california state prison corcoran, home to hundreds of the state's most violent and infamous offenders hosted "lockup" crews in 2000 and 2005. >> right before i walked in, i had to sign a document that kind of really made me think twice. it basically said that in an event that there is a hostage situation inside the prison walls, they will not negotiate for your life and you know the risk that you're taking when you walk in. while at corcoran, you constantly hear these alarms going off. you never are sure what's going to happen in this place. then when you hear those alarms and everyone dropping on the ground, and you've got those rifles appearing out of the towers, immediately it takes your breath away for a second. >> in most cases, the alarm sounds when a fight has broken out between inmates. though these incidents are usually brought to a stop in minutes, they always pose serious danger to the responding officers and our crews. >> while at corcoran, there was one instance, we were doing pretty much routine cell search. we were following along, they had the dogs, so it was a very co

. >> at california state prison corcoran, we met one young inmate was ordered to attack an older, weaker gang member simply to thin out the herd. he asked that we not use his name. >> i accepted that because that's the way it is. you know i didn't question it. some things i was against but i just dealt with it and accepted it because that's the law of the land in here. >> he explained that the hit was ordered because the older victim was unable to keep up with the gang's military style exercise program. >> he couldn't keep up with the exercise. you know, that was the reason. this is how stupid this is. you know, the dumb reasons they have in here. when i did speak up for him, it was placed on me. well, since you're speaking up with him, you'll deal with it. i dealt with it because that's what it was about. >> the older inmate survived the stabbing and his assailant quit the gang. >> finally i made my stance and went against them. now i'm a christian and i go for that. i wrote him a letter and i apologized that i was sorry i had to do that i was so weak. and i didn't protect him. i should

. >> 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 doe

california state prison corcoran, home to hundreds of the state's most violent and infamous offenders"lockup" crews in 2000 and 2005. >> right before i walked in, i had to sign a document that kind