some of the most violent gang attacks have taken place here at california state prison corcoran's securitysing 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 nowhere 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 showed 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 ha

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

. >> among the nation's toughest, california state prison corcoran. severely overcrowded and riffe with racial tension. officers try to maintain order in an institution with a violent past. this is lockup corcoran extended stay. >> most of these people out on this yard could die right there and i would watch them die. i don't care about them. >> when it comes down to it, you miss one beat, you're going to miss the whole burrito. >> from old school prison gangs, to destructive street gangs, it's a dangerous mix. >> bulldogs are at war with everybody. >> officers who have known gang members into the shu where they have a choice, stay in the gang or drop out. >> you're going to have to die sometime. i might as well go out with a bang. >> california state prison corcoran has the largest housing unit or shu in the state. split between two units, the shu houses some of the worst inmates in california. the majority of these are validated gang members or inmates too violent to be housed in the general population. shu inmates are kept in 8x12 foot cells and re

>>> corcoran's a maximum security prison in the california state penal system. we house approximately 5,600 felons. >> this population includes infamous criminals like juan corona, sirhan sirhan, and manson. built to hold the most violent offenders in the state, corcoran has seen its share of brutality. today, a fresh group of inmates arrives at receiving and release, no doubt aware of this prison's reputation. >> when i get on the bus, they called your names out to come off the bus, and they're teary-eyed coming to corcoran. it's a shock to them. i guess they have heard a lot about corcoran. >> what do you know about corcoran? >> what i know? i know it ain't no joke. that's what i know. i know this is serious business. >> corcoran is a pretty rough prison here. it's one of the rougher prisons. >> this is how serious it is. it's a life or death situation. it is like that. i don't care what they tell you. it is like that. okay? it is hardcore like that. >> corcoran's general population inmates are split into three main yards. the level one yard consists mainly of

>> this is california state prison, corcoran. a maximum security prison that has housed some of the nation's most infamous criminals including charles manson and the founder of the mexican mafia. despite its reputation, violence doesn't come naturally to everyone at corcoran. >> i don't see myself as being like many of the people here. what i saw the longer i was here is there really is a thin line between them and me. >> before he was an inmate, stefan parro was a librarian. >> i'm here basically because i'm an alcoholic and i've done a lot of drugs, too. drugs are part of my story. >> parro's drug use resulted in a six-year sentence for crimes including burglary. >> at that time i had been married not very long. my wife was pregnant. the fact i couldn't stop drinking and i couldn't stop using, it was difficult to deal with the shame and guilt of all that. >> parro and his wife eventually separated, but he landed in prison for breaking into her home and stealing her credit cards to pay for drugs. >> i readily admitted to it. that

when we met christian knight, he was serving 79 years for murder at california state prison corcoran. >> just seeing christian the first time, you kind of knew he very dramatic looking. you know, with all the tats and very intense. several incredible stories but one involved his attempt to attack a sex offender at the los angeles county jail. >> got this freaking child molester on the tier. he's actually in the van talking about what he does. you know, i like to keep myself, hey, i don't lose my temper. keep myself calm, cool, and collective. that dude made me snap. i get in the van and i tell him, i'm going to rip the toilet off the wall. i'm going to bust through this frickin' glass. i'm going to drag it down the tier, and i'm going to bust through your glass and cut you up your [ muted ]. you're a dead man. yeah, yeah, yeah. then all you hear is steel bending. i got behind the toilet, pushed the toilet all the way back. long story short, i ripped the whole toilet off, wrapped my hands up with my socks, smashed through the glass. he hadn't seen me yet. you know what i mean? get on t

. >> 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 debt or have them stabbed, in which case we would send one of ours to stab them. >> duncan's loyalt

. >> during one of our shoots at california state prison corcoran, our crew barely got a glimpse of mansonow. 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. oc

. >> when we visited california state prison corcoran for "extended stay," we came upon clarence leeinto a new cell with 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 a life sentence 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 whatever with terry 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 homeys 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 t

but this one yard at california state prison corcoran that's supposed to be gang-free. >> it's calledyard, sny. it's where gang dropouts or sex offenders or high-risk inmates go for their own safety. but even here gangs can spring up, and we found one of the most unorthodox gangs. they call themselves gbg, the gay boy gangsters. >> it's a group of men that are gay, that are not transgender, and who are gay men who like men who do not want to be a woman. okay. that's it. we're pretty thick actually. we're pretty much respected. we don't get into fights. we don't get into that sort of thing, but we have a pretty good following. we're just a group of people that are gay and stand for our own. >> clement, who prefers to be called wicked, is serving 20 years for three counts of robbery. and he's not the only gay boy gangster on the sensitive needs yard at corcoran. nicolas turner, who goes by the name demon, told us the gbgs should not be taken lightly. >> we hurt anybody that -- inside the prison system, anybody that tries to forcefully take property or rape or in any way hurt a homosexua

>> among the nation's toughest, california state prison corcoran.nsion. we spent months inside where

. ♪ ho ho ho ♪ green giant ♪ ♪ as we sing holy holy holy >>> when we met brian at california state prison corcoran a pretty good hunch that the origin of his 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

. >> in the exercise yard at california state prison corcoran, we met an inmate whose art is inspirede. >> my name is kevin moore, m-o-o-r-e. >> what were you convicted for? >> i'm doing a parole violation for sales of marijuana. >> the yard is an interesting place because you never know who you're going to run into, you never know who you're going to talk to, you never know the personality, who they are. i kind of just started looking around and tried to find interesting-looking faces. i happened upon kevin moore. he started telling me that he's a rap artist. he is a ghost writer. >> i have a record deal waiting on me. death row records. for anybody, any rap fans that's listening, my aka is sassoon. and i got a demo coming out in a few months. if you're a rap fan, listen to it. >> when you start talking to inmates you are not sure what to believe. they start telling you these stories. you're kind of like say, all right. >> i have been a ghost writer in the rap industry for about 13 years. a lot of stuff i have written from behind these walls i have sold to other artists. that have be