Largest Toxic Waste Dump, Jails and Refugee Camp | The Insider: Reggie Yates

Reggie Yates heads to Ghana to live on one of the largest e-waste dumps in the world – Accra’s notorious Agbogbloshie. Working with a group of “burner boys”, grafting at the bottom of the ladder, Reggie discovers first-hand what life is like for the people who eke out a living on the site.

Dumping e-waste is illegal and the chemicals in the soil in Agbogbloshie mean it has been described as “the most toxic place on earth”. But can we really be complicit in creating it?

Tough Jail in Texas

America incarcerates more people than any other country in the world… and the largest population of inmates are housed in Texas. In fact, one in twenty of adult Texans are now under criminal justice control, so who are these people being locked up?

“Every day around a hundred people enter this jail and a hundred people leave”

For one week Reggie Yates will eat, sleep and work alongside the inmates of Bexar County Jail, Texas to try to understand the criminal justice system from the inside.

He doesn’t just meet the prisoners of this Texan jail, he becomes one. Stripped of all personal belongings, locked up at the ankles, and wearing an orange jumpsuit, he enters into a world most of us will never know.

Working as a Jail Guard in a US Jail

A year after spending a week living as an inmate, Reggie is back in jail, this time as a guard. Working inside Guilford County Jail in North Carolina, Reggie helps guard nearly a thousand prisoners – whose crimes range from minor misdemeanors to murder.

What is it like working in a system operating under unprecedented scrutiny? And having seen incarceration from the other side, does he feel part of the solution? Or part of the problem?

Living in the Largest Refugee Camp in Iraq

Reggie is in the Middle East to spend a week living in the largest refugee camp in Iraq. Being alongside 30,000 Syrian refugees, he discovers what it’s really like to be a 21st-century refugee.

Since the war in Syria began, nearly 11 million people have fled their homes in search of safety. The news has been dominated by those trying to cross into Europe, but some 5 million people ended up in refugee camps.

What’s it like to plan for your future when you can’t go home and you can’t move on?

If you’re interested in experiencing these thought-provoking documentaries firsthand, we highly recommend Reginald Yates’ “Extremes” series. Check it out!