'Inside the World's Toughest Prisons' Season 4: Paraguay inmates eat out of cut-up bottles scavenged from garbage
Raphael Rowe watches in shock as an inmate scavenges through prison waste in the hope of finding trash that he can sell for some money. He picks up leftover bits of food, crushed bottles and whatnot. He beams as he says there are times when he finds money and drugs as well. He is incarcerated in the Tinglado section of the Tacumbu prison in Paraguay and that's how every day looks like to prisoners living there.
There's overcrowding, no beds or bunkers available and people are openly doing crack and carrying knives too. There is a guard watching over them but he does nothing to stop them. Raphael was stunned to witness the state of things inside the prison but at the same time what was running on his mind was what would happen to those unusable plastic bottles that were recovered from the prison garbage bin.
Like every season, he volunteers to stay in the prison to understand the inmates' lives better. He shares a cell with two other people in Pavillion D, where the wealthy and obedient live. Edgar, who runs the bay, informed that Raphael must abide by the 50 plus rules if he wishes to complete his week-long stay in Tacumbu. He obliges and immediately starts his daily-wage work in the kitchen where he learns that dinner is served at 5 pm because later on there are fewer guards and no daylight, which often results in inmates fighting over food.
While that got Raphael thinking, what really had him surprised was those plastic bottles that were once picked out from trash were being used as plates to collect dinner. "When I saw the inmate with these bags of bottles, these dirty bags of bottles, I thought to myself — what the F are you going to do with them? But I have just seen him out there getting paid for dirty plastic bottles," he elaborated as he appreciated how people are quick to find opportunities even when they are put behind bars.
Raphael walked away with an unusually different experience through which he gained immense knowledge about the Tacumbu prison. He also learnt how there's deep-seated classism within the prison walls and like most of our society, inmates too are oddly comfortable with the arrangement.
Catch all the new episodes of 'Inside World's Toughest Prisons' Season 4 on Netflix now.