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." >> what is it? what is it? >> a fight. >> when our crews go behind prison walls, we know always to expect the unexpected.

we've seen bloody assaults. >> we got another cut up here, guys. >> inmate rage. >> we will not negotiate with terrorists! >> destruction in the cell block. in the first week of filming inside lie man correction facility in colorado, we inadvertently became part of the story we were covering. >> why is everybody getting agitated. we were in ad seg, administrative segregation, the prison within a prison. we started hearing inmates screaming out things and i started to hear them talking about cho-mos, which are sex offenders and then mayhem erupted. [ bleep ]

>> i believe he threw a liquid substance under the door that smelled somewhat suspicious and we're going to report that. >> jonathan hall, serving 40 years for murder, was one of the first inmates to make it clear we weren't welcome in administrative segregation. >> unless he does calm down and follow our rules and orders, he'll be cell extracted. >> inmate hall won't calm down. so they call in the special response team. and they suit up in their gear. in these situations, when we want to film it, they always have us suit up as well. >> if he doesn't comply at that point, we'll introduce o.c. >> you got it? >> uh-huh.

>> inmate hall, come to the door and cuff up. if you do not cuff up, we will introduce chemical agents. are you going to comply? >> introduce o.c. >> hall has covered his food port and window with a mattress. but the special response team knocks it down and fires a couple of short bursts of o.c. gas. >> hall, you're going to be all right, all right? listen to my orders, okay? >> i can't. >> i need you to get up on your knees. come on, help us out.

>> ahhh! >> shooting an extraction wearing a gas mask is pretty difficult. you're kept a certain distance from the view finder. it's hard to see with the beard and goatee, the seal is compromised a bit. so there is some of the gas that leaks in. eyes are watering a bit. but that's just part of it. we go in there and do the best we can to show what's going on. >> what's going on with these [ bleep ]? i need fresh air. i can't breathe. >> you're all right, hall. >> so that was quite a first day. the next day we had to go back into ad seg to continue doing our interviews and one of the inmates we were going to interview was michael gill. one of the first things he shared with us is that on the streets, he was a professional

wrestler. >> i do what you see on tv, like wwe. but i do -- i do it off camera most of the time. and at smaller arenas. mainly around kansas, colorado, iowa, stuff like that. >> what's your name? >> my wrestling name? bud dubey. it was a stoner character. >> gill had just finished explaining that he was currently at limon on a parole violation when the interview was interrupted by a commotion on the ad seg tier. >> that's crazy. what's that about? >> yeah, i'm curious, too. i can hear water running and we had an officer in the room with us that was doing our security and i asked him, what's going on? when he opened the door, you just heard this cascading water. >> what happened?

>> they flooded the tier. >> it's awesome. >> you better go get that. >> i walked out of the interview room and was shocked to see water cascading down from the top tier down onto the floor. i'd never seen anything like that in my life in a prison. >> what happened? >> what did you do, did you do this? >> i didn't do nothing. >> what happened? >> i have no idea. >> what does it look like happened? >> i'm not even going to say nothing with that door opened. >> in the midst of this crazy scene, the officers were taking michael gill back to his cell, at which point he just started cracking jokes with the staff members. >> if you let me see the key, i'll do the rest. oh, i guess that's real cool. thanks for having faith in me. >> i have faith that you'll try and escape.

>> see? >> you're crazy, sarge. >> after following gill to his cell, our crew is taken to the source of the flood. george graph, serving three years for motor vehicle theft, started the flood by overflowing his toilet. >> [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. >> pull your seat away there, please. >> [ bleep ]. >> i'm sorry? >> [ bleep ]. >> why don't you -- >> [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. >> are you flooding out here or what? >> [ bleep ]. [ bleep ]. >> you know it's not hurting my feelings.

>> the warden says we can't film there anymore. >> we had two offenders that acted out for the camera crew, to put a show on pour the camera crew. we asked the camera crew to stop filming in segregation in order to calm these guys down. from this point on, we'll assess whether we'll allow the camera crew to come back in to segregation. >> a week later, prison officials allowed us back anywhere we conducted several more interviews without interview. even george graph and hall allowed us to continue shooting. a few months later, michael gim was released on patrol. >> coming up, our producer follows a trail of blood that leads to one of the most shocking scenes ever shown on lockup. et the check.

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when our crews are filming inside high security prisons, they know violence can erupt at any moment. while they're prepared for it, it can still be shocking. during our shoot, we walked into one of the bloodiest encounters

in lockup history. >> we were filming in one of the housing units and we heard a call come over the radio. instantly all staff members started running. we picked up our gear and ran with them. >> what is it? what is it? >> a fight. >> there was just a chaotic scene. by the time we got there, they were already pulling people out that were coming back from chow and they were trying to find a victim of what we thought at the time was a fight. >> i don't know who was involved. >> was he involved? >> i don't know. >> i know. i just told these guys to hold up. >> where is the guy that got stabbed? >> immediately it just became a large crime scene. >> they're looking for a long-haired white guy. they say he got to main street. >> i looked over and saw our field producer take off and she had a little camera she was filming with and i didn't see

who she was filming but i saw her make her way into the infirmary. >> i saw a man walking towards me and realized it was the victim for only one reason, there was blood on his shirt. and i saw blood drops coming from him, so i just started to follow him into the medical building. >> where do you want me? >> i was a little shocked because every time they would remove another article of his clothing, there was a bigger and keeping gash. but the bizarre thing about it is, all he was concerned about was his tennis shoes. >> don't throw them away. they're brand spanking new. can you put them in a bag, please? >> we got another cut up here, guys. >> okay. >> we'll get you an ambulance. >> how bad? is it worse than this? >> we need to get him on the gurney, though, get him up front.

>> the nerve damaged? >> i don't know. >> i didn't know what happened. >> the fact that the wounds were so graphic, they actually had to be blurred, it was best for all. they were some of the worst wounds i've ever seen. >> does it look all right? >> wanna go for a ride? >> the victim, pat ellerman, serving 40 years for attempted murder spent two weeks at a local hospital before returning. his attacker, michael ray stafford, was found guilty of the stabbing at a disciplinary hearing and received extra time in the prison segregation unit. but no criminal charges were filed against him because ellerman refused to cooperate with the investigators. we caught up with ellerman on the day he returned to general population. >> after pat recovered from his

injuries and we saw him back out on the yard, again, one of the first comments he made was about his shoes. >> see the blood on my shoes? that's why i stopped fighting, because i seen blood on my shoes. >> it's indicative of prison life. you have so few personal items and you certainly don't have very many things that were brand new. these shoes were new. they were a symbol of him having some kind of success as a convict in prison and he wanted to keep them as pristine as possible, even during this horrific situation. >> is this the end of it? >> no. if i ever see him again -- i can't say nothing. of courts i can't say nothing. if i say no, i'm going to the hole. the guards ain't going to want to hear i'm going to kill this guy. i can't have him coming up behind me a thinking i'm going to get him and doing this again just because he's thinking i'm going to get him back, he's going to want to jump first. i've got to jump first.

but i'm not going to. i can't tell you i'm going to because i'll be in seg. i'm not mad at people. if more people would do what he did instead of poking and running, it would be a different prison. i'm not mad at this guy. >> why? was he justified? >> no. but he did what he thought he had to do. it could have been a lot worse. i'm sort of impressed that he went that far. he could have cut me and ran. >> the throat. >> it would have been my ticket out. >> is it time for you to leave? >> an inmate strug with reality before making a heartbreaking realization.

correctional officers and "lockup" camera crews share something in common, they never know moment to moment what they might encounter behind prison walls. but the unexpected events we cover in prison are not always violent. >> inside, close the door. >> sometimes they're just heartbreaking. during our initial scout at indiana state prison, our main goal was to get familiar with the prison prior to beginning formal production. but when we toured the chronic care unit, which houses mentally ill inmates, we walked in on a quiet drama. >> we were there for our scout week, which means we can't even have a sound guy with us. but when we came upon this scene, we knew we had to roll. >> we came upon this inmate, michael steele, who was sitting outside his cell with his items all packed up. he was convinced he was going home that day.

and it was becoming a problem for the prison, because nobody could dissuade him from this notion. >> i've been in prison since november 3rd, 1988, for a crime that i was charged with and i'm not guilty of. >> okay. what's going on today? >> that's why i'm leaving prison. >> is it time for you to leave? >> my prison time has expired. >> what are you doing sitting here, waiting for what? >> to be released from prison. >> how long have you been waiting here? >> approximately 14 minutes. >> in reality, he was nowhere near his release date. he's serving 110 years for murder and attempted murder. >> which one of these cells was yours? where did you sleep at night

when you were here? did you sleep in one of these cells when you were here? >> the more i asked for details about him leaving, he started to shut down. it was almost as if i was breaking his belief system. the staff then started to move in and they were making it very clear to him that he was going to have to comply and go back into his cell. >> hey, mike. come on in. >> and once he was surrounded by all these staff members, everything just kind of fell apart for him and he broke down sobbing.

>> and that was tough. that was really difficult to film because he was just broken. you know, it was just a sad, sad time. >> eventually, prison staff had no choice but to physically carry steele back into his cell. >> here we go. come on, there we go. there we go. >> don't hurt yourself. >> one, two, three, lift. bring him in. >> he just kind of went limp and then they dragged him back into his cell, propped him up on his cot, and he just sat there. just staring straight ahead. but looking very much like a broken man. >> we visited steele several weeks later. he agreed to speak with us about the incident we had filmed earlier.

both he and prison medical staff also gave us permission to air the footage we had shot of him. >> that day i saw you up here with your things packed ready to go home, did you believe in your heart you were going to go home? >> yes. >> and what about now? >> i don't think so. >> so what do you think, do you think you're going to have to stay in this housing unit? >> i hope not. >> what do you want? >> i want to be released from prison. >> prison psychologist reggie matias hopes steele will be well enough to transition to a less restrictive housing unit. >> we have a work program where they work in general population, they do that for a week or so, maybe two. if it looks like it's going well, then they'll move them up to a dorm and they can go to work from there. essentially they would be discharged from the chronic care unit. >> i heard you've been doing much, much better these days. >> i'm trying to. >> yeah, good. the plan is as soon as you get

back to your usual self, we'll get you back out there working. you worked in the kitchen, right? >> yeah, i worked in the kitchen as a cook. >> i heard you were popular. >> i'm the best cook over there. >> that's what they said. they said the food was good. >> that's because i have a passion for cooking. >> but when the subject of getting a job in population arises, steele suddenly changes his tone and accuses the doctor of deceiving him. >> you lied to me so much in the past out there about working in population, that i don't know if i can trust you. >> i understand. now things look infinitely better. trust is earned. as time goes on -- >> you can't be trusted. >> hopefully we can do things to trust your mind. >> if somebody lies to me, i never trust them again.

>> like i said, trust is earned. we want to get you back out in population and working. that's the goal. i think he's convinced i have been responsible for keeping him on a mental health unit. i guess he's right. i think if he were more open to us, we would have a better sense that it would be okay to put him back out there. >> still playing chess? >> no. >> somebody told me you were a chess player. >> no, i don't know how to play chess. >> really? >> they lied to you. >> we checked back on steele's progress several weeks later. >> he had been telling the staff that he was all ready to begin working in population. we made arrangements for him to do that. i believe they came to pick him up and he said no, i'm not going. so for now, he's going to stay on the chronic care unit and we'll go from there

good morning. coming up on msnbc's "your business," how will the republican controlled congress and president-elect trump help small businesses in 2017? >> small business star kurt russell on what he learned growing his wine company. >> and would you like to sit down and grab a snack with a dog or cat? two growing businesses cater to pet lovers. all that and a whole lot more coming up next on "your business."