Locked Up Abroad: "Raving Arizona" Season 9 Episode 3

Here are videos and photos from National Geographic’s “Locked Up Abroad: Raving Arizona,” featuring Shaun Attwood's story. It is episode 3 (season 9) of the critically acclaimed series. It will have its broadcast premiere on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 9 p.m. ET /PT on Nat Geo Channel in America. The one-hour episode is expected to draw 8 to 10 million viewers in America alone, and over 50 million worldwide in 36 countries. It is the first time the conditions in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jails will be exposed to such a wide audience. From 2003 to 2007, over 60 people died in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jails.

Click here for preview video 1: Living the Life as an Ecstasy Dealer

The new episode reveals the story of Shaun Attwood who left England in pursuit of his dream to live in America and become a stockbroker. Relocating to Phoenix Arizona, he found success as a stockbroker as well as the pressures and the stress that went with the job.

He had been seeking an opportunity to unwind when he went with one of his colleagues to a nightclub in downtown Phoenix, where he takes the drug, ecstasy, in the company of enticing women. The fateful night and the euphoria he feels changes his life forever; he becomes first a habitual ecstasy user and then, a dealer.

His success as an ecstasy dealer outpaces his success as a stockbroker, and he quits the job and becomes a full-time dealer, with the help of some friends he has recruited. He lives for years in lavish circumstances befitting an ecstasy kingpin: luxurious mansion in the mountains, expensive cars, and all the while surrounding himself with beautiful women and holding “raves” — well-attended parties where he introduces people to ecstasy and gives out free samples.

When he tries to return to his old life as a stockbroker — after having a brush with a rival ecstasy ring run by "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, the former underboss of the Gambino Crime Family, an Italian Mafia mass murderer — it is too late and he is busted and winds up in the notorious Madison Street jail which is one of the Maricopa County jails run by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It is here that he is subjected to intolerable and inhumane conditions, and danger from the skinheads and other gangs that are rampant in the jail. He becomes an onlooker as some skinheads kill someone, and thus witnesses firsthand how and why the jail has such a high rate of murder of its inmates.

He begins to chronicle his experience in the Madison Street jail in a blog, “Jon’s Jail Journal,” by smuggling out his handwritten entries via his weekly visits with his aunt. As time goes by, the site and his unfolding story of the harsh prison conditions in Maricopa County receive worldwide attention.

Click here for preview video 2: No More Running From The Law

Read more about Shaun Attwood’s story and biography, as well as his book, and the advocacy work he does today at his official Web site here.

This episode "Raving Arizona" is based on Shaun's autobiographies, Party Time and Hard Time.

Click here for photo gallery from the new episode. Click here for background details. An overview of season 9 of Locked Up Abroad — including pictures, video, background and biography of participants is here.