and it's not money, it's not houses or material things. it's spending time with family, friends, loved ones. and every day that i get to spend with them to me now is precious. due to mature subject matter, viewer discretion is advised. >> msnbc takes you behind the walls of america's most notorious prisons to a world of chaos and danger. now the scenes you've never seen. "lockup: raw." when "lockup" producers traveled to the joliet correctional facility in illinois, they walked through

the corridors of one of the nation's most historic penal institutions. constructed from sandstone, this castle-like prison was built in 1857. four years prior to the civil war. and the friction between staff and inmates seems every bit as old. >> you just hit me in the head. so [ bleep ] choke man [ bleep ] >> during our shoot at 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. >> shouldn't [ bleep ] don't hit me, man. he really hit me, man. >> that particular inmate was from the r&c. we 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 have a seat in the back of the cell and remain quiet.

he wouldn't. disobeyed. then he was insolent toward myself and a lieutenant. and it progressed towards then. >> why you got handcuffs on me. huh? >> nobody hit you. >> you did hit me on my mother i swear to god [ bleep ] you hit me now. you hit me again. when they leave you're going to hit me again, man. don't touch me, man. [ bleep ] >> as captain morgan processes the paperwork -- >> he hit me in the back of my head. after he handcuffed me. >> the inmate continues his tirade against him. >> turn the feds on you. on my momma, man. >> captain morgan completes the paperwork and then escorts him towards 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. >> [ bleep ], man. >> 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 turn around on me. >> [ bleep ] >> you grabbing on my -- >> that's whenever i secured him to the ground until i could get more security help. >> [ bleep ] >> no, no, no. >> no, no, no. >> [ bleep ] >> i'm going to walk. on my momma, i'm going to walk. >> no, you ain't walking. >> those particular charges i charged him with insolence, disobeying direct order, assault, he attempted to spit on me as well as turn around on me. he'll go to an adjustment committee, which is a hearing, a 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. if extreme violence breaks out, these officers may use lethal means as a last report. but they usually stop most assaults through verbal orders. >> keep moving on the track. >> if that doesn't work, they have an arsenal of nonlethal weapons, including ones that fire wood blocks. though not deadly, wood block rounds can leave a lasting impression as we discovered at the kern valley state prison in california. >> se ee >> no. i don't remember getting shot. i don't know if i got shot. >> we often talk to corrections officers about the nonlethal weapons they use but it's not often 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. >> i had a personal problem and i ran over and handled it and i didn't make it all of the way. i was in the chow hall eating, you know i just got irritated and finally decided i don't like this guy. so i'm going to fight him. that's it. >> next thing you remember? >> they're dragging me out. telling me i got hit in the head with a block. >> let me see your head. >> the shooting left johns with seven staples in his head and a wound still caked with dried 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 a fight with? >> yeah, kind of sort of. apparently i didn't like him. i was eating my dinner, eating a baked potato at a table which was way down the corner of the chow hall and i guess the guy was running, i didn't see him. he hit me, blindside me. i smacked my head on cement. that's why i got a few stitches in the back of my head. >> jeff ahart is the inmate who johns attacked. though asked a number of times by our producer why he started the fight, johns was never specific. >> if you can't tell me what's going on, then just tell me that you can't say it. >> i just told you as far as i can go. i ain't going to tell you i didn't like him. he didn't spit in my soup or nothing. he didn't do nothing like that. just progressed to where the point where i felt like i had to kick his ass. i just exploded. i just have a bad impulse problem. >> but ahart has his suspicions about why the attack occurred. he thinks 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 on the tower right in the chow hall so i consider that to be a protective custody p.c. move on his part. >> he was saying the other guy johns was doing a p.c. move. he's trying to say that he owes drug money on the yard or something like that, the reason why he's doing that is so he's in the hole now, so he doesn't get stabbed out in the yard or whatnot. when he's in the hole he doesn't have contact with other inmates. so if they're telling him on the yard pay me the money or you're going to get stabbed, they do something in front of the cops they get locked up, get sent to the hole and they stay here until, you know, a later day. they're eventually going to have to deal with it. but, for a short time he's safe in here. >> johns did in fact get sentenced to time in the hole, but never confirmed whether it was on purpose or not. >> so was it worth it? >> not really. huh-uh. but at the time i didn't think about the consequences. i didn't think about falling

down, getting pepper sprayed and burning still. i didn't think about getting staples. i didn't think about none of that. up next -- >> ooh. >> prison-made whiskey. it's called juice. got prunes in it. >> alcohol inside our correctional institutions are a very big problem. >> when inmates get drunk. g dea. g dea. and with fever, aches, and chills, mom knows it needs a big solution: an antiviral. don't kid around with the flu, call your doctor within the first 48 hours of symptoms and ask about prescription tamiflu. attack the flu virus at its source with tamiflu, an antiviral that helps stop it from spreading in the body. tamiflu in liquid form is fda approved to treat the flu in people two weeks of age and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. before taking tamiflu tell your doctor if you're pregnant, nursing, have serious health conditions, or take other medicines. if you develop an allergic reaction,

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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 whims, everyone calls me gator.

a lot of us have animal names in here because it has to represent something, you know. that's prison life. >> calvin williams got his nickname while working as a sparring partner to a heavyweight boxer. >> every time i get against the ropes he'll jab me and hit me real hard. i get upset about it, man you hit me too hard. he kept doing it, kept doing it, so i snapped the gloves off, and i attacked him. i knew i couldn't beat him hand to hand so i bit him. when they broke us off, when they wiped the blood away, it was in the shape of a gator. with the head and the tail the whole nine yards. i don't know how it happened. i just bit him. you know. >> any nicknames? >> they call me cocoa joe. the name hustle got me here, too. so sometime 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 called julu. it's got prunes in it. they just wait till it ferments good. >> what does it smell like? smell it and tell us. >> kind of a strong whiskey aroma. >> inmate manufactured alcohol goes by many names. prison julep, hooch, white lightning, whatever it's called. our crews have seen it, heard about it, smelt it, and it exists in every prison we've 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 we discovered in an inmate cell just a couple of days ago. a regular garbage bag and inside you can smell the sweet smell of the pruno itself and the apples.

>> how much could that serve? it looks like it would fill a keg. >> actually i would say it will serve up to five or ten people all depending. some of the inmates actually even sell the pruno. >> -- cocktail? >> 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've got caught with it. i don't know the makeup and how to do it. and even if i did, i probably wouldn't divulge that. >> but we've met 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. you need something that has sugar in it. most fruit have some. i mean extra sugar helps. we don't give them that. but you can get candy from your canteen issue. sugar coat. you need containers to keep it in while it's heating. we give them little milk cartons. if they want to destroy state

property, the mattresses and the pillows are all in plastic cases. they can be torn apart. and they make very nice bags. then you need a little 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 got drinkable pruno. >> like a vintner selecting a particular grape variety for his wine, inmates can choose from a wide array of ingredients to brew their hooch. >> kool-aid, apples, oranges. >> corn. corn cobs. >> catch-up, tomato paste. >> pineapple. >> grapefruits. >> prunes, peaches. >> sugar and yeast. >> they can get their hands on prunes, that's what they like to use. >> of the many experts we 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. pruno, made from oranges and fruit that we let sit, rot, pour it into a bag, make mush out of it, add a lot of hot water to it and let it sit with a lot of sugar in it. that ferments it to allow it to accumulate the alcohol base. then we take it from the bag, tour it into a pillow case and strain it. keeping all the mush out and just putting the liquid into a bag. we use 40 apples, and two boxes of sugar, you'll come up with about three gallons of pruno. and once you're done with the pruno you can sell it. each costs $10. that's a 16 ounce tumbler. so you sell at $10 apiece if you want or you can get drunk off it all you want. >> outlaw then told us about a much more potent concoction. >> the second is called white lightning. that's similar to jack daniel's, hennessy, it's like 150 proof. >> and according to outlaw, white lightning has a very dark side. >> pruno can get you drunk, and

get you riled up, and get you just, that intoxication, under the influence trip. whereas white lightning can cause you -- you can drink a half a cup of white lightning and white lightning will actually the c.o.s come and ask you a common question, something like can i see your i.d. card because you have that white lightning in your system you immediately get violent. a lot of times they have that. they have to take you to the ground because you're on white lightning. you know what i mean. take six or seven to bring them down. >> at pelican bay we saw the definitive inmates guide to distilling white lightning. a hand drawn illustration confiscated in a cell search. >> i found that in an inmate's cell. it explains to other people on the tier and whatnot how to manufacture pure alcohol. >> they're actually making like -- >> the 150 proof, that's not your regular pruno. a little bit more sophisticated. >> this is the final result. this here is about the equivalent of grain alcohol.

whoo. extremely potent. >> how does this stuff taste? talk to me about the taste. >> white lightning tastes exactly like whiskey without the cut. some guys in prison will cut it with say probably kool-aid or something because it's too strong. then you have other inmates who are what we call radicals, they just down it, okay, just raw. a lot of these dudes that make this stuff though they fail to realize that the bacteria in the stuff they're drinking doesn't give them diseases because it's nothing but rotting fruit that the stuff is made from. >> since drunken inmates can lead to big trouble, correctional officers are constantly on the lookout. >> the officers are out there searching cells. 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 would be scorpions and spiders. >> the confiscated artwork of america's most infamous inmate.

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but what's next? for all binge watchers. movie geeks. sports freaks. x1 from xfinity will change the way you experience tv. >> [ bleep ] while some inmates might spend their time behind bars creating mayhem, we've met plenty of others who choose a very different path. think 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 river bend maximum security institution in tennessee. >> well, it's therapeutic for me, because it gives me a chance to escape, and to release a lot of tension. you know, i can look at the situations in the world today, and what i -- what i can't say verbally, i can say in a picture, because they say a

picture paints a thousand words. i can say a thousand words, and i guess this is my way of saying a thousand words. i use acrylics, water colors, soft pastels, chalk pastels, pen and ink. they give me a stick and mud, i would use it. 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 use -- take the color off an m&m. i lick a piece of paper, fold it into a corner, touch it on the m&m. the color comes off. i use that as color, and i paint. that's what i do. >> because of his high security level as a confirmed gang member we could only shoot david hampton's art outside his cell at pelican bay. a correctional 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's 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 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 this stuff? >> he's not allowed to have it. he -- occasionally we go through and do a cell searches, and just confiscate all items. he doesn't have a hobby card. other inmates try to sneak it out and put it on ebay and sell it and whatnot so we go in and confiscate it and dispose of it. >> how does he react when you guys take his stuff. >> sometimes he's passive, occasionally he gets pretty angry and threatens us. but for the most part he's usually pretty passive because he knows all he's going to do is make some more.

>> there's one other remnant of manson's artistic interest hanging on the wall of the prison's investigative services office. >> this is when charles manson was out in the protective yard, and the inmates that were out in the maximum security yard were actually able to defeat the security lock, and got through there and 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. or they ended up breaking his guitar. so we took it. he wasn't hurt or anything. we quelled the disturbance pretty quick. the guy that actually came into the yard was more scared than manson. he came in real quick and broke the guitar up and got down. so complied with the orders. >> any idea what song manson was singing? revolution or? >> no. i have no idea what he was playing. >> helter skelter. >> no, i don't know. today people are coming out

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