A glimpse into a high-security Russian prison housing serial killers and cannibals reveals inmates that are watched around the clock and blindfolded when they leave their cell.
The high-security Black Dolphin prison houses the country’s most brutal criminals including serial killers, cannibals and terrorists.
It is home to around 700 inmates who together have killed around 3,500 people - that’s a horrifying average of five murders per inmate.
Lieutenant Denis Avsyuk, who oversees the prison, said the main crime the inmates have committed is murder, but they also have “maniacs, paedophiles and terrorists”.
In an interview with National Geographic, Mr Avsyuk said: “To call them people - it makes your tongue bend back just to say it.
“I have never felt any sympathy for them.”
Located on the Kazakhstan border, the prison, which is one of the oldest in Russia, gets its informal name from the statue at the front of the building. The sculpture was made by the prisoners themselves.
One prison lieutenant said that the only way to escape is by dying, as Black Dolphin inmates are imprisoned for life.
No inmate has ever escaped from Black Dolphin.
Prisoners in the brutal detention centre are kept under 24-hour video surveillance.
The cells are set back between three sets of steel doors, and inmates live in a ‘cell within a cell’ with two inmates being forced to share one 50-square-foot-cell.
Due to the nature of the prisoners, guards make rounds every 15 minutes.
When inmates leave their cells, they are made to walk bent at the waist. This technique is believed to be unique to Black Dolphin and is believed to be a tactic allowing for maximum control while depriving the inmate of a view of his immediate surroundings - preventing them from escaping or attacking.
They are also blindfolded when they walk outside of their cell. This is to ensure that prisoners do not have a good understanding of the prison layout.
There is no prison yard, and exercise consists of pacing back and forth in another cell, during which time the cells of inmates are checked by guards for contraband.
There is no cafeteria in Black Dolphin, instead, prisoners eat four meals a day in their cells and meals consist of soup and bread.
They are only allowed books, newspapers and a radio.
Footage from the TV segment shows an inmate being marched down a corridor lined with locked doors, bent over at the waist with his hands being held behind his back. A German shepherd dog barks incessantly as it’s led on a short leash behind the man.
The inmate, Nikolai Astankov, who is serving a life sentence for killing an entire family and burning their bodies in the forest, spoke of how it wasn’t worth spending too much time thinking about his fate.
“If you constantly think about how you are here, what is waiting for you, that you won’t ever get free, that you are left here alone, you simply won’t make it,” he said.
Astankov and his cellmate are woken up each morning at 6am, the clip details, and for the next 16 hours are not allowed to sit on their beds.
“You are constantly being filmed in your cell,” Astankov said.
“You’re being watched around the clock. There are light and motion detectors… plus, every 15 minutes a guard goes through the cells so you must constantly be attentive.”
Another of the inmates, Vladimir Nikolayev, one of Russia's most notorious murderers, is doing time for cannibalism after he killed a man during a drunken fight, then dragged him into his bathroom and chopped him up.
In a video interview Nikolayev said: "What was I to do?”
“I dragged him to the bathroom, undressed him and started cutting him apart,” he said.
"I cut off his head, arms, legs and all of a sudden something kind of struck me and I thought I would try him.
"I cut off a piece of meat of his thigh and boiled it. I tried it and didn't like it, so I chopped it up and fried it in a frying pan.
"I gave some meat to one of my friends, he took it home and gave it to his wife. She made dumplings with it, she had some herself and fed it to her children.
"I said it was kangaroo, we don't have kangaroos around here. They didn't know what it was."
