Page 43 - Prison Authorities News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> some prison authorities see all this added muscle as a potential security threat, but others see benefits to having weights on the yard. >> i think the important thing for inmates is to keep them occupied. that's what we try to do here at the institution. >> john ault was warden at anamosa state penitentiary at the time we shot there. >> any time you can have inmates participate in some type of meaningful activity it makes their time easier and staff's time much easier. i would much rather have them participate in something positive than talking about how to do a better armed robbery or plo...

From us. it's like something that was filling people's time and taking away negative energy. they took it out. >> some prison authorities see all this added muscle as a potential security threat. but others see benefits to having weights on the yard. >> i think the important thing for inmates is to keep them occupied. that's what we try to do here at the institution. >> he was warden at the state penitentiary at the time we shot there. >> any time you can have inmates participate in some type of meaningful activity, it makes their time easier, makes the staff's time easier. i'd rather them par...

Repercussions for doing what they're doing now. i think that when they're in prison, even a lot of prison authorities were afraid of them given how much attention was on what they were doing and that they were able to bring so much attention to prison conditions in russia and other factors. >> all right. we'll leave it there. our thanks to you, and our thanks to you as well for watching. i'm craig melvin from washington, d.c. on this wednesday afternoon. my colleague andrea mitchell, just a few feet away, standing by. she'll pick things up after the break. our high impact winter storm moving...

Be whacked. so i started seeing that they asked people to do stuff that they wouldn't do themselves, and they're playing people as a puppet and that's what basically they are, puppet masters. i'm not a puppet. >> one of the things i noticed in the transitional housing unit, there's a real mix of prisoners, people that previously on the page yard would have been trying to kill each other. now we're all mixing -- there were books, counselling sessions, a much less tense atmosphere from the rest of the prison. the irony, though, is that some of them still carry this weight of being snitches, of h...

The dues of belonging came at too high a cost. >> people would be put in the hat -- meaning the hit list for any personal reason it could be any personal agenda. for any reason. i didn't want that to happen to me. >> when they decided to leave gang life behind, pelican bay had a place for them to go. a protective housing unit. but admittance came with a price. >> one of the areas at pelican bay is the transitional housing unit, this is where inmates who want to opt out of the gang life divulge everything they know to the prison authorities, they then get the protection of being put away from t...