The United States holds more women in prison than any other country, over 200,000 at the time this film was made, and the cameras follow that population through overcrowded facilities where cells built for one or two people hold more, and some women sleep on the floor for lack of a bunk. Interviews with prisoners and staff describe medical care that lags behind need, with illnesses and injuries going untreated for weeks at a stretch. Many of the women interviewed are serving time for nonviolent offenses, and the film spends real time on what happens to their children, who often end up with relatives or in foster care while their mothers serve out sentences years long. Addiction and mental illness come up repeatedly as conditions that landed women in the system in the first place and that the system does little to treat once they're inside. The film moves between several facilities rather than settling on one, building its picture of the prison system from the accumulation of similar stories rather than a single case.