorpions and spiders. >> the confiscated artwork of america's most infamous inmate.

[office phone chatter] [frogs croaking] you know what, let me call you back. what are you doing?! [scream] [frogs croaking] [yelling and screaming] it's back! xfinity watchathon week. the biggest week in television history. it's your all-access binge-watching pass to tv's hottest shows, free with xfinity on demand. xfinity watchathon week. now through april 12th. perfect for people who really love tv.

while some inmates might spend their time behind bars creating mayhem, we've met plenty of others who choose a very different path. they use their time in prison to do something constructive. for many, that means turning to art. paul majors had been in and out of prison for most of the last 23 years when we met him at the riverbend maximum security institution in tennessee. >> well, it's therapeutic for me because it gives me a chance to escape and release a lot of tension. i can look at the situation in the world today and what i can't say verbally, i can say in a picture because they say a picture paints a thousand words or can say a thousand words, so i guess this is my way of saying a thousand words.

i use acrylics, water colors, chalk pastels, pen and ink. if they gave me a stick in mud, i would use that. anything i get my hands on, i can use. >> and some prison artists, especially those confined to high-security cells, nearly have to go to such lengths to create art. >> i got different techniques, but sometimes i just take the color off an m&m. the color come off. i can use that color. >> because of his high security level as a confirmed gang member, we could only shoot david hampton's art outside of his cell at pelican bay. a corrections officer offered to hold it in place for our camera. but at another california prison, one inmate's artwork is either immediately confiscated and destroyed or kept in a secured location.

the inmate is charles manson. >> we have some manson memorabilia that charles manson has created since he's been incarcerated here at corcoran. >> during one of our shoots at california state prison corcoran, our crew barely got a glimpse of manson before he covered up his window. a recent mug shot shows how much he has aged since first coming to prison in 1971. but his artwork provides a unique insight into his life behind bars. >> here a scorpion that he's made. basically just taking thread from various types of items, socks and t-shirts and towels, and he creates it and uses -- looks like a marker to color it. this is probably one of the items that he makes the most of would be scorpions and spiders. this is, i would, assume something like a harp, and he's

made it out of toilet paper and newspaper. this looks like some dental floss, a small stick, and probably for the coloring he used kool-aid to get the coloring for it. >> why do you guys have it? >> he's not allowed to have it. occasionally we go through and do cell searches and confiscate all items. he doesn't have a hobby card, and other inmates try to sneak it out and put it on ebay and sell it. so we go in and dispose of it. >> how does he react when you take this stuff? >> sometime he's passive. occasionally he gets pretty angry and threatens us. for the most part, he is usually pretty passive. he knows all he will do is make some more. >> there's one other remnant of manson's interest, hanging on the wall of the prison's investigative services office. >> this is when charles manson

was out in the protective yard. the inmates that were out on the maximum security yard were able to defeat the security lock and got through there. manson was out in the yard playing the guitar, and they ended up breaking it. i don't know if they hit him with it, but they ended up breaking it. we took it. he wasn't hurt or anything. we quelled it pretty quick. the guy that came into the yard was more scared than manson. he came in real quick and broke the guitar up and got down. so he complied with the orders. >> any idea what song manson was singing? >> no, no. i have no idea what he was playing. >> "helter-skelter." >> yeah, i don't know.

due to mature subject matter, viewer discretion is advised. msnbc takes you behind the walls of america's most notorious prisons, into a world of chaos and danger. now, the scenes you've never seen, "lockup: raw." >> you're in jail. there's no greater punishment in the world. >> you're here with crack heads, dope fiends, rapists, murders. >> we're all treated guilty until proven otherwise. >> "lockup" has spent time in three of america's busiest and largest jails, l.a. county, miami-dade and new york's rikers island.