Maximum Security tells the stories of the world's harshest prisons, and the people on either side of the locked door.

From Alcatraz and Devil's Island to La Santé, France and Boscobel, USA 'supermax', this book is about the eternal cat and mouse game played out between convicts and the warders who try to keep them behind the four tall walls of 'the Big House'.

These pages are packed with accounts of repressive prison regimes and the people who fight against them, the vicious

hierarchies that operate within the prison population, what it's like to be on Death Row, riots and hostage-taking, violent abuse by both guards and inmates, plus daring escapes against the odds.

From institutional corruption and sadistic punishments to drug smuggling and prisoner murder, Maximum Security lets you peer between the cell bars into a hidden world of crime and punishment.