get through the doors is a challenge. >> go to the west gates, see officer von reagan. >> the maricopa county jail has been the subject of more media attention than probably any other jail in america. in recent years it's been due to the county's policies toward illegal immigrants. before that, much of the coverage centered on its practices. such as constructing an outdoor housing facility with tents. the striped uniforms and pink underwear inmates are required to wear. and the use of chain gangs to perform everything from maintenance work to burying the indigent. behind it all is the man who has run the jail since 1992. sheriff joe arpaio. >> one of my philosophies is you should never live better in jail than you do on the outside. >> you purposely want your jails to be tough, correct? >> well, i sure don't want it to be a hilton hotel like some other prisons around the nation. it's all this rehabilitation, education. we have all that in our jails, nobody talks about, but we punish our children, take away certain things from them, privileges. why can't we punish people who committed crimes a

stands for the maricopa county sheriff's office animal safe haven. ls in that are at death's door. >> m.a.s.h. is a housing unit for abused animals whose owners are incarcerated at maricopa. it's located in one of the original jail facilities, which was shut down for human occupants in 1999. >> we get animals in that are literally skin and bones. we nurse them back to health. we resocialize them. we get them used to being around people. and once their court case is cleared, we take actual ownership of the animal, we adopt them out to a good home. >> good boy. >> the animals are cared for by inmate workers who have no history of animal abuse. male inmates take care of the horses and other farm animals. >> we get accused of standing around scratching our ass all day here at m.a.s.h. unit. best job on the yard. >> female inmates handle the dogs and cats. >> i bond more with the dogs here than any of the girls on the yard. what i like best about the dogs is they don't argue with everything that you say like the inmates do. >> abigail, calm down. >> you kn

male housing units. >> these are the worst in maricopa county. get them out of gp and stuff downstairs. those are the shock collars out there. get them out there, stuff calms down for a while. >> these inmates have either committed violent attacks in the jail or have been identified as gang members. and like all inmates, some are awaiting trial while others have been convicted and are appealing their verdicts or sentences. they are isolated in very stark cells, 23 hours a day and get one hour of rec time in an empty concrete room with a skylight located right next door to their cells. >> the rec pen is the same size as the cell so you go from one cell to another to walk in circles. it's life in solitary confinement. no cellmates, no card games, no chess, but that's life. >> without the distraction of television, radio or cellmates, even the most hardened criminals can break under the pressure. >> every 25 minutes we do our walks to check on inmates to make sure the inmates are safe. they're a greater risk to themselves than anything else. they're

. >> located on a 400-acre lot southwest of downtown phoenix, the maricopa county jail consists of fourndoor facilities that house up to 5,700 inmates and two outdoor tent facilities that can house another 2,000 men and women. a fifth indoor facility is located four miles away in the heart of the city. the fourth avenue jail houses 2,000 mail inmates. considered amongst the highest security threats. while some have actually been convicted of crimes and are awaiting transport to prison, most are still facing trial or sentencing for everything from i.d. theft to murder. maintaining order here is up to a significantly smaller staff of detention officers. >> in sheer volume, we are greatly outnumbered so we try to reduce that by finding out who the shock callers are and working smarter rather than harder. >> shock callers are racially segregated gangs who try to control the gangs within their housing units. in a jail system where inmates of different races are housed together, that can lead to trouble. >> prisons segregate. the jail settings do not. >> we don't segregate by gangs, either. s

. >>> when we visited the special management unit at the maricopa county jail in phoenix, arizona, weere struck by how different it felt from the rest of the facility. >> this is where the killers, rapists, the most violent offenders are housed and when you get up there, it has a very feel than other areas of the jail and that's because there's an eerie silence. and the reason there is an eerie silence as opposed to other segregation units is becaused inmates are housed behind double sets of doors. this is as close to ahanibl lecter cell unit you can get. they walk out and they have their 45 minutes of recreation. each day and then, boom. right become into the cell without ever interacting with another inmate. so it has a very ominous feel when you walk through the special management unit and this is the path that i took when i went to meet shawn gaines. >> 29-year-old shawn gaines had spent most of the last six years in the special management unit. awaiting trial on a first degree murder charge that could land him on death row. >> i lived here longer than i ever lived in one spot in