Overview
- Channel 5 ordered a feature-length film titled Richard Madeley On Murder Row, produced by ITN Productions and due to air later in 2026.
- Producers say access to the usually closed CECOT complex took months to negotiate, and Richard Madeley interviewed prisoners and guards inside.
- Press materials describe stark conditions: crowded metal bunks, inmates kept in boxer shorts with shaved heads, lights on around the clock, and no family visits or rehabilitation.
- CECOT opened in 2023 as a 23-hectare, $115 million facility built for up to 40,000 detainees, with reports saying it currently holds about 15,000.
- The film sets the prison within President Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang strategy and follows Madeley into gang-hit neighborhoods to assess its wider impact and ethics.