Life Inside Jail: Hell on Earth
28 June, 2016
To gain access to a tough US prison, we gambled with telling some stark truths
about our intentions, says Lee Phillips.
LIFE INSIDE JAIL: HELL ON EARTH
Production company Voltage TV
Commissioner Andrew O’Connell
Length 2 x 60 minutes
TX 9pm, Tuesday 28 June, ITV
Executive producer Sanjay Singhal
Producer/director Lee Phillips
Lee Phillips
Producer/director
When I was approached about making Life Inside Jail, I was hesitant. After
making Her Majesty’s Prison: Aylesbury a few years back, I’d feared another prison
series was going to be difficult to top.
However, I’d worked with executive producer and Voltage founder Sanjay Singhal
nearly a decade ago when we quite literally made Mischief together at the BBC and it
had been a fun and rewarding experience. I agreed to at least lend him a hand and
head out to New York for a few days with the intention of shooting a taster tape.
Producing a taster tape is an easy gig: A couple of days filming without the pressure
of having to build characters or story. Yet in the world of observationaldocumentaries, a good taster is like gold. It unlocks almost every commission.
But a brilliantly executed taster can be dangerous. Believe me, I’ve been burnt
myself: seduced by two-minutes of intriguing sound bites, only to discover that the
dismal reality of what is possible has been deftly disguised by some cleverly-edited
smoke and mirrors.
Voltage’s development team had been trying to secure access to an American jail
for the best part of a year. With interest from ITV, two really good taster tapes had
already been shot, but once it came to the finer details of the access agreement,
both of the jails got cold feet and pulled out.
When I came on board, Sanjay agreed that the production of a jaw-dropping taster
should be secondary to me really testing the jail’s apparent willingness to let
cameras in. He encouraged me to push them to their limits and whichever way the
trip went, I should return confident that if Voltage pressed ITV for the commission,
it would be based on a sincere belief that the end result had the potential to be
something special.
Travelling 150 miles north of Manhattan, I met the jail’s all-important gatekeeper:
elected sheriff Craig Apple. Responsible for not just the jail, but the police and the
county court, the Sheriff is an incredibly busy man.
I didn’t want to waste his time, so I quickly cut to the chase: we wanted full and
complete access to the facility - the kind of access that he should be afraid to give.
When he asked what that might entail, the answer I gave was designed to shock. I
was painfully aware it could easily end the trip before it’d even begun. I told him
that if the unthinkable happens - an inmate commits suicide, or an officer is
assaulted or even murdered inside his jail – no-one would stop us filming.
I could see the sheriff was taken aback, but having worked his way up from being a
correctional officer, he knew only too well that these extreme situations are the
grim reality of jail life.
He looked to his deputies and Chris Clark, the jail’s chief superintendent (the US
equivalent to a prison governor) to measure their response. Everyone looked
incredibly nervous at the prospect. I think they thought they were signing up for a
few interviews and maybe a quick tour, not months of filming with no restrictions,
or editorial control.
Finally, the sheriff made his decision: “You got it.” His east coast drawl was music to
my ears. “Anything you want, you got it.”
I hadn’t even stepped into the jail, but that’s when I knew the trip was a success. All
I had to do now was shoot a cracking taster to help Sanjay win the commission.
I was quickly brought down to earth as the sheriff reminded me that I wasn’t out of
the woods just yet. I still had around 240 hardened and pretty sour correctional
officers to convince.
Working on the frontline of a maximum-security jail, with gangsters, rapists and
murderers, has a way of making people untrusting and jaded. In an incredibly
dangerous and unpredictable environment, the last thing they want is the added
stress of keeping a film crew safe.
I spent the next day-and-a-half in jail meeting inmates and officers. Maybe the
English accent made me a curious oddity, but everyone wanted to talk. They were
incredibly articulate and open about their lives.
Grabbing a few moments of arresting actuality – an angry woman shouting and
screaming as she arrived back from court, a gang-banging crip caged in the special
housing unit (the infamous SHU) bragging about his thug life on the streets of
Brooklyn – I was happily gathering enough footage to bring the facility to life.
Crucially, I was getting excited about the prospect of actually making the series
myself. I can’t put my finger on why I’m so drawn to such a dark subject matter, but
there is nothing quite so thrilling as trying to unpick the mind of someone accused
of a heinous crime like murder.
The jail holds around 1,000 inmates over 22 separate housing units. Speeding my
way through the endless maze of cells, dormitories and corridors, the whole place
felt like a treasure chest of larger than life characters and dramatic opportunity.
Before wrapping things up, I caught up with the young woman who I’d filmed
shouting abuse at officers after returning from court. Her name was Morgan and
everyone thought she was crazy.
When I found her, Morgan was being held in an 8ft by 7ft cell on the mental health
tier. She had no personal belongings and no privacy. I asked Morgan
if sheconsidered herself crazy.
“No”, she replied. “I’m mad - but not crazy.”
I must have looked confused.
“I’m not a criminal. I’ve got a college diploma and a life. I’d be crazy if I gave up my
freedom without a fight.”
Looking around me, I knew it was going to be incredibly difficult to hand this kind
of opportunity over to another filmmaker. I told the officers who’d shown me round
that I’d be back.
Getting ITV to commit was going to be the easy bit. Convincing my family that it
would be a good idea for me to spend months behind bars in one of New York’s
toughest jails? That was a whole different story.