Reggie Yates is going to jail. For one week he will eat, sleep and work alongside the inmates of Bexar County Jail, Texas. America incarcerates more people than any other country in the world… and the largest population of inmates are housed in Texas. What’s life really like on the inside, and what’s the real impact of being locked up in America’s criminal justice system?
Reggie is joining up with Unit 27 of the 56th Infantry Battalion in Acapulco to live the life of an ordinary soldier fighting on the front line of the brutal war against the country’s powerful and violent drug cartels. Acapulco was once a tourist paradise, now it’s the fourth most dangerous city in the world. As the situation spirals further and further out of control, the army have been called in. But what’s it like for the young soldiers putting their lives on the line? How does it feel to be fighting a war against your own countrymen in a place where you don’t know who the enemy is… and you don’t know who to trust?
Reggie heads to Ghana to live on one of the largest e-waste dumps in the world – Accra’s notorious Agbogbloshie. Working with a group of “burner boys”, the people grafting at what is considered to be the bottom of the ladder, Reggie discovers first hand what life's like for the people who eke out a living on the site. Dumping e-waste is illegal and the chemicals in the soil in Agbogbloshie mean it has been described as “the most toxic place on earth”. But could we really be complicit in creating it?
Reggie is in the Middle East to spend a week living and sleeping in the largest refugee camp in Iraq - alongside 30,000 Syrian refugees. Since the war in Syria first began, nearly 11 million people have fled their homes in search of safety. The news has been dominated by those trying to cross into Europe, but some 5 million people ended up in refugee camps. What’s it really like to be a 21st century refugee? And what’s it like to plan for your future when you cant go home and you cant move on?
A year after spending a week living as an inmate, Reggie is heading back to jail. Only this time, he’s working as a guard. Based inside Guildford County Jail in North Carolina, Reggie helps guard nearly a thousand prisoners – whose crimes range from minor misdemeanors to murder. What is it like working in a system operating under unprecedented scrutiny? And having seen incarceration from the other side sides – will he feel part of the solution? Or part of the problem?
