- Severe
- Murders are frequent and usually without remorse. People are stabbed, shot, raped, and overall abused constantly and without letup.
- The whole show takes place at "Oswald State Correctional Facility", which is an extremely unrelenting and brutally violent level 4 maximum-security state prison. Murderers, rapists, and arsonists are mixed with common thieves and white-collar criminals with unpleasant results.
- Best friends murder each other, naive people are taken advantage of, prisoners use their connections on the street to murder while in prison, and much more happens.
- In an episode, a man peels his own gums with a razor blade. He screams in extreme agony as blood pours from his mouth. Very bloody, graphic and extremely painful to watch.
- This show is VERY VERY violent, VERY VERY often. There is a murder in nearly every single episode, usually by "shanking", or stabbing/cutting with makeshift blades. Prisoners and guards are killed by electrocution, beatings, and shootings. The electric chair is frequently used for execution, as well as firing squads and hanging. Prisoners on death row are allowed to choose their means of execution.
- Drug trade is very active in the prison and many, many prisoners are killed because of it.
- When a prisoner is introduced, their crime is shown. While a narrator tells us their name and prison number. Flashbacks to these sometimes occur. Some of them are DEEPLY disturbing.
- Rape is quite common in the prison, and the majority of guards are totally apathetic, if not encouraging, of it.
- Blood is shown in almost every violent scene (Gore is never shown).
- Insane prisoners do things such as cut their faces up, put their waste on themselves, commit self harm, etc.
- Violent assaults include a guard having his eyes cut out because of his past membership in a gang, another one having their achilles tendon cut because they beat a prisoner basketball team in a tournament, and in a few instances of limb removal. Attempted murders are not uncommon.
- Guards frequently abuse, beat and even kill prisoners.
- Some stronger examples of violence include a man's eyes being cut out, a man biting off another man's penis, a person cutting out his own gums, and a priest being crucified by being nailed to the ground.
- Beecher attacks schillinger and defecates on his face