As per the pilot, 60 Days In was the brainchild of Jamey Noel, a sheriff based in Clark County, Ind. Noel boasts to viewers that his tenure brought order to pre-existing prison chaos within the county’s jail, opining that before he took over, “the inmates were running the facility,” and “people were getting arrested on purpose because drugs were cheaper to get in jail.”
Despite his best efforts, drug use and violence still run rampant in Clark County Jail, so in an effort to quash any further corruption — corruption he suspects is on the part of both inmates and prison staff — Noel’s proposed quick-fix is the show’s premise: to plant civilians inside of the correction facility as moles.
Their reality TV mission? To report back to Noel with any information gleaned inside the complex. The way they’ll document everything? Inmates are told the production crew is filming a docuseries, but aren’t given the whole story as to what that docuseries is.
And yes, before you ask, “What could possibly go wrong?”, the answer is… everything. As the show’s first season trailer revealed, conflict and life-threatening violence are the rule rather than the exception. With every realization of how, say, prison does an irreversible disservice to the mentally ill, there’s a homophobic “booty” joke (courtesy of the editing team) lurking around the corner.
Written by: Nicki