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Filmed over an entire year, Inside: Maximum Security goes behind the scenes of Hays State Prison in Georgia, immersing viewers in the brutal reality of life inside. This high-profile correctional centre, is built to house criminals that other prisons can't handle, within its walls are over 2,500 of America’s toughest criminal inmates and we investigate the harsh reality of their existence.

Episode 1: Breaking In

Episode 1 follows new inmates and correctional officer cadets as they first enter the treacherous world of Georgia’s prisons, embarking on a year long journey behind bars. A paramilitary ethos dictate show inmates dress, walk, keep their hair, and clean their cells. But another set of rules operates beneath the administration’s: the convict code, a world of respect and retribution that separates the wolves from the sheep.

Episode 2: The Ropes

The second episode of this groundbreaking series follows inmates and officers as they learn the ropes in one of the toughest, highest security facilities in the state. Inmates deal with violence, manhood, and a life behind bars as they decide how to do their time.

Episode 3: Tools of Control

Episode 3 follows inmates and prison officials as they struggle to set the rules inside these walls. In here, the battlefield shifts daily, and control can give way to chaos at any time. This is the inmates’ home – and they want it on their terms. But the administration sees it differently: when convicts are in charge, lives are at stake.

Episode 4: Changes Behind Bars

In Episode 4, a young inmate ready for parole, an old timer in his 40th year behind bars, a family man-turned-female, and a veteran fighting a life sentence confront how time in one of Georgia’s toughest prisons has transformed them.

Episode 5: Breaking Point

Episode 5 takes you deep into the Georgia prison system's most extreme methods of control: from shock incarceration for young offenders to the isolation units of High Max – and a last meal before execution.

Episode 6: Release and Return

Two inmates with violent histories, long sentences, and nothing to lose escape. Now it’s up to law enforcement to track them down – and as the hours go by, the stakes get higher. Episode 6 reports from the center of a manhunt to capture the two fugitives, before time runs out.