Behind Bars: The World's Toughest Prisons — Season 1, Episode 5: Sofia Central Prison — Sofia, Bulgaria
Crime, Documentary, Drama, Reality • 60 min • 4 seasons, 25 episodes • ★ 7.0/10
Episode synopsis
Sofia Central Prison - a Bulgarian detention center, crumbling foundations and fit for demolition - derelict conditions too much to ask of anyone - even a criminal. Multi-prisoner cells, bunks stacked three stories high as well as a large count of isolation cells where prisoners spend 23 hours a day behind rusty bars, with nothing to do, vegetating their days away. Although the European Union requires 43 square feet space per inmate, prisoners in Sofia Central Prison have on average less than half. Central heating and hot running water are considered a luxury. This jail is a place of violence - inter-prisoner violence is rampant and many reports have emerged describing regular abuse by the prison guards.
About Behind Bars: The World's Toughest Prisons
These are some of the toughest prisons in the world. Prisons so tough, even gang bosses and killers learn the meaning of fear. Across four continents, six different prisons, the series takes us beyond the gates, walls, barred windows and cells into an unknown world, a world we know exists, but a world nobody wants to think about.