’60 Days In’ is a novel concept in that it follows jail officials as they solicit assistance from the public in trying to rid their prisons of competing gangs, narcotics, and corruption. Sheriff Jonathon W. Horton recruits seven people to help him fulfill a mission in the Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama during Season 6.
We watch them engage with various convicts to understand better how things like race-based politics and contraband operate in jail.
Everything comes within the realm of reality television. As such, its credibility is likely to be questioned by the public, all the more so given the genre’s reputation for spiced-up narratives to get more views.
However, does ‘60 Days In‘ promote its plot to the public, and are the participants compensated for their participation? What we discovered is as follows.
How much are participants in 60 Days In compensated?
According to recent reports, law-abiding persons seem to be financially rewarded for their efforts. According to a Reddit member with experience in reality television, the average budget for a one-hour program on A&E is roughly $375,000 each episode.
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It covers expenses such as production offices, staff, post-production, and location. If this individual’s estimates are true, each participant will earn little more than $3,000 every episode.
Is 60 Days In a Real or a Scripted One?
When the program launched in 2016, its creators admitted that it was not scripted. After all, there is a reason why this docuseries has amassed such a large following over the last several years.
Greg Henry, the executive producer, said that shows focusing on prisons are often prejudiced depending on who is interviewed. You get information from the criminal’s perspective or the prison officer’s perspective, both of whom have (naturally) contradictory viewpoints.
This is why the play makes use of the audience—”We wanted to create a presentation where the voices you heard were yours and mine.” They would be regular folks, and hence we would perceive it objectively.”
Interestingly, incarcerating law-abiding citizens is not prohibited, yet candidates are jailed under fictitious names. Everyone is also required to sign release paperwork while inside the institution.
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In discussing the series’ purpose and the prisoners’ rights, the producer noted, “We had around 300 inmates wanting to participate.”
We’re not aiming to deceive anybody; we’re just informing them that the documentary is about first-timers, and that’s where we found a space where everyone felt at ease.”
However, one of the participants, Robert Holcomb, claimed that the series was excessively edited to sway the viewer.
“The program was genuine, but the editing was fabricated,” the school instructor claimed. The convicts figured me out in two hours, and they treated me like gold.
They were the most pleasant set of folks I had ever met.” Season 1, which occurred in Clark County Jail in Clark County, Indiana, saw the participant encounter his share of difficulties.
Despite his training, Robert was quickly viewed suspiciously by his fellow convicts as they exposed flaws in his cover tale. As a result, he placed a towel over a camera, a significant offense, and secured his life with a month in solitary confinement.
These antics effectively rendered Robert unable to contribute to the resolution of any of the jail’s problems. (We’d even go so far as to claim he was one of the most divisive characters to appear on the program.)
However, the production crew could not just remove him from the facility since this would raise several red flags.
“This is the portion of the program when there are laws and regulations that must be observed; if somebody looks to be getting favoritism or has misgivings, it raises problems,” Henry added. That attests to the program’s genuineness as a whole.”
However, Robert thought that the cast of ’60 Days In’ represented his fellow convicts in an unflattering way. “They attempted to create the illusion that I was about to be assaulted,” he added.
The program portrayed convicts as beasts while, in truth, they were gentle human beings struggling with drug addiction.
When you watch the program, you get the impression that convicts are awful individuals who should make you fearful of going to jail. In actuality, many are honorable individuals who made unfortunate choices.”
Brooke was one of seven individuals selected to showcase the inner workings of the jail mentioned above in Arizona during season 5. Unlike the other participants, she was booked using her true name, despite being a fictitious convict.
Dan Barr, an attorney, specializing in public records law, commented on the disaster, saying, “Perhaps they should return to their roots as police officers and exit the entertainment sector.” (Andy Howell, Assistant Managing Editor at PinalCentral, indicated that the mugshot would be removed from the website.)
’60 Days In’ is attempting to demonstrate the complexities and operation. However, many have condemned it for its seeming misleading representations of convicts.
This distortion and its motivation have been extensively debated among fans of the series. As this is still reality television, we’d advise taking the storyline with a grain of salt, particularly given how these shows are notorious for zhuzh up the tales to make them more palatable.
