it replaced its 100-year-old predecessor, the tennessee state penitentiary, known as the walls. today, riverbend houses close to 700 male inmates, 480 of them are high risk offenders, classified this way because they're a threat to the security of the institution and other inmates. >> we house the worst of the worst including the male inmates, male offenders that are sentenced to death. >> ricky j. bell is warden at riverbend. he's been on the job since 1995. >> it's the state of the art operation. and very proud of what it represents for the taxpayers and the state. >> let's go! chow time! >> the prison compound consists of six different housing units. maximum security inmates live in one, three, and four. nicknamed the high side. it's here you will find riverbend's most dangerous inmates. >> the screaming never stops. it drives people crazy. i've seen a young man come to prison to maximum security, completely sane. three years later, he was screaming and cutting his self. >> ask me what being back here is like. it's like asking a cancer patient how it feels to die slowly. be d

penitentiary in the state. >> michael king, serving a life sentence for murder, managed to break out of another tennessee prisonscaped from a secure compound, northeast correctional. i packed myself up in some boxes and shipped myself out. i was part of a warehouse crew. i've taken yoga for several years, and i just squeezed myself in there. very cramped position. brought some water with me and everything else. about an hour and a half before they shipped me out, they put me in the back of the truck. then they took me to north carolina. they caught me while i was trying to get out of the truck. >> king was sent to brushy mountain's max unit. >> this is supposed to be the most secure building in the state. and that's why they house them here because they've got the wall around the outside. in between the stone wall and this building, we've got razor wire, chain-link fence plus the towers on the walls. so they don't really have an avenue to go out. we have certain inmates we have to move once a month from cell to cell to make sure they're not trying to tunnel out or something of that nature. >> i guess they belie