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Hays State Prison is one of the toughest facilities in the state of Georgia for prisoners and guards alike. In this episode, we'll meet Stephen Crane and 18 other inmates who are being transferred here. They'll be forced to learn the ropes and face the hurdles that come with entering a new prison. Then, we'll meet Elgin Tracy, a 23-year-old Iraq War veteran. Now he is on a different front line as a corrections officer, level one, starting his first day on the job.

See the Hi-Max -- the most extreme prison environment allowed under American law, and at the other end of the spectrum, Georgia has "shock incarceration" for nonviolent first-time offenders: 90 days of intense, military-style boot camp.

Ross Correctional Institution is a gated city. Every inmate must make a choice: Use his sentence to prepare for a life on the outside, or fall prey to the convict mentality which on the inside is called getting institutionalized.

Go inside the underground prison economy at Ohio's Ross Correctional Institution and see inmates try their hands at different money-making strategies. A "jailhouse thief" brings his street ways within jailhouse walls, brutally robbing inmates and selling their possessions. A drug dealer on a 27-year sentence for attempted murder struggles to stay "clean" after getting caught up selling contraband at the orientation prison.

Almost all of the inmates in Ohio's Ross Correctional Institution for drugs, robbery or murder will be released back into the community someday. But withdrawing from the temptations of gang life, gambling and dark hustles is a steep challenge. After years behind bars, prison can seem more like home than the outside world. The last few months of an inmate's sentence are a time for him to unlearn the prison mentality.

Life at one of the most scenic lockups in the world, Alaska’s Spring Creek Correctional Center, where the inmates are surround by one of the countries most breathtaking national parks. But that tranquility is just a sharp contrast to the crimes committed by those jailed inside.

Forget what you thought you knew about women behind bars: theyre the fastest growing prison population in America, and one of the toughest to manage. At the Ohio Reformatory for Women, the system is tested daily by every kind of female offender: from capital murderers, to nursery mothers - and everything in between. Behind these bars, there are "pseudo-families" instead of gangs, infants being raised by inmates, and a complicated web of contraband trades and power plays. This is a world of women unlike any youve ever seen.

In prison, every day is a fight for survival. An inmate's most important weapon may not be a shank or a razor, but instead a gang membership. With more than 1,400 classified gangs in the Ohio prison system, inmates are joining up in alarming numbers.