Three American lockups get the full inside treatment in this compilation of episodes from the Behind Bars series. At Dade County Jail in Florida, cameras contrast the punishing drills of the Miami-Dade Boot Camp, where minor offenders can work their way out early, against the general population wing where murderers and robbers set their own rules. In Arizona's Tent City Jail, prisoners live in decommissioned Korean War-era army tents with no insulation, exposed to desert heat and winter cold under a sheriff who prides himself on spending as little as possible on inmate comfort. The final segment moves to Missouri's North East Correctional Center in Bowling Green, where Officer Peterson and inmate Richard McCool narrate daily routines inside a system that spends over 800 million dollars a year running 21 state prisons, and where a new rehabilitation approach is taking shape. Interviews with guards and inmates alongside on-the-ground footage carry the film, moving from one institution's survival codes to another's attempt at reform.