lockup crews have also been frequent guests at california's state prison corcoran. >> you might have to fight. you might have to stab. you never know. depends on the situation. >> a lot of times it is fist fights out here. but i would say maybe every other month we get a righteous stabbing. when they do stab each other they go for the kill. they don't just stab each other to play around. >> every morning you wake up you are dealing with 1,000 different attitudes. you never know what can happen on that certain day. all you can do is think the worst, hope for the best. >> we met two inmates on the yard at corcoran who are much more pro-active when it comes to surviving life in this powder keg. they gave our crew a tutorial on how they do it. >> the rules you want to live by behind the walls you want to give everybody the same respect that you expect to receive from them. >> without order we have

some of the most violent gang attacks have taken place here at california state prison corcoran's security unit, or shu. we visited the shu's now vacant exercise yard, which has been the scene of some of the prison's most brutal violence. ♪ >> i can see why fights went on in that exercise yard. because it was literally like a cage. there was no where for you to go. and if you really wanted to take someone out, that was the place to do it. it's literally -- like the most extreme ultimate fighting thing you would see. >> correctional officers show our cameras how they quell the violence with an arsenal of their own. one that includes nonlethal and lethal weaponry. >> get down! get down! >> the first rounds we fire are wood blocks. hopefully the hurt will make them stop. if we really have to escalate with our nonlethal options, we use what's called a scat round. which is really irritating. see those are a little bit louder, the smoke you see there, that's cn gas. it's no fun. it messes up your sight, makes you, you know, makes your snot roll. and of course, we have a lethal option. we have a

california state prison. corcoran. when we interviewed these men, our crew was required to wear stab-proof vests. one of the corcoran inmates we san down with was christian knighten. nobody describes the daily pressures, the ups and downs of being a predator, like he does. >> it's seductive, you know what i mean? you can love the game, but the game loves nobody. you know what i mean? you could sit there and give it your all and think everyone's supporting you, and before you know it, just like that. get your throat cut. seen it, done it. >> knighten was serving time for murder and attempted murder. crimes he committed at the los angeles county jail while awaiting trial on an outside murder/robbery charge that he was convinced would send him to prison for life. but when he went on trial for that original murder charge, something completely unexpected happened. >> they find me not guilty, and it righteously blew my mind. i had to laugh. the irony of it it was classic. >> knighten should have walked away as a free man, in

> but we have never seen a more bizarre display of the gut churning activity than at california state prison corcoranpened during a routine shoot at the prison hospital. >> we were there for like ten minutes. did a couple interviews with a couple doctors. initially it seemed like it was going to be mundane and going through the process. so we decided to leave. we were all packed up ready to go back into the other section of the prison when all hell broke loose. >> we have four inmates in four different cells that are holding food trays, some have started flooding the tier which means they're causing the toilets to back up, causing water to come out on to the floor. i'll first go out, try to talk to the inmates and trying to get them into compliance. inmates failed to comply with staff instructions we will probably have to extract them. >> one by one the cells just started popping off. you know, one guy is just started throwing feces, the other guy was covering up his cell. i was like, wow, this isn't boring. this is pretty intense. >> i am going to talk to them. want to make sure we get that on video

california state prison, corcoran.ut you'd never know it by talking to easley. >> i got it pretty good. it's all right. it's fine. this is something that i like doing, you know? it's kind of like a relaxation, you know? >> ernest had a legitimate job given to him by the administration in the kitchen, but he was smart in that he had figured out a way to have a little hustle on the side to make extra money. >> i usually charge, like a suit, a pair of pants is a suit, a shirt is a suit. i wash clothes. i don't wash boxers or socks. that's what i don't wash. you know, other than that i charge, you know, a dollar to wash, a dollar to iron their clothes. you'd be surprised. a lot of people, well men, they aren't really into washing or ironing, so i do it. >> one of the first things that struck me about ernest was he had a happiness about him you don't often see in a prison and then we came to find out why. >> well, i have a significant other. he's a very good person. you know? his name is robert. and he's a good man. you kno

(laura) at the california state prison-- corcoran, the inmates like the inmates in other california prisons their own set of rules that they call prison politics. and the politics can get violent. corcoran averages two assaults per day. what crimes are most common? >>batteries, assaults, stabbings. >>this is a razor. >>they call that a tomahawk. they attach two razors at the end of the handle right there, and that really does a lot of damage. >>what are the odds that at any given moment there's a weapon out on the yard? >>about a 90 percent chance. when they're out there on the yard, they'll know where that weapon is, in case something goes down, they'll go out there and get it and take care of what they need to take care of. all the yards right now, i'll bet you, have weapons on them. if something goes down then they'll get it and do what they got to do. [woman over pa] >>captain field, you said that this is a level 4 yard. what does that mean? level 4? >>level 4 is a higher security level than say, a level 1 inmate. these inmates, when they go through the classification process, they're g

. >> when we visited california state prison corcoran for "extended stay," we came upon clarence leeith an old friend from the neighborhood. a place he might never see again. lee was a veteran of the crips street gang and is serving for murder. the majority of inmates in prison belong to gangs. >> welcome into our little casa. >> lee's old friend reginald maiden who preferred to be called terry was in a distinct minority. >> go to school together. help each other with schoolwork. go to chow together. i have no problem sitting with terry. i have no problem doing what it takes because i look at him as a human. i understand all of the things he went through. to others it seems like we're more than homies because they don't understand how long i've known terry. >> terry was a very overt transgender inmate. then we meet clarence who comes off as this very strong, straight-looking guy. and because terry was constantly running into problems with his cellmates, he needed protection, for lack of a better word, and clarence was willing to offer that for terry. they characterize their relations

. >> duncan was serving 28 years for home invasion, kidnapping, and robbery at california state prison corcoran it was the culmination of a criminal career that began at a very young age. >> i came from a good home. i can't say that i had a bad childhood. i just got mixed up with the wrong people. i started committing petty crimes when i was a kid because i actually did get strung out on heroin. my first shot was probably when i was 10 or 11 years old. >> duncan had spent most of his life incarcerated. in that time, he developed a reputation as an inmate to fear. >> these are some weapons that they say they discovered in a cell that i once occupied, allegedly. myself, personally, i'm a nice guy and i don't believe in violence. that's a damn lie. it was my responsibility on the yard to ensure that, one, our people were not harmed by another race. i took care of the drug debts if one of our people became delinquent in a drug debt to another race, it was my responsibility to either cover their drug debor have them stabbed, in which case we would send one of ours to stab them. >> duncan's loyalty t

. >>> california state prison corcoran has one of the largest populations of many dangerous inmates on the west coast. our crews have visited here several times and correctional staff is always blunt about the danger. >> when talking to the cos at corcoran, they told me, you come in here, you have to join a gang for protection. immediately. >> when you come to the prison, you have to join a gang. you have no choice. it's a must. >> the prison cannot protect you from the other inmates. it's an incredible admission. >> so you have to have that backup from your other races that are out here, whatever race backs you up, you need to be in their gang because you have no protection. you're on your own and anything could happen to you. >> correctional officers know anything can happen to them as ç well. >> i'm very well aware that the gangs can reach outside these walls. it may hold them in, but it doesn't hold in their power, the things they can do. i keep my family business to myself. i don't go to areas in the public where i know gangs are known to hang out. i avoid those locations. >> the

for clay lopez, at california state prison corcoran, doing time led him to the harmonica. >> i'm almost don't have a career or anything, so i thought, well, you know, if i learn to play the harmonica, i can at least pay my own rent when i get out there, even as a street musician, if i'm sober. i think i'll do okay. ♪ i started to play the harp better when i lost this tooth. i started getting the twanging sound the way it was supposed to sound. i was never so happy to lose a tooth. makes this harp sound real good. ♪ you can play what you feel without reading music, and i've tried to play guitar, piano, all kinds of stuff, and i never went anywhere, and not that i'm going anywhere with this, but, i know a few songs, mostly hymnals, gospel songs, and a few of my own, and it just expresses me. >> lopez was serving a 20-year sentence on 27 counts of burglary. but it was his exposure to inmates serving life terms that inspired him to pay them tribute through his songs. >> i just wanted to do something for the lifers to kind of express them. i could sing the last verse and it speaks for itself

. ♪ >>> when we met brian at california state prison corcoran, we had a pretty good hunch that the origins nickname would play a major part in his story. >> my nickname is lefty. never been called lefty, it's because i have one arm. at 18 i was the victim of a drunk driving accident when i was in the air force. >> the other thing that was significant about brian to me was he was the height of irony on a lot of levels. he was a good example as to why you don't want to take justice into your own hands. his crime was that of a vigilante. >> you know being a christian means you don't have to be scared of your past because your sins, no matter how ugly they are, and we have some ugly ones in this room -- >> he is an inmate preacher at the prison's chapel and can trace the ugliest of his sins to a bizarre series of events that began with the loss of his arm. >> after the air force medically retired me, i retired to little rock, arkansas, started selling clothes in the mall. all i thought about all day long was having one arm, being in the big city where i didn't know anybody, and i already had

>>> there are nearly 5,000 inmates at california state prison corcoran.nt one of the highest concentrations of dangerous felons found anywhere. it's rare that inmates and correctional staff on this yard ever unite in a common goal. but when a bus load of teenagers arrive during our shoot there, we witnessed one of those times. line them up. let's go. let's go. come on now. come on now. >> so all these kids they brought into corcoran for the day, there is an aura of like, hey, this is going to be kind of cool. we're going to see things on the inside. i will see what it's really like to be a bad ass. >> here at corcoran, we don't discriminate. if you're white, we'll take you. if you're black, we'll take you. hispanic, we'll take you. we do not discriminate. >> the teens, who have all had run-ins with the law, were sent here for a crime intervention program called "reaching out: convicts to kids" or r.o.c.k. it's designed to send a clear message -- prison is not a place to make new friends. >> when we go into the yard, if the alarm goes off, everybody goes d