. >>> on the western edge of southern indiana is the wabash valley town of carlisle where main street conjures images of a bygone era, and except for the daily passing of the csx freight line, this one-light town might be all but forgotten. just a couple miles down u.s. 41, however, is evidence that carlisle is anything but forgotten. >> it's 2 1/2 hours away from everywhere. it's just the middle of nowhere. what goes on out here? prison. that's what goes on out here. >> surrounded by little else but big skies, the wabash valley correctional facility houses more than 2,000 convicted felons, including some of the highest security prisoners in the state. it is a fortress among farms. >> we have a total of seven towers blanketing the entire facility, including one tower that's in the center of our south yard. we've got the two sets of fences all the way around the facility. the inner fence is a stun fence, it's a nonlethal stun fence. the outside fence another 14-foot fence covered with razor ribbon. shaker alarm on the motion detector. motion detector in between the fences. we think our

. >>> plucked from death row an inmate tries to make a >>> indiana's wabash valley correctional facility houses nearly 2200 inmates. more than one-third of them are doing time for serious violent crimes. unless isolated in solitary confinement, the vast majority of inmates live in two-man cells. pairings are critical and avoiding a volatile mix of cell mates a constant challenge. >> we try to not put people doing life with people who are going home next year or blacks with whites or white supremist where with someone with a child molestation case just to resolve the conflict before it happens. >> but even with careful screening conflicts can still arise between cell mates. >> there is a guy in the infirmary with several injuries to his facial and head area. at this point he is saying he had a seizure. we will try to talk to him. he may have been assaulted with a hot pot. we're going to talk to him and see if he is willing to talk at all. >> the victim is curt its cash who is serving a 29-year sentence for burglary. >> cash? >> yeah. >> what's up with you, man? >> you can stay laid down i

. >> with more than 2,000 inmates, the wabash valley correctional facility in southwestern indiana has larger population and more acreage than the rest of the small town in which it's located. >> carlisle is a very small community, approximately 1,200 is their population. it's comprised of a school. it has a grocery store. it has a gas station, a couple of little restaurants, a dollar store and that's really about all that's in carlisle. >> while carlisle might be a remnant of a simpler time, inside the twin security fences of wabash is evidence of how some aspects of society have grown harder. >> we're seeing a lot more offenders coming in much younger than they were before and much more violent than in the past as well. correctional officers are the backbone of the facility. they're the ones dealing with the offenders on a daily basis. they are frontline. >> i've been hearing about the correction setting since i was 8 years old. i grew up around it. so coming in here was actually kind of easy for me. i already knew what to expect. i've heard all the war stories. >> officer jarrod mcm

at prisons like wabash valley correctional facility in indiana. t wabash houses men doing time for more serious crimes. men like jeremy blanchard. >> i have never been a drug abuser or a drunk. i knew what i done when i done it. i knew the heinous nature of what i done. i can still to this day remember nearly every blood spot that was in that house. i can remember the wallpaper, the way the bodies were laid. i can remember nearly everything that happened that night. >> blanchard has served a little more than one year of a 195-year sentence. but his facial tattoos will forever commemorate both his crime, the triple murder and the moniker the media gave him, the kokomo slayer. >> that's who i am and what i'm about. yes. >> blanchard tracked down his former girlfriend, her mother, and her mother's boyfriend when they traveled to kokomo, indiana to attend a funeral. blanchard broke into their home, hid inside and stabbed all three to death with a butcher's knife. >> a friend of jessica's told me that she had an abortion and that's what probed my anger

now he's one of more than 2,000 inmates at the wabash valley correctional facility in southwestern indiana. >> yeah, i had a great home, a great mother. you know what i mean? but by the same token, when i step outside my front door, it's the jungle. coming home from school, you may get into a fight, you may get jumped, you may get shot, you know what i mean, may get harassed by the police, but when you grow up around that, it becomes normal. you get accustomed to it, and some may make it out of the neighborhood, if you can see an alternative lifestyle. but so many get consumed in a lifestyle that leads to prison or death. the street don't give you too many bright endings, man. i ran the streets, man. i did the street life. i'm in here washing clothes by hand and eating bull [ bleep ] chicks like that on the street. i wear my white t-shirt one time and throw it away and buy a new one. you make do with what you've got in prison, you know? the things you think you'll never do out on the street is like a luxury in here. this is everything, your kitchen, your bathroom, your laundry room, your b

. >> mcquay is not the only inmate at wabash valley who say he's been through a spiritual transformation since coming to prison. marcus murray is a self-pro claimed priest of a little known pagan religion. >> it is the prechristian religion of northern europeans. >> hail all yea holy gods. >> it's proven popular among primarily white inmates prison wide. murray says he discovered it shortly before coming to wabash 121 years earlier. he's serving a 60-year sentence for beating another man to death and says that this has helped him come to grips with the murder. his pendant and his many tattoos are symbols of his fate. >> vieking age is a large portion of it. >> but prison officials have begun to see this as something else, a front for white supremacist gangs. ahave been able to hold services at some prisons but wabash has banned the meetings. >> it's been quite disruptive, even at the other facilities. >> murray denies any link to these white supremacist meetings. >> it does not pro mote gang mentality or any criminal elements at all. it's a religion based on virtue and knowledge. >> the

. >> the first time i put on a stab vest was in indiana at wabash valley.t was definitely an uneasy feeling knowing i had to wear this to walk on to the unit an that the potential to be stabbed was higher here. it definitely makes you a little more on your toes and a lot more alert of your environment. >> we noticed that these vests said lock down. wile we're here we're going to slowly but surely change every stinkin' one of them. >> if i'm required to wear a stab vest i usually just make light of it. i joke around about how it adds ten pounds to me and the color don't go with my outfit. i make it into a joke. >> and a sense of humor goes a long way in breaking the ice with many of the inmates featured on lockup. >> coming up the one lockup crew member inmates love to rib. >> sometimes i'll hear people say stuff through their cell, hey fat boy. i have to look at myself, really? >> and later previously unseen clips from one of the more memorable inmates we ever met. meeting took forever. oh, my parents will be here any minute. ♪ canned soup? no way. ♪ mmm! t

when we visited indiana's wabash valley correctional facility, officers in the security housing unit >> since he's been inside the shu, he's been on strip cell. when you see the offender coming out of his cell only wearing his underwear, he was on strip cell for resisting staff or trying to assault staff before. we have had trouble with him on about every range we've put him on so far. >> i can't get along with people too much. especially when they're evil. >> one of the people mccombs claims was evil, officer sachen. >> an average day in the shu can be pretty mundane. you have rec and showers to do. chow to serve, md sick call, so on and so forth. some days like today get a little more exciting. we had an offender who became belligerent in the shower. >> the offender was mccombs who told us he had good reason to be upset. >> try to get me to take a shower. but they don't have no soap or nothing. i said, ma'am, i just came from the other side, it was nasty where i come from. i need something to wash, a bar of soap. she's talking crazy to me. right. she come up here and talking to me

menagerie to match that of philip stroud, who was serving three life sentences for murder at the wabash valley correctional facility in indiana. >> basically making origami figures. you've got the lion, you've got the swan, you've got the rabbit, little puppy, dinosaur, flower. my niece, she loves the little goldfish. this is my favorite one because it turns into like a kaleidoscope-type thing. the hardest one to make was probably the elephant because it got a lot 6 folds. i'm an artsy fartsy type of guy, i guess you could say. it's basically a way to spend my time, use my hands to make something that really means something that can bring a smile to somebody's face, instead of using -- using my time or using my hands to hurt somebody or to destroy something. i even sent some to nursing homes and stuff. the different animals remind me of when mom used to take us to the zoo or, you know, cartoons or stuff like that because in here, it's easy to grow cold. it's easy to become desensitized. and i was like that for a while. and i'm still trying to come out of that. so this is a part of me trying to