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There are now more than 90,000 women incarcerated in American prisons and their numbers are growing at twice the rate of men. Women Behind Bars goes behind the doors of three of the USA’s toughest female prisons to reveal a reality that no male institution has to confront.

California’s Valley State Institution for Women is the biggest women's prison in the world. Behind its barbed wire fences, there are more women contained than in all the female prisons in Italy, France and the United Kingdom combined.

With 80% of female prisoners having been sexually and physically abused as children, the series investigates how such horrors turn these women to crime.

Prisoners openly reveal how hard drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine are smuggled inside and the scourge of addiction behind bars.

All in all, Women Behind Bars is a compelling insight into the lives of women housed in America’s toughest female prisons.