How would you survive in jail for 60 days? More to the point, how would you survive for 60 days in an overcrowded local jail in Clark County, Indiana, which houses 500 bored, neurotic and at times dangerous inmates? That is the premise of a new series called 60 Days In.

Watching the show, we discover that hell really is other people, especially when you are packed in a small “pod” with 50 hardened remand prisoners and sleeping four to a cell. Robert, the narcissistic comic figure among the seven voluntary inmates, reckons jail will be like a holiday camp. “I don’t want this to be too easy,” he says. Fellow participant Tami, a police officer is real life, fears he is in for a terrible awakening.

The idea of planting volunteers in the county jail, where prisoners are held while awaiting trial, was dreamed up by local sheriff Jamey Noel. A sheriff in the US is a political post – Noel is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and stout defender of the right to carry guns. He won the election in 2014 (the fact that his Democratic predecessor had been arrested after a relationship with a prostitute really helped the Republican cause) and vowed to clean up the drug-ridden jail.

“I already knew there was a big problem,” says Noel, “but then when I was on the campaign trail running for sheriff I’d have parents call me up saying ‘If you get elected, you’ve got to do something. My kid’s in jail. I figured he would be getting help or at least be safe, but things have got worse.’ I knew we had to do something.”

‘Jail will be like a holiday camp’ … cocky Robert, who ends up in solitary confinement.

His initial idea was to put cops undercover to root out the drugs, but he couldn’t find officers who inmates didn’t know, and, in any case, police personnel were unwilling to do a stretch inside. “They would do it for a weekend,” says Noel, “but were reluctant to do it for longer.”

News of Noel’s idea leaked out, production company Lucky 8 got wind of it, and together they cooked up the notion of putting members of the public in. The participants are diverse: as well as Robert, who is a teacher, and police officer Tami, there is a laconic former marine called Zac, a meek security guard called Jeff, a young black man called Isaiah whose brother is in prison for real, a young military wife and mother-of-two called Barbra, and, roll the drums, 47-year-old Maryum Ali, a social worker who happens to be the eldest daughter of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali was born in Louisville, just the other side of the Ohio river in Kentucky (the river forms the state line), and within walking distance of Clark County prison.

Former marine Zac, one of the voluntary inmates in 60 Days In.

Surely, installing cameras – inmates were told the programme was tracking the experience of first-time offenders – makes the whole thing a stunt and changes the behaviour of prisoners? “It was a very real experience,” insists Noel, “because the only people that knew these undercover participants were not actual inmates were me, one other member of the sheriff’s office and the production company. The corrections officers didn’t even know.”

Maryum Ali, a social worker who happens to be the eldest daughter of boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

Noel says the volunteers were given safety training, but after that were treated like ordinary inmates. “It’s my career on the line,” he admits in the opening show. “God forbid something should happen to one of these participants.” He won’t say a great deal about how they fare, but in the preview material we see Tami with a black eye and the cocky, irritating Robert being put in solitary confinement. There were also rumours that one participant failed to make it through the 60 days, though the producers are coy. “Some people followed their training and act as skilled witnesses,” says Noel. “Other folks don’t and it doesn’t end well.”

Films and TV shows about prison life seem to exercise a ghoulish fascination for the public, especially in the US (why else would The Shawshank Redemption regularly feature on best of lists?), but Noel insists 60 Days In is not just an entertainment. “I hope this sparks an interest everywhere about corrections. We’ve got to get away from just housing bodies and start to direct their energies.”

Man with a plan … Sheriff Noel, who allowed members of the public in to Clark County as an experiment.

The statistics on US jails and prisons – the latter are federal facilities and house convicted prisoners and long-term inmates – are startling. More than 2.5 million people are incarcerated at any one time; 13 million people a year pass through the system; drugs, gangs and criminal activity are rife; recidivism rates are high. It is a portrait of penal failure that would shame a country in the developing world.

The clearest conclusion to be drawn from 60 Days In is that Clark County jail is a disgrace: inmates are allowed to do more or less what they want; the real control is exercised by “pod bosses”; guards only intervene when someone is physically threatened. There aren’t even enough beds for all prisoners, with some sleeping on mattresses in the public area; there is no organised work and little opportunity for recreation.

A portrait of penal failure … inmates at Clark County.

The regime is not malign, just hopelessly underfunded and inefficient, typical of a country that offers no safety net for the vulnerable and marginalised. I wondered whether, in a society with so many homeless people, the idea was not to make jail too attractive as an alternative. Robert’s notion that this would be a holiday camp couldn’t be further from the truth: it’s a combination of the boring, the anarchic and the occasionally threatening; 60 days must have felt like a life sentence.

I email Barbra and ask how she coped. “I stood up to the experience a little better than I expected,” she says. “Over the course of the 60 days, I was much more bored than I thought I would be, and I missed my family. However, I was able to develop friendships with several inmates, which helped me pass the time.”

She says the regime needs to be changed to allow prisoners to do something constructive while they are inside, with “programs directed at rehabilitation” so that “inmates learn to better themselves and recover from the mistakes they made to be placed in jail”. When she went in, Barbra was one of those who felt prisoners were too leniently treated – they got three meals a day while her husband had to put his life on the line to feed his family, she complained – so the change is significant.

‘The friendships I developed helped me pass the time’ … Barbra (left) with other Clark County inmates.

Whether the US as a whole will make that change is another matter. When we talk, Sheriff Noel will not accept my contention that America imprisons too many people, though he admits locking up drug addicts rather than treating them is mad. Instead, he argues, emphasis should be placed on rehabilitation and less ready access to drugs. When he took over, he says, people were trying to get into Clark County because drugs were cheaper and easier to get inside. But better regulation and constructive regimes cost money, and the jail budget is tight. Noel’s own journey is going to be long and arduous.

The series has already started in the US, and Brad Holcman, a producer at A&E which commissioned it, says it has been very successful. “The numbers are beyond anyone’s expectations.” A second series, with eight new participants, was filmed before the first series aired, and the sheriff is now implementing what he has learned. In particular, Noel says he has a clearer idea of how power relationships work in the pods – for instance, the way access to bathrooms is used as a tool of control – and how exhausted and irritable prisoners get because of their lack of sleep and unstructured day. He says such behavioural lessons could not have been understood without having guinea pigs in the jail.

There will still be those who argue it is more stunt than social document, but Holcman fights his corner. “We make entertaining shows with a social purpose,” he says, “and I want people to watch this programme because it’s got a powerful message to it. It’s not a lowest-common-denominator reality show.”

The Jail: 60 Days In starts at 10pm on Wednesday on the Crime + Investigation (CI) channel.