History - Weird US Crimes And Punishment - [DVD]

Whether it's a bank heist or a traffic violation, there's a punishment in America for every type of crime. Hosts Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran take viewers behind some bizarre bars to investigate our weird fascination with criminals--both lives of crime and time in the slammer. Their journey begins on a dusty Louisiana road, where Bonnie and Clyde's death by police ambush is reenacted each year, and ends in the scorching Arizona desert, where 2,000 petty criminals are forced to wear pink underwear, work inchain gangs, and live in army tents. They also visit a town in Texas with nine state prisons, a place where crime really does pay, and a jail in Philadelphia built by Quakers for "confinement in solitude with labor"--a punishment even Dickens thought cruel and unusual. Then, Mark and Mark follow the trail of dapper escape artist and bank robber Willie Sutton as he ingeniously springs himself from the Quaker pen and two other high-security jails.