I just began watching a show called 60 Days in, available on Netflix in Canada. The first season of this docuseries is about 7 people who get recruited by a sheriff to pose as inmates for 60 days to expose crime and corruption in the Clark County Jail. 

I just started the first episode and there are already so many things standing out to me as weird… borderlining on being problematic. I thought I would use this post as a bit of a journal entry to note some of the things that stand out and offer a different perspective on what is going on in this show. 

The choice to pick out “innocent” people to go undercover inside a prison was interesting. The reasoning behind it was that inmates are usually reluctant to snitch on other inmates, and officers won’t necessarily want to call out a coworker. 

Watching the introduction videos that each participant submitted before screening, it’s clear that some of them have really biased views on how the criminal justice system works in America. One participant, a military wife, talks about how hard her husband works to earn 3 meals a day, and how the inmates in the Cook County jail get “the same benefits”. I am curious to see how her opinions on that change when she sees that what inmates experience aren’t actually beneficial to anyone. She mentioned later on in the first episode that a lot of people end up reoffending after being released. She came to the conclusion that prison wasn’t so bad since the inmates weren’t afraid of coming back. Unfortunately, that’s not really what’s happening. 

Another participant, a teacher, talks about how hard he works. He gets up at 5 every morning after working a nightshift, and says that it’s unfair the inmates get to sleep in and play cards all day. He later says that he chose to participate so he can go back and tell his students about the consequences of the choices they make after receiving first hand experience on how it all works. Unfortunately, not everyone is actually presented with that choice. Later in the episode he is asked about what he predicts the environment will be like in jail. He says his prediction is that it will be like a country-club environment. 

One participant talks about her experience growing up in group homes and foster care before becoming a police officer. She mentioned how a lot of the people she grew up with ended up addicted to drugs or in jail, and wanted to get a better perspective on how she went one way and other kids went another way. I actually think she had a really valuable perspective on the prison system. She said “what I get to see on a daily basis is people that I’m throwing people in there, they’re coming out worse than they were before. So, I’d like to see what life is like for people that I’ve locked up”. 

One participant was actually a social worker who came in to try and figure out why the recidivism rate is so high. She came in hoping that she can help the employees become better wardens. I was really happy to see her coming into this program, I really wanted to see someone who came into this project with compassion. Someone who genuinely wanted to understand the perspective of the people living inside prison. 

I’m really curious to watch the rest of the season and see how each participant’s perspective changes and what they end up reporting by the end of it. 

If you’ve seen this show, comment below and let me know what you thought of it.