Marching Powder

Rusty Young was backpacking in South America when he heard about Thomas McFadden a convicted English drug trafficker who ran tours inside Bolivia's notorious San Pedro prison. The young Australian journalist went to la Paz and joined one of Thomas's illegal tours. They formed an instant friendship and then became partners in an attempt to record Thomas's experiences in jail. Rusty bribed the guards to allow him to stay and for the next 3 months he lived inside the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas and recording one of the strangest prison stories. San Pedro is not your average prison. It's a place where if you lived in luxury on the outside, you also lived in luxury on the inside. The poorest prisoners live in abject poverty and deprivation. Violence always seems like a threat and parts of San Pedro that echo children during the day, also housed one of Bolivia's busiest cocaine factories by night.