By risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they document the uprisings against the military regime in 2007. Armed with small handycams, the Burma VJs stop at nothing to make their reports from the streets of Rangoon. Their video footage is smuggled out of the country and broadcast back in via satellite and offered up for use in the international media. The whole world witnesses single event clips made by the VJs, but for the very first time, the individual images have been put together here to tell a much bigger story…

In the summer of 1971, Philip Zimbardo, Craig Haney, and Curtis Banks carried out a psychological experiment to test a simple question: What happens when you put ordinary people in positions of power, enabling abuse? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? To explore this, student volunteers were selected and randomly assigned to play the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison at Stanford University. Although the students were mentally healthy and knew they were taking part in an experiment, some guards quickly became sadistic, while prisoners showed signs of acute stress, depression and trauma. After only six days, the planned two-week study was a disaster…

The shocking story of a well respected Indigenous community leader in outback Western Australia who was locked in a metal cell in the back of a prison van and driven through the desert in the searing heat. Four hours later he was dead. Reporter Liz Jackson reveals the tragic train of events that led to this death, despite repeated warnings that Western Australia’s prisoner transport system was unsafe and inhumane…

In the wake of the attacks of September 11th 2001, the United States opened a prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The hundreds of prisoners detained there are not afforded prisoners of war status according to the Geneva Convention, they are labelled “unlawful combatants” and are held indefinitely and tortured with no right to a lawyer or a trial. Gitmo — The New Rules Of War cuts through the official political rhetoric surrounding Guantánamo to expose what really goes on at the United States central gulag in the ‘war on terror’.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent reports on the issue of innocent people confined to prisons on remand in the UK, circa 1974. People are imprisoned without trial and are later released with either a small fine, a set of mandatory conditions, or leave completely innocent. It’s a strange set of circumstances in a country with such pretensions of a bill of rights and espoused ‘legal protections.’ Is bail a right or a privilege?