Raphael Rowe is gearing up for his seventh series of Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons – travelling across the globe from the Solomon Islands to Bali and the Czech Republic to give a deep-dive into some of the most hostile and dangerous prison environments in the world.
He’s been attacked, verbally abused and watched prisoners be murdered by other prisoners – but it’s not stopping him from making another series.
Why? Because he’s been tirelessly working to try to change the narrative about prisoners – something he thinks could be swiftly ruined by reality shows like Channel 4’s new format HMP.
He said: “It’s frustrating because the producers of these shows are asking people to do things or behave in a certain way for telly purposes and it doesn’t serve any purpose when it comes to taking about prisons other than entertainment.
“I’ll probably kick myself because one day I might participate in one of these kinds of shows for a reason, but I don’t see how producers can expect people to believe when you use a decommissioned prison and pretend to be a real prison, that it can be anywhere near the reality.