- Sheriff Eric Higgins gave film crew full access to Pulaski County jail in Arkansas
- Inmates filmed making jail wine, smoking, getting in fights without guards
- Higgins hailed experiment a success but local officials furious he didn’t tell them
Inmates made three gallons of illegal ‘hooch’ and bashed a man for cheating at cards when they were given the run of the jail for a reality TV series.
Sheriff Eric Higgins unlocked the cell doors of a block in the Pulaski County jail in Arkansas for a radical experiment to see if they could govern themselves.
The six-week trial was documented by a TV crew and hidden cameras and edited into Unlocked: A Jail Experiment now screening on Netflix.
However, the series enraged blindsided local officials who only learned about the show, and the experiment, when the Netflix trailer was released.
They claim Higgins went rogue and signed an illegal contract allowing ‘reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous’ changes to jail operations to be shown to the world.
Higgins hailed the experiment a success and planned to roll it out to four other general population blocks across the prison.
The eight-episode series documented 46 inmates including 13 accused murderers, along with drug dealers and wife beaters, in Block H in February to April 2023.
Pulaski County Detention Facility is a remand center where inmates are locked up until they face trial or make bail. Some who appeared on the show were later convicted and sent to jail elsewhere and two were acquitted.
They included Raymond ‘AJ’ Lovett, 24, who was in December jailed for life without parole for shooting dead Leighton Whitfield, 21, as he visited his fiancée in hospital.
Despite the prisoners eventually achieving tentative harmony, learning to work together, and creating a system to run the block, there was plenty of drama.
Several fist fights were caught on camera where inmates punched each other in the face, but they were usually broken up by other prisoners in a few seconds.
However, in the last few days of the experiment a new inmate joined the block and was caught cheating at cards, enraging the losing player.
The pair agreed to settle the score in a cell out of sight of the cameras, but instead the card cheater was jumped by three and viciously beaten.
The beating almost derailed the entire experiment, which would have put the inmates in lockdown up to 23 hours a day.
Weeks earlier, other inmates made three gallons of prison wine ‘hooch’ from fruit, Kool-Aid, bread crusts, and water left to ferment for days.
They also used a battery stolen from a clock to light ‘cigarettes’ made from toilet paper and coffee grinds, and make ink for crude prison tattoos.
One scene showed what appeared to be inmates smoking marijuana, but turned out to be dried-up broccoli and coffee grounds that one prisoner tried to sell to others as a scam.
This clandestine partying abruptly ended when a smoke alarm went off and deputies in body armor stormed the block and confiscated all the contraband.
Much of the tension in the show was between a group of ‘oldhead’ inmates who tried to maintain order, and the ‘youngsters’ who resented being told what to do.
There were moments of humanity when inmates spoke of how the program helped them be better people and realize their mistakes.
A hardened, heavily tattooed gang member almost cried on camera admitting he ruined his life due to drugs and needed to change.
The sheriff’s office was paid $60,000 for allowing the filming, which it turned over to general county revenue. Higgins was not personally paid for his appearance.
Sheriff’s radical plan
Higgins is a Democrat and longtime supporter of prison reform, introducing programs after his 2019 election that help inmates re-enter society.
These programs caught the attention of Lucky 8, a production company that made several other jail-focused documentaries, which approached him in 2021.
Higgins was frustrated with inmates often being locked down for 23 hours a day due to staff shortages, especially during Covid.
He said this built up tension among prisoners that was released when they were allowed out of their cells.
The sheriff said in the second episode that Little Rock homicides were worst in 20 years, and half of crime was by repeat offenders.
‘If all we’re doing is locking people up… that’s all we’re ever gonna do. There’s not gonna be a change in behavior,’ he said.
‘I don’t want this place to be just a place for punishment. I want this to be a place where reform happens.’
He said prisoners in other countries had more freedom in jails than the US but lower recidivism rates, showing it worked.
Higgins last week told county officials the ‘no lock, no officers’ claim in the Netflix trailer was ‘hyperbole’ it was using to promote the show.
The plan involved leaving the doors to each cell unlocked during the day, with everyone back inside from 10pm to 7am.
The guards usually posted at a desk inside the block, or ‘pod’ as it’s known in the jail, were moved to a room about six feet outside the pod door.
Guards closely monitored the prison CCTV, but could not see the dozens of cameras installed around the block by the TV crew.
Inmates were also, after the first two weeks, given unlimited and free phone calls, paid for by Lucky 8, during certain times of day.
Inmates still had to stand by their doors for regular headcounts, medication and commissary delivery, and when food carts and laundry were taken in and out, as normal. All the usual jail rules still applied.
Higgins said two other blocks in the jail had similar rules and no locks on their doors, but were for the best behaved prisoners in the jail who earned it.
Inmates are divided into tiers one to four, four being problem prisoners locked in solitary. The unlocked cells setup had never been tried on the tier two and three inmates who made up Block H.
Prisoners were selected for the series after being vetted by the sheriff’s office and production crew, and then asked to volunteer for a documentary about life behind bars without being told about the experiment.
Anyone facing federal charges or accused of a sex crime, or with any past sexual convictions, was excluded.
Prisoners who agreed to be filmed were given $75 by Lucky 8 they could use to buy goods from the commissary like instant noodles or headphones.
Higgins admitted at the start of the show he was staking his reputation on the experiment and was not sure if it would work – but was worth trying.
Furious officials were blindsided
Unlocked was destined to be controversial, but whipped up outrage among local officials because they had no idea it was happening.
None of the county’s elected leadership knew about the series until they saw the trailer after it was released last month.
Chief Roy Baker with the Arkansas First Responders Bureau was the most scathing in his criticism, claiming the experiment itself was too dangerous.
‘Sheriff Higgins made mention that there were detention officers in the area, and they have a view of them by video in a specific location,’ he said.
‘However, even if this was the case, and this would be the best case scenario for this project, it is absolutely reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous.
‘At no time should any inmate feel that they have even the smallest amount of freedom or reign within the detention facility.’
Baker noted the jail was understaffed for many years and though Higgins’ plan tried to solve that, it created ‘more serious concerns’.
‘Had there been a fight or other issue, it would have taken much longer for an officer response and the backup for that officer would have an even longer response time,’ he said.
‘That leaves a detention officer fighting for their life while they attempt to maintain order.
‘The county judge and other county administration should have absolutely been notified and several meetings should have been had on the planning stage.’
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders also blasted Higgins for taking the guards out of the block and unlocking the doors.
Turning our prisons into a free-for-all all reality show is dangerous and insulting to our brave law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to apprehend violent criminals,’ she said.
‘This is a reckless decision by the Pulaski County Sheriff and highlights the need for our new state prison to keep repeat violent offenders off our streets and our communities safe.’
Higgins may also have illegally signed a contract with Lucky 8 in the August 15, 2022, release form allowing the crew to film inside the jail.
Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde, who also functions as the county’s chief executive and day-to-day administrator, is the only one with the authority to sign contracts that are legally binding for the county.
Higgins argued the release form was not a contract and was the same as when jails around the US allow news crews to film inside prisons.
County Attorney Adam Fogleman and other local legal figures have weighed in over the past weeks and agree the form was an illegal contract.
‘It doesn’t matter what they thought it was. It’s a contract,’ Hyde told local media after a council meeting last week.
Hyde said he didn’t want to show local residents ‘at their worst’ with the rest of the world.
‘People are very upset because they believe this is the next installment of Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock, which was probably the worst PR for central Arkansas ever,’ he said.
Hyde said Higgins first proposed the idea in late 2021 but county legal experts had issues with Lucky 8’s proposed contract and negotiations broke down.
He claimed the sheriff then went behind everyone’s backs to approve and participate in the series anyway.
‘My primary concern now and always has been that the sheriff stepped outside of his authority by signing a contract he doesn’t have authority to sign,’ Hyde told DailyMail.com.
‘The only person, by state law, who can legally bind the county into a contract is the county judge.
‘The question now is: how are we going to resolve the issue of an illegal contract? We are exploring that at this time.’
Another possibly illegal issue was that two deputies were paid $40 an hour by Lucky 8 for extra shifts, possibly as security for the TV crew.
The County Quorum Court, its legislative body made up of 15 elected justices of the peace, passed a resolution last week demanding Higgins answer 40 questions about the production and his experiment.
Phil Stowers, one of the JPs, said he was ‘sickened’ by the trailer. ‘I can only imagine how damning the full documentary will be,’ he said.
Higgins answered the questions, some of which were obtained by KATV and other local media, and explained details of how the plan worked.
He said he did not notify several state and local agencies because there was no need to as all state jail standards and local policies were followed.
The situation has gotten so tense that the Quorum and Hyde allocated $150,000 to retain outside legal counsel and Fogleman advised Higgins to get his own.
‘This will end up in court one way or another,’ one JP said.
Higgins has the support of several local churches, who said they saw positive changes in inmates they ministered to.
‘It was amazing. I would encourage anybody to watch it before you criticize it. I honor the sheriff for making this particular decision. It is not popular, but I believe it is purposeful,’ Eric Crowder-Jones with Another Chance Ministries said.
Other Little Rock clergy released a joint statement of support after hearing from Higgins that he wanted to humanize people who would one day be released.
‘Sheriff Higgins expressed the intention of giving those inmates the opportunity to become better by allowing them to govern their freedom, rather than to sit in a caged area and become bitter,’ they said.
Viewers were also stunned by the show, calling it ‘unhinged’.
Concern before the cell doors opened
The first episode featured a final meeting before the experiment began in which some senior deputies expressed their concerns.
‘It’s kinda scary. They could create some type of riot situation. That would be one of the worst-case scenarios,’ said Lieutenant Derrick Freeman, who was worried about a mass escape attempt.
Deputy Jessie Ownes added: ‘It’s terrifying… Once the doors are open, I feel like it’s gonna be a s**tshow.
‘I hope I’m wrong but they’re not used to the doors being open and not having a deputy in here to hold them accountable.’
Many of the inmates were just as skeptical when the plan was announced days before the cells were unlocked.
‘He’s not an idiot, he knows this is going to fail, he knows there’s no way that you can let criminals govern theirself,’ Daniel ‘Crooks’ Gatlin, 38, a gangster charged with aggravated robbery said.
Another named Willie Lovelace, 50, said the prison was just giving them a chance to screw themselves.
‘We’re betting against you on all odds that you clowns is gonna f**k up. And the moment that you do, we can show America, this is why we keep you stupid clowns behind the door,’ he said.
Randy Randall, 46, who was charged with domestic assault and drug possession, quickly started organizing a group of older prisoners to run the pod.
Nicknamed ‘True Story’ as it was his frequent catchphrase, he was one of the major characters on the show and involved in most of its pivotal events.
‘I think this is going to work, I have faith in it,’ he said. ‘I’m the vibe boss!’
Randall was filmed speaking to inmates nicknamed Tiny, Crooks, Finch, and Squirrel about forming a group to maintain order, but not all of them were enthusiastic and some were annoyed he was trying to boss them around.
Meet the inmates
Unlocked in the first episodes profiled eight inmates who would be major players in the series, and interviewed them and other characters on their banks throughout the six weeks.
Krisna Piro Clarke, 35, was charged with aggravated robbery and first degree battery and nicknamed Tiny because he was skinny and only 5ft 3in.
He was in the notorious Crips gang and committed his first crime aged eight when he stabbed an older kid who threw a football at the back of his head.
‘I’ve been stabbing motherf**kers ever since,’ he said.
John ‘Eastside’ McCallister, 28, charged with drug possession with firearm, was the block’s tattoo artist and in jail 14 times since he was 19.
He never got his driver’s license but had been in high speed chases and ‘some worse s**t’, and used meth since he was eight.
‘All I’ve been around is criminals… I love that adrenaline rush high, knowing you could get caught,’ he said.
McCallister’s first crime was robbing a pet store, while high on meth, pills, and acid, and stole a pillowcase full of snakes and reptiles.
But an iguana bit his penis when he ran from the cops, and he was caught when a snake tightened around him and he couldn’t breathe properly.
Mason ‘Mayham’ Abraham, 21, from Mississippi was charged with capital murder and was fighting the charges so he could see his young daughter again.
He was the most prominent of a group of younger prisoners who clashed with Randall’s older crew and often spoke for them.
Chauncey Young, 20, was charged with aggravated robbery, theft, first degree battery, and drug possession with intent to deliver.
Another of the younger group, he was facing decades in jail but said ‘I’m really not supposed to be here… I can’t accept my fate’ and wanted to go to college and working in IT if he got out.
Gatlin, a heavily tattooed gangster and drug dealer, said his ‘Crooks’ nickname came from his teeth and eyes being a bit crooked.
‘I’m a criminal for real. You better f**king worry about me, buddy. I’m gangster as f**k, I’m mot going for no silly s**t. I’m gonna do real bad, but I’m gonna take care over everybody around me. I was a scumbag,’ he said.
He said he was a meth addict who was dealing since he was 13, and as a teenager was injecting a gram of meth seven times a day.
Gatlin traced his life of crime back to when his dad died in a car accident when he was nine, drinking and racing in the street until he hit a telephone pole, flew out the windscreen and broke his neck.
He said getting sober for three months in jail made him want to turn his life around and he thought the program would help him a lot because it made him feel like ‘I can do this for real’ outside jail.
Later in the series, Raymond ‘AJ’ Lovett, 24, was introduced – easily the highest-profile inmate in the series.
He was awaiting trial for capital murder after shooting dead Leighton Whitfield, 21, who was visiting his fiancée Jade Pye at CHI St Vincent North Hospital.
Lovett, who was an acquaintance of his victim, walked into the fourth floor room and asked if they were together, then shot Whitfield and walked away.
He was on suicide watch when he first arrived after splitting his head open in the police car whacking it on a belt buckle in a suicide attempt.
‘We run the pod now’
The doors unlocked and inmates burst out of their cells, celebrating and yelling ‘we run the pod now’.
But tensions between different generations began almost immediately after the doors were unlocked at the start of episode 2.
The youngsters were keen to enjoy the freedom of being out of their cells and resented Randall and his group telling them they still had to follow the jail rules.
This dynamic became the defining storyline of the first half of the experiment and the cause of most of the drama.
But the block’s stability had a more immediate problem: David Miller, who was locked up after being arrested for domestic battery.
Unlike most of the prisoners, Miller had both culinary and business degrees and was a night manager at a Wingstop.
But he seemed to delight in needling other inmates that built up anger and threatened to derail the whole program.
McCallister explained Miller had been moved from two other blocks after being beaten up in each of them, and said he deserved it.
Finally in episode 3, having had enough of his antics, two inmates lured him into a cell away from the CCTV – but not the TV cameras – and punched him twice in the face to teach him a lesson.
Despite this, ice water being thrown on him as he lay in bed, and a come to Jesus meeting with Randall, he didn’t seem to learn.
The conflict finally ended when Miller started carving a shank on one of the door locks in plain sight of cameras.
‘Why should I run and hide? There’s no reason for me to. This place can be dangerous at time, but I don’t have fear, I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,’ he told the camera.
But his boneheaded move was quickly spotted by prison guards who confiscated the weapon and kicked him out of the pod.
Generational conflict spills over
By day eight, prisoners had become comfortable that without a guard in the block whatever they did in their cells wouldn’t be seen.
The youngsters began acting up and Randall got worried they would mess up and derail the program, so he called a meeting.
‘I’m gonna make sure these doors stay open. No exceptions,’ he said.
One of the things the older inmates tried to clamp down on was the making of hooch, which was very much against prison rules.
However, this didn’t go down well because one of Randall’s top lieutenants, nicknamed Squirrel and a dead-ringer for actor Samuel L Jackson, was a big drinker of it.
‘I can’t take advice from somebody that’s a hypocrite,’ one of the younger prisoners said.
Mayham added afterwards: ‘They want us to do the right thing for the program. Man, come on… It’s a pod full of felons. We’re not kindergarteners, we in jail.’
Randall tried a new strategy of reaching across the generational divide, starting by showing them how to cook creative meals, like a bizarre makeshift pizza using liver, with jail food and they ate together.
Even Mayham started to come around: ‘Randall, he’s been through this way longer than us. This unit is working the way it’s supposed to because of him.’
The stability had inmates forming Bible classes, addiction meetings, group workouts, and playing basketball, and told the TV crews how mature everyone was being.
‘No other unit is doing what we’re doing… it’s paradise,’ one prisoner said.
By day 13 everything was going so well that Higgins was ready to proceed to the next part of the plan – giving the inmates free, unlimited phone calls.
This created drama as there were only so many phones, but Higgins said it was an important part of them working together.
Randall came up with a solution – a phone list so they knew who was in line before them. The access to phones allowed them to reconnect with family and more easily contact lawyers about their cases.
But the ‘paradise’ was lost just a few days later, starting with Clarke getting some bad news in a phone call with his family.
Upset, he got into a petty argument with Randall that escalated into a fistfight on the upper level of the pod in full view of the other inmates.
Nearby prisoners broke up the scuffle in seconds, but it was a body blow to Randall’s credibility as a leader and stoked tensions once more.
‘He’s a good dude, but he’s the type that he want to run the show,’ Randall’s cellmate Big Mel said in an interview.
‘He acts like a guard – get in your cell, get up and put your shirt on. Man, I hate this, I hate people like that. And at the same time Randy’s causing problems.’
The pair soon had a chat in their cell in front of the cameras, where Mel told Randall people called him ‘Pod Daddy’ and were sick of him being in their business.
Breaking point came when Young started taunting him as he was trying to adjust the TV channel, shouting ‘piggy pig, pig’ over and over.
Randall snapped and charged at Young and the pair fought until others pulled them apart.
‘He a hypocrite, he the main one causing problems. Then he want to tell everybody what not to do… look at yourself, you’re doing stuff too. Words don’t give you a reason to put your hands on nobody,’ Young said after the fight.
McCallister’s cellmate Tyler, 19, later observed that Randall ‘gets mad at people for no reason’.
‘There’s literally not a day that goes by that he’s not yelling at somebody… you youngsters are not f**king with him no more,’ he told another inmate.
But Randall maintained it wasn’t his fault: ‘It ain’t me, it’s us, it’s all of us, not just me.
‘I always stick my nose in their business to stop them… the mishaps come along here because everybody think you’re trying to boss them.’
Chaos reigns
Seeing his position was untenable, Randall stepped back from leadership and the rest of the ‘oldheads’ followed suit.
‘So we gonna find out and see what’s going to happen now,’ he said.
Seeing this happen Higgins and his deputies became concerned that a power vacuum could lead to chaos. They were right.
Because Randall stopped organizing food distribution, and role he had even before the experiment, inmates missed meals and the youngsters began hoarding it.
Some of the hoarded food was used to make three gallons of hooch, a prison wine that would be a major infraction if discovered by guards.
‘Now that no one’s in charge, we’re all just gonna get wild. We’re gonna have fun, and we’re just gonna party. Because the hooch makes everything feel nice,’ McCallister said.
Tyler explained to the film crew how to make it, starting with putting hoarded fruit in a bag and leaving it in hot water and adding Kool-Aid due to its high sugar content, and bread crust to release yeast.
‘It de-fermen-tates it… I guess that’s the word,’ he said. ‘We gonna be drunk as hell.’
McCallister, as the tattoo artist, was in charge of creating a wick out of wound-up toilet paper that would burn like a fuse and be used to light other things.
First they tried using a pair of glasses to ignite leaves and paper in the yard, but the wind blew it out so they decided on a riskier strategy.
As the documentary crew filmed, an inmate was boosted up by others in a camera blind spot and took the clock off the wall. They used the battery to light the wicks and replaced the clock like nothing happened.
McCallister explained that he made tattoo ink by lighting a makeshift candle in a metal alcove in his cell, and scraped off the soot that collected on the metal.
He put two staples together at the top of a pen to make the tattoo injector and charged $5 for a name and $15-20 for more complicated art.
The wick also lit ‘coffee sticks’ made from a napkin soaked in black coffee that is spread over it with a toothbrush and left to dry outside, giving inmates a small high.
Guards remained none the wiser about these illicit operations until one of the wicks set off a smoke alarm at the end of episode 5.
After contraband was found in rooms nearby, Higgins responded by sending in deputies dressed in riot gear to search the entire pod and strip search everyone.
Wicks, the hooch, and various prescription pills were found and confiscated.
The sheriff put everyone on 24-hour lockdown so they could think about whether that was what they wanted to go back to.
Higgins decided to continue with the program after that, but set up an anonymous vote afterwards where inmates could nominate a troublemaker and anyone with more than one vote would be moved to another block.
Despite the jail code of never snitching, Randall and the other older inmates advocated voting out those who threatened to derail the program.
As each inmate cast their vote one by one, McCallister decided to take the fall for the entire pod, as he was the instigator.
‘Jail helps you look at your whole life… I’m going to evaluate myself and some of the stuff I’ve been doing,’ he said.
‘You hit a spot in your life where you don’t even want negative stuff in your life anymore. And I feel like I’ve hit that spot this time.’
He was given restrictions for a week, but allowed to stay as Higgins was impressed with him taking responsibility.
Lovett spent a week in solitary confinement as the lockdown gave him suicidal thoughts, and was given a warm welcome on his return.
‘It’s nasty in the hole. You have a bunk but you don’t have a mattress when you’re on suicide watch,’ he said.
‘They give you one blanket, you have no mat to sleep on. I guess so you don’t choke yourself out. Here is heaven compared to the hole.
‘I was thinking about the unit the whole time I was in there and I was worried they weren’t going to bring me back here… this is the best unit in the whole jail right now.’
Heartbreaking moments
Between the drama, there were emotional moments for the prisoners as the experience made them want to change their ways.
Phone calls to loved ones had inmates opening weeping at what they missed, or realizing how they ruined their lives.
‘I don’t wanna be like these other dudes, ’cause that’s why they ready to fight and crash out and lose their spot because they know they not going home,’ Young said through tears in an interview from his bunk.
Gatlin, despite being a hardened gangster, was on the verge of tears as he explained that getting sober in jail made him regret his life choices.
‘I’m not responsible enough, I’m not strong enough… to take care of myself. My actions put me here,’ he said.
There’s a lot of people in here who are really smart and have a lot of talent, that don’t know how to take care of themselves.
‘I know what to do, but I just don’t do it, and I don’t know why. I have to man up and realize that and take care of myself.’
Later in the show, inmates were given double the usual number of visitations – two a week, and Gatlin’s sister Juanita visited him.
‘This program has helped him out, tremendously. These inmates, they need stuff like that, and in prisons,’ she said after her brother cowed to go to rehab.
‘Because they’re eventually gonna get out, and we need this type of rehabilitation or encouragement, [otherwise] they’re just gonna go right back in. This time I can really see a difference, so I’m really fighting for him.’
Clarke also got a visit from his son and the boy’s mother, who had earlier refused to see him, where the teenager told him he was forgiven.
Falling at the last hurdle
New inmates were admitted to the block to replace those who were moved out, made bail, or were convicted and imprisoned elsewhere.
One of them, nicknamed Weekley, was caught cheating at cards by a longstanding prisoner named CJ, who furiously attacked him.
The pair were separated before the fight was spotted by guards, but agreed to settle the score later in his cell.
Furious about the newcomer cheating, two other prisoners went into the cell too, and viciously bashed Weekley while others watched through the door window.
When deputies arrived he told them he fell out of the top bunk and was taken to hospital while saying it hurt to breathe.
Surveillance footage soon revealed what really happened and all four inmates involved were kicked out and everyone put back on lockdown.
Higgins now doubts the whole plan can work as harmony needs to be maintained when new people come in due to it being a transitional jail.
‘They’re not taking it seriously, they don’t see the opportunity that they have, they don’t see that we could do something different,’ he said.
‘So I don’t know if it can really work.’
He told the inmates they had until the next day to convince him that the doors should stay open.
‘I don’t know what they’re going to do, I don’t know if it’s too late,’ he said afterwards.
The inmates called a meeting to figure out what to do, and faced with the prospect of losing their relative freedom and access to loved ones, finally work together.
Old rivalries are finally settled and Clarke and Mayham give speeches about how much they respect the other generations.
They agree on a plan where new inmates would get a 30-minute orientation and anyone who didn’t follow the jail rules would be forced out after too many strikes.
After the meeting, Randall and Young buried the hatchet from their feud, and agree they blew everything out of proportion.
‘I stopped coming to your rooms and demanding stuff, because you inspired me the way you sat back and I sat back,’ Randall said.
He told Young the first time he went in jail at 22 his kid was one and when he got out they were eight, and he doesn’t want him to miss his family like that too. He told him to pay it forward and help other people.
The next day, Higgins returned and the inmates made their case, but the sheriff was unconvinced.
‘Y’all sat back and let things happen, this whole time. You didn’t make the cocktail, but maybe you drank it. Are you serious? How many times have you told me you’re serious? Every time I come in here,’ he said.
Lovelace argued that the inmates were serious, but it took them a while to understand because they were new to working with other people.
‘So it took us a while, because we slow. Look how long it’s taken us to get along in life,’ he said.
Higgins replied: ‘It’s not just about you, it’s about the safety of this facility, it’s about the deputies who work here, and the people coming after you… I don’t know.’
The sheriff said he would let them know his decision the next day.
‘This program’s got my name on it, so there’s a lot on the line. I’m trying to do something different to change the legacy of the facility, but I’m not truly convinced that the doors need to be opened,’ he told the camera afterwards.
‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do.’
Higgins, after some dramatic tension, announced he would leave the doors unlocked because he could see the inmates were finally trusting each other.
‘I believe that the lightbulb has come on,’ he said.
Did it work?
Higgins at the end of the show, and in an interview last month, argued the experiment was a success even though it wasn’t perfect.
‘If I were to do this again, I’ve learned they can make anything out of anything,’ he said.
‘If we commit to something like this, and we learn form the experience and continue to try to improve what we’re doing, we can create a safer detention facility.
‘It’s not just for the jail itself, we have people in this facility, some will be released to the community, some will go to federal prison. Wherever they end up, we’re interested in them being a better person.’
Inmates also spoke about how the experience made them better people who wanted to turn their life around, and improved their social skills.
‘Before, I was just wanting that adrenaline rush high, and anything to get that fix, I was with it,’ McCallister said.
‘Now, I feel better as a person where I don’t have to look over my shoulder…. I know this has helped me, and I want it to continue to help me.’
Higgins said H Block had fewer disciplinary actions against inmates since the series was filmed than any other block, which is backed up by jail statistics provided as part of the Quorum’s demands.
H Block is still functioning the same way as during the experiment a year later, and Higgins plans to to the same with four other blocks in the jail.
